Cats review - feline freakiness

★★★ CATS A high-wire theatrical folly pays off

A high-wire theatrical folly pays off in its uniqueness

Tom Hooper’s freakily phantasmagoric visualisation of an already strange West End smash is a high-wire act risking the sniggers which greeted its trailer. And yet it never falls, sustaining a subtly hallucinatory, wholly theatrical reality. Doubling down on the bizarre unlikelihood of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s original adaptation of T.S.

Curtains, Wyndham's Theatre review - unexpectedly giddy fun

★★★★ CURTAINS, WYNDHAM'S THEATRE Unexpectedly giddy fun

Late-arrival to the West End is broad, brash - and delightful

Who knew? This West End premiere of the 2007 Broadway entry from the legendary songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret) secured a prime holiday-season slot at the last minute when this playhouse's previous entry, The Man in the White Suit, closed prematurely.

Frozen II review - the allure cools off

★★★ FROZEN II The allure cools off

Disney returns to one of its biggest successes, with middling results

Frozen is possibly the most beloved Disney movie since the studio rediscovered its mojo in the 1990s. While picking up a couple of Oscars and laying waste to box office records, it had young girls immersing themselves in favourite characters and performing the songs on a dime.

Dear Evan Hansen, Noël Coward Theatre review - this social outcast will steal your heart

★★★★ DEAR EVAN HANSEN, NOËL COWARD THEATRE This social outcast will still your heart

A stirring new musical tackles missed connections in the internet age

Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institution in the States, running on Broadway since 2016 and currently on its second year of a national tour.

Ghost Quartet, Boulevard Theatre review - a beguiling journey into the beyond

★★★★ GHOST QUARTET, BOULEVARD THEATRE A beguiling journey into the beyond

Both mystical and alcoholic spirits infuse this wonderfully distinctive chamber musical

London’s latest new theatre opens with an appropriately otherworldly Halloween offering: American composer Dave Malloy’s teeming 2014 song cycle, which played at the Edinburgh Festival in 2016.

Assassins, Watermill Theatre, Newbury, review - Sondheim musical in scalding form

Sondheim's 1990 show gets more disturbingly pertinent with every revival

“Every now and then the country goes a little wrong”: so goes one of the many lyrics from the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical Assassins that makes this 1990 Off Broadway musical (subsequently chosen to open Sam Mendes’ Donmar Warehouse in 1992) a piece of theatre very much for our time. Some shows need textual tweaking when they come around again but not this one.