A Small Mind At The Theatre

The Last Laugh from writer and director Paul Hendy and from producers Evolution Productions has taken a gradual path to the stage following an initial short film by the same name released back in 2017. The short told of a fictional meeting of three comedy legends, Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe and Bob Monkhouse in a theatre dressing room. Here they share memories, jokes and sentimental moments of their life and what made them what they are. The sheer simplicity of this one-location film and the whole world of comedy evolving on a theatre stage created an inevitability that this would eventually flesh out into what now is a 70-minute play. It is perhaps no surprise either that this show has previewed for three performances at The Eric Morecambe Centre. So, the question is, has a 20-minute film made a quality stage show, or do we get the token reply to Morecambe's classic quip question "What do you think of it so far"? Much like that was a false cry of "rubbish" i...

The 2005 Dreamworks film Madagascar introduced us to a menagerie of colourful anthropomorphic animal characters shipped off to Africa after a very happy life in Central Park Zoo. This simple concept has managed to spawn three further franchise films and a musical of the same name, first performed in 2018. Designed very much for a younger audience, Madagascar the Musical lays everything on stage with broad strokes of colour and simple storytelling and from the perspective of that audience, it works really well, keeping the majority of its audience enthralled for its relatively brief one-hour 40 minutes, which includes the interval. The show is filled with energy from its performers, delivering everything in a manner suited to the animated background of the story and with a children's TV feeling. Alex the lion played by Joseph Hewlett is the friendliest lion you could imagine, happily getting on in the zoo with what would be his steak in the wild. Alex has a wonderful relationship w...

The Wizard of Oz,  first brought to the world in L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel and more famously turned into a classic 1939 film, has become a staple family tale, known throughout all ages as a result. Therefore it was little surprise that back in 2011, musical maestros Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice created their own musical of the story, incorporating original film songs by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, and populating it more with those of their own. Since its first appearance in the West End, it has had a number of tours and revivals and this new one, reaching Milton Keynes Theatre this week, plans on once again bringing it to another new audience and back to those of old. The question is, does it do the world-famous story justice? First of all, the lead definitely does the story justice, as taking on the iconic role of Dorothy is Aviva Tulley and she very much makes it her own from the very beginning with a stunning performance of the classic song Over the Rainbow a...