I live in Brixton, south London. To get to the tube, I have to cross Windrush Square. Since 2021, I go past the Cherry Groce memorial, which honours the woman who was wrongfully shot by the Met in 1985, an event which sparked the riots I remember so well from 40 years ago. Amazingly enough, I have now seen her sister, Sutara Gayle AKA Lorna Gee, performing a gig theatre piece on the main stage at the Royal Court.

Those with treasured battered copies of Noel Streatfield’s 1936 story of three young adopted sisters in pre-war London may have thrilled to the idea of a version coming to the National Theatre. But be warned: jolly though it is, it’s not the story of stagestruck pre-war Londoners you know.

Connaught Brass is a quintet of twenty-something players rapidly establishing an enviable reputation, and on the evidence of what I heard yesterday that reputation is fully deserved: they really are superbly good. A well-stuffed Milton Court spoke to their pulling power even in the face of terrible weather, and their easy stage manner and mostly successful repertoire choices made for an enjoyable evening hiding from the elements.

Growing up within a few hundred yards of a major dock, I hardly knew darkness or quiet – the first time I properly felt their terrible beauty was on the Isle of Man ferry in the middle of the Irish Sea, its voids still vivid half a century on. 

That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the producers fired two directors (Bryan Forbes and Don Taylor) in succession before hiring Richard Lester in desperation. His quest to salvage Juggernaut in a just a few weeks mirrors events in the film, its protagonists attempting to defuse a set of bombs planted in the bowels of a transatlantic liner.

Percy Jackson is neither the missing one from Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, nor an Australian Test cricketer of the 1920s, but a New York teenager with dyslexia and ADHD who keeps getting expelled from school. He’s a bit of a loner, too intense to huddle with the geeks, too stubborn to avoid the fights with the jocks, and his mother won’t tell him anything about his absent father. Who turns out to be a Greek god. Could happen to any kid. 

November can be a month to hunker down for the onset of winter and its weather, and where better to do that than in one of the myriad venues across the capital hosting the annual London Jazz Festival and its hundreds of concerts, from cosy clubs like Ronnie Scott’s and Pizza Express Dean Street to the big stages of the Barbican and South Bank.

"All’s well that ends well". Sounds like the kind of phrase a guilty parent says to a disappointed child after they’ve been caught in a white lie and bought them a bag of sweets to smooth things over. It’s a saying that betokens bad behaviour, a need to sweep things under the carpet, portending a fresh start. There’s an edge of power in it too, implying that the speaker can now define their interlocutor’s feelings. In short, it’s ugly.

Cleveland is probably the American city most like the one in which I grew up. Early into the icy embrace of post-industrialisation, not really on the way to anywhere, but not a destination either and obsessed with popular music and sports, it's very Scouse. Okay, the Mersey did not catch fire as the Cuyahoga River did in 1969, but it would not have surprised anyone in Liverpool had it done so.

Not just a backstage musical, a backroom musical!

In the 70s, Follies and A Chorus Line took us into the rehearsal room giving us a chance to look under the bonnet to see the cogs of the Musical Theatre machine bump and grind as a show gets on its feet. But what of the other room, the writers’ room, where the ideas emerge mistily and the egos clang in conflict? [title of show] pulls back the curtain behind the curtain, behind the curtain.