Groundhog Day (Old Vic, London)
Verdict: Please repeat!
Think you know Groundhog Day from the Bill Murray movie? Have you been there and got the giant furry rodent t-shirt? Well, think again.
From Matthew Warchus and Tim Minchin, the musical is a dizzying, breathtaking and joyful reinterpretation of Danny Rubin’s iconic story.
Back in the West End, seven years after its premiere, it’s a show that not only stands up to reruns, but turns it into an art form – thanks in no small part to the mesmerizing Andy Karl in the Murray role of cynical weatherman Phil Connors.
I didn’t think it possible to outdo Murray as the scornful TV reporter doomed to relive the same day in Midwest Hicksville.
But to Murray’s laconic genius, Karl adds vocals, athleticism and panache.
From Matthew Warchus and Tim Minchin, the musical is a dizzying, breathtaking and joyful reinterpretation of Danny Rubin’s iconic story
Andy Karl as Phil Connors and Tanisha Spring as Rita Hanson in Groundhog Day at the Old Vic, London
The staging of Warchus is also the highlight of a show. If it shakes, it’s over – but never shake it.
This is partly because Warchus has extremely low stasis tolerance and constantly bombards us with dance twirls.
And Rob Howell’s set is a gigantic cuckoo clock: he swallows Phil’s tacky tomb of a bedroom and replaces it with a town square, a local restaurant, a bar, park benches and the pickup truck Phil frantically drives down the railway.
(A substantive footnote on the site warns those who take this and Phil’s hilarious suicide attempts seriously to contact the Samaritans — but it’s really never that profound.)
The paradoxical genius of the story – and the show – is that we love the ride and yet, like Phil, long for it to end.
Warchus’ sleight of hand – with astounding illusions by Paul Kiewe that seem to blast the space-time continuum – also ensures that the tempo is rarely less than breathless.
Credit for that goes to Lizzi Gee’s microscopically choreographed movement, where a single gear not seating properly would mean all four wheels of the recreational vehicle would come loose.
Yet it is also a moralistic story.
The correction of Phil turning from contempt to anger, followed by recklessness, despair, acceptance and finally redemption is backed up by a sticky romantic comedy in which Phil falls in love with his TV producer Rita (the role of Andie MacDowell in the film). ).
Minchin does better with cynical whiplash lyrics than when he manages to give the love story an unforgettable, beating heart.
But he fuels the action with marching music, rock and a groundhog drum solo – and lightens it up with moody acoustic guitar, ringing piano and a hackneyed but cute country and western love song to the finale.
Groundhog Day is a show that not only stands up to repetition, but turns it into an art form – thanks in no small part to the mesmerizing Andy Karl (centre) in the Murray role of cynical weatherman Phil Connors
The correction of Phil turning from contempt to anger, followed by recklessness, desperation, acceptance and finally redemption is backed up by a sticky romantic comedy in which Phil falls in love with his TV producer Rita (left).
However, the show would be unthinkable without Karl as the self-absorbed Phil.
Rarely are looks and talent so impressively combined.
Channeling the deadpan Murray, Steve Martin’s body comedy and David Schwimmer’s silliness, it also has the dark, brooding traits of Bryan Cranston.
Did Minchin have to give his star a series of icky references to his solo sex life?
Probably not, but thanks to the chaotic pacing, we never dwell on them; and Karl expertly combines the body, mind and soul of the show.
Tanisha Spring is fleshing out the MacDowell role of Rita — though her Disney interludes in Dear Diary are a slightly see-through attempt to transform her two-dimensional love interest into the strong, independent woman that’s become the cliché of the day.
Still, like the rest of the impressively drilled townsfolk (and Eve Norris’ sweet longing for Nancy, Phil’s one-night stand), Spring has a warm voice and a spirit all his own.
Maybe the second half race to the finish is ten minutes too long – simply because it’s so damn exhausting to watch. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a hell of a ride.
The Shape Of Things (Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, London)
Conclusion: Shapely fit
Welcome back to Neil La Bute’s 20-year-old play, which is now about as old as its college-educated characters and still as fresh as a newly decapitated daisy.
Readers who haven’t seen the theatrical drama for the first time at Islington’s Almeida Theater (starring Rachel Weisz as the cheeky, sociopathic art student) may be familiar with the play from the film, which also starred Weisz.
She meets goofy Adam at a gallery where he works as a security guard – and she threatens to deface a sculpture in the name of artistic liberty.
What emerges is a small American campus version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion – with the sexes reversed and lots of sex, taunts and swearing.
The jewel of the play remains Weisz’s role of Evelyn, who stylizes herself as a wild, male fantasy figure.
Amber Anderson as Evelyn and Luke Newton as Adam in The Shape of Things at the Park Theater in Finsbury Park, London
Lanky English student Adam is eagerly led to carnage as she transforms him from a edgy Woody Allen guy into a cheeky Tom Cruise.
He sheds his dowdy corduroy jacket and glasses, stops biting his nails and — wait a minute — starts using lip balm.
Amber Anderson, Peaky Blinders’ cruel seductress, handles the role with wry detachment and forensic purpose. And Luke Newton makes his transition from zero to hero while remaining endearing and deadly incredulous at his amazing luck.
Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy and Carla Harrison-Hodge provide the anxious college kid backdrop in Nicky Allpress’s slick staging.
And it’s designed by Peter Butler to look like a cross between an art gallery and a Uniqlo outlet – with a range of chic ’90s costumes to match.
The play can be misconstrued as an attempt to present a serious moral dilemma, when in reality it is just a theatrical jab and the ethical equivalent of chewing gum. But it’s still a good sport.
Around the World in 80 Days (tour)
Verdict: Crown Jules
The York Theater Royal’s touring production Around The World In 80 Days dares to take liberties with Jules Verne’s trans-global race against the clock – but thankfully the effect is (mostly) invigorating.
Alex Phelps’ stuffy Phileas Fogg is a mustachioed puppet of a clubman in red velvet tailcoats, top hat and riding boots jumping off a trampoline.
Wilson Benedito, as his French sidekick Passepartout, is an uncharacteristically endearing buffoon, dressed smartly in plaid trousers, Breton shirt and bowler hat.
The big twist, however, is that – alongside the usual denunciations of patriarchy etc – there is a subplot about the real American journalist of the time, Nellie Bly (Katriona Brown), who actually completes the trip around the world in just 72 days has.
But thanks to Genevieve Sabherwal as the Indian lover and Eddie Mann as the detective stalker and never-missing knife thrower (think about it), it’s a political correction with a mercifully light touch.
The focus is on having fun improvising with bikes, umbrellas and a busy laundry basket.
The best moments in Juliet Forster’s imaginative staging are a drunken double act on a seesaw, a storm that sends the cast tumbling about on the China Sea, and a mad attempt to pilot a steam train over a collapsing bridge en route to New York.
The second half is snappier than the first and they could use a circus band to provide some more “Ta-da!” but it’s still another gem in Verne’s worn crown.
Alex Phelps’ (center) square Phileas Fogg is a mustachioed puppet of a clubman in red velvet tailcoats, top hat and riding boots jumping off a trampoline.
Wilson Benedito as French sidekick Passepartou and Genevieve Sabherwal as Aouda in Around the World in 80 Days.
Patriots (Noel Coward Theatre, London)
Verdict: Russian Roulette
Georgina Brown
After that famous first meeting with Putin, newly elected President George W. Bush said he looked the Russian in the eye and saw his soul.
His astute Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was more specific. He saw “KGB”.
Which Will Keen perfectly sums up as the Russian president in Peter (The Crown) Morgan’s political drama Patriots.
His Putin has no personality. Still but nervous, he melts into the background.
Even when he’s standing in front of a mirror and trying a few poses that might make him look taller, he’s more of an absence than a presence, a soulless, ghastly, empty human being.
In sharp contrast to Tom Hollander’s boisterous, feisty Boris Berezovsky, the math prodigy who got his PhD in decision-making and then sold himself to Mammon.
Tom Hollander’s (pictured) boisterous, feisty Boris Berezovsky, the math prodigy who got his PhD in decision-making and then sold himself to Mammon
Josef Davies and Stefanie Martini in Patriots at the Noel Coward Theater in London
Full of front, charisma and swagger, he also has enough money to create the Russia he wants to live in, ruled and ruled by oligarchs, wealthy and confident.
Rupert Goold’s characteristically snappy staging unfolds on a crimson cruciform platform, conjuring up an eerie subterranean nightclub and a presidential Kremlin office as decidedly Russian as Adam Corke’s catchy soundtrack.
A lengthy first half traces the rise and rise of a KGB nobody. In the more engaging second half, almost Shakespearean in structure, the puppeteer becomes the puppet and Berezovsky’s creation the monster we all know and hate.
A fervent Berezovsky exaggerates in the style of Richard III. and calls the government’s handling of the torpedoed Kursk submarine “another Chernobyl” on Russia’s main TV channel, which it owns.
Ousted from Kremlin circles, relegated to his Berkshire home, lacking in math and the Russia he loves, Hollander’s limp, almost pitiable Berezovsky seems to be quite literally losing his composure. He is a patriot without a country.
Morgan’s prescient game suggests that for Putin, patriotism means making Russia bigger and more feared. And as the war against Ukraine proves, it knows no bounds.
I Found My Horn (Riverside Studios, London)
Verdict: Strikes the right note
Veronica Lee
Midlife crises are weird, aren’t they? Some men grow facial hair, some make you buy an expensive red sports car.
Others, like journalist Jasper Rees, pick up an instrument they haven’t played since their school orchestra days… in his case the French horn, apparently one of the most difficult orchestral instruments to master.
But crises shouldn’t be easy either.
Mr Rees adapted his 2008 amusing memoir of the same name for the stage with actor Jonathan Guy Lewis and now they have teamed up with director Harry Burton to revive the one-man play for a short screening in London.
Mr Lewis plays multiple roles including would-be hornblower Jasper, who is getting divorced and dealing with a moody teenage son, as well as several other characters including gruff Yorkshireman and hornblower Dave, who becomes Jasper’s mentor.
“It takes tons of Sheffield steel to play that thing in public,” Dave replies when Jasper tells him about his plan to perform Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3, K. 447, at the British Horn Society’s annual festival in 12 months’ time. Will Jasper find his horn in time?
It’s a sign of clever planning that although I know the story there is a sense of danger in the 90 minutes as Mr. Rees (feels odd writing this as I’ve been calling him a pal for several years) and Mr. Lewis wrote a touching story about learning to live with yourself and rebuild relationships.
There’s also a bit of horn playing as we hear Jasper’s progress (or lack thereof); Mr Lewis can clearly play but manages to impress as a newcomer.
He also describes the cast of characters well, including the Americans Jasper meets at Horn Camp – that’s one thing! – in New Hampshire.
Though the play feels underdeveloped at times – Jasper’s dysfunctional relationship with his son, for example – it’s a social evening with plenty of laughs.