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  In the 80s Starlight Express was the brash follow-up to Cats —the show that seemed unlikely to succeed but became a phenomenon with an eventual 25 years run. Starlight is about trains as characters: the engines who compete in a race—the stuff of a boy’s dream—with locomotives attached. Each character has their own personality, and there’s trash-talk and rap as well as a sweet love story and the mystical notion underpinning growing self-belief. This new production in Wembley is the third version in the UK: The Apollo Victoria theatre was the home to the groundbreaking premiere, but it was also leg-breaking and the production was scaled down in the early 90s, with some new songs. And amazingly it ran to 2004. Now, with the Wembley production there are more new songs and some gender-changes. Poppa is Momma, Greaseball and the gang are ladies, and there’s a Nitrogen powered locomotive. Most importantly the auditorium has been built around the production, so it’s no longer crammed int...

This new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Christopher Hampton’s glitzy 90s take on the 1950 Billy Wilder film is overall a phenomenal re-interpretation. The stage is spartan and dark, the cast is racially blind and there’s none of the opulence that went with the original set. The enduring image of the film and the musical was the body of Joe Gillis floating in a swimming pool. Gillis narrates how he got there and we find out. But of course the big songs and the big drama emanate from the screenwriter’s killer—faded movie star Norma Desmond. There’s a lot to say about the different women who have taken this role, with Glen Close probably being the most famous. This time it’s Nicole Scherzinger. Norma is on stage before the overture begins, and is an omnipresent figure throughout. Joe Gillis (Tom Francis) emerges from a body-bag to narrate his story: fleeing creditors who want to repossess his car, he goes to Paramount Studio to pitch an idea to a producer, but the studio doesn’t l...

Miss Saigon was one of the big musicals that opened in the 80s and 90s. Based on Puccini’s Madame Butterly  and created the writers of Les Misérables plus an American lyricist—all men—it starred Lea Salonga as Kim and Jonathan Pryce as The Engineer—the man who runs the club where the girls go to meet GIs during the closing days of the Vietnam War in 1975. Kim meets Chris, whose friend is called John because it rhymes with Saigon, and Chris and Kim fall in love and she gets pregnant while he goes back to America and restarts his life, including getting married. The show was known at the time for the big helicopter which played a role in the fall of Saigon theme, and the fact that white Jonathan Pryce wore eye makeup to make him look “more Asiatic”. And I thought it was new and brash and brilliant. I bought the cassette, and I bought the book about it (cowritten by Mark Steyn—and look what happened to him?) And there are good things about it: I guess the main one being the discover...

The HLH Team live and in person I can’t remember how I found out about Hidden London Hangouts. There was an exhibition at the Museum about disused stations and parts of other places that were not publicly seen. And then Covid-19 hit more or less at the same time as the Youtube show began on April 4th 2020—with a look at Aldwych, which closed in 1994. However I got to know about it, I knew I was going to love it. It goes out on Youtube on Saturday evenings, presented by the London Transport Museum’s Chris Nix, Siddy Holloway and Laura Hilton-Brown along with Alex Grunden, a producer with a phenomenal talent for presenting if this series is anything to go by.  It was a difficult and at times terrifying time, and Alex’s sign-off “have yourself a great day and stay safe” actually felt like the most heartfelt words of wisdom and care. Because although I was very lucky and I have nothing but respect for those in harms way during this time, I also didn’t go anywhere and lived and worked...

Almost at the end of this tremendously entertaining movie, there’s a moment where the bad guy is cooly standing around, waiting to be beaten up by Ethan Hunt. The thing is, he is cooly standing atop the Orient Express as it steams through the Alps. It’s not the first time a train-top fight has been staged, and it’s not the first one in a Summer 2023 franchise movie, but the coolness and the chutzpah is at minimum levels, and the franchise has easily surpassed its nearest competitor, the Bond films. It doesn’t really matter though because it’s so much fun. A lot earlier, at the end of the epically preposterous pre-title sequences, we see “A Tom Cruise Production” and then the name “ Tom Cruise ”… and he is famous in this film for being a Producer who shouted at people for ignoring Covid restrictions back when this film was being made. Now, while most people have forgotten about the lockdown and cinema is facing a new crisis, Cruise is famous for having six times done the stunt that domi...

The threat of nuclear war is something people lived with if they grew up in the 1980s and earlier. As a child of the era there was of course no memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis but 1983 was one of the most dangerous years in terms of the prospect of the bomb being used. Greenham Common protests mixed with skirmishes in the Middle East and cultural icons like Threads [didn’t watch!] and When The Wind Blows [Plenty harrowing enough, please and thank you!]. And obviously “ Two Tribes ” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The reality of the nuclear bomb from its discovery to the beginning of its impact, especially on America in the 1940s onwards, is told in Christopher Nolan’s new biopic of “The father of the bomb” Oppenheimer. Cillian Murphy takes the role of a young man steeped in physics and in love with the world which it underpins. Also he was in love with another scientist, with Communist links, as well as with his wife, played by a steely, wary looking Emily Blunt —a necessarily for...

  “I didn’t think I’d be singing this song in my seventies… I didn’t think I’d be playing this gig in my seventies.” Seventy-four year old singer-songwriter is preparing his adoring Hyde Park crowd for a high note that he might not hit in ‘An Innocent Man’ from the eponymous 1983 album. Joel, who is known mainly for an apt autobiographical song ‘Piano Man’ was mostly known only for three or four songs which had British chart success. In a long and phenomenally popular career he has delighted those who love his work, but in this country has always seemed like songs your Dad likes. And that’s fine. The man who used to climb on pianos and jump around, the man who had a headline-grabbing temper tantrum in Leningrad during the final years of the Cold War: he has mellowed from a punchy writer of elegantly-written, fondly rendered takes on classic American music styles and acts. So some of his biggest successes have belonged to Barry White or Garth Brooks. But now, with all his youthful e...