It seemed impossible and yet, the other evening, while idly flicking through emails, I learned the unimaginable: Stephen Sondheim, age 91, had passed away. And very quickly by all accounts, given that he was reported to have enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal with friends just the previous day.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike has taken eight years to reach the London stage, which is surprisingly long for the Tony Award winner for Best Play of 2013: the pandemic, unsurprisingly, didn't help. But in a burst of somewhat un-Chekhovian confidence, here it now is re-cast from a previous run in Bath, and the wait has been worth it.  

Can we turn off the script and simply leave the music to do its soul-stirring bit?  That's likely to be a not uncommon response to Get Up Stand Up!, which gives Bob Marley much the same biomusical treatment currently on view in Tina across town (and in New York). The difference, of course, is that Tina Turner is soon to be 82, whereas Marley died 40 years ago, at the preposterously premature age of 36. 

The first two stage adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies – written by Mike Poulton, way back in 2014 - were a very different beast from the novels, but they were at least eyecatching plastinations of her unruly human characters, made attractive to those who had not read the novels.

Much has happened in the five years since your reviewer braved the steep rake at The Other Palace and saw The Last Five Years (not least my now getting its “Nobody needs to know” nod in Hamilton – worth a fistful of Tonys in prestige, I guess) so it’s timely to revisit Jason Robert Brown’s musical.

Anuvab Pal may be a new name to some UK audiences (although many will know him from the global satirical podcast The Bugle), but he is well known in his native India.

Olga Koch – born in Russia to ethnic German parents, multilingual and now living in London – might fit into the group that Theresa May once dismissed as “citizens of nowhere”, whatever that phrase means.

Let it snow! The Broadway musical adaptation of the Disney film behemoth Frozen premiered back in 2018 and now, following Covid delays, a rejigged version finally makes its home in the West End – to the delight of the army of miniature Elsas in attendance.

Danny Robins tells us what we’re in for with his title, so we’re warned. And it’s not long before we get the “things that go bump in the night”, the creaking floorboards, the “I know this sounds crazy, but…” because they’re the essential components of the genre. Reviewing a ghost story and complaining about that stuff really isn’t on – like critiquing a pantomime for its audience participation.