Reality and Make-Believe
25 – 30 July 2026
Saturday 25 July
To Birmingham by train
Birmingham, Alexandra Theatre • Like The Lost Boys (1987), recently made into a Broadway musical, The Karate Kid (1984) features a single mother relocating to California with her children to start a new life in unfamiliar surroundings. The former involved an encounter with vampires, the latter with bullies — and the help of a friendly and gently mischievous karate master. Someone evidently thought The Karate Kid deserved a musical adaptation and chose the regional UK route to try out a show advertised as Broadway-bound. I watched the film for the first time on the train to Birmingham and enjoyed the (mostly) personable characters and a streamlined, no-nonsense plot. The stage adaptation, for all its visual flair and Broadway-style scale, never quite answers the obvious question of why this story needed to be sung, especially with such a bland, unremarkable score. Whether it ever reaches Broadway is anyone’s guess.
Birmingham, The Rep • Remarkably, seeing Sweeney Todd for the 40th time brought not the slightest trace of weariness. The Birmingham Rep’s production achieved the impressive feat of preserving the show’s impact with only eleven actors and seven musicians. A blindfolded incarnation of Justice, dominating the set, provided a perfect image for the plot’s moral ambiguity. Ramin Karimloo gave a blood-curdling performance in the title role, among a first-rate cast that proved remarkable in the tricky multi-voice songs. Meow Meow’s Mrs. Lovett navigated her vocal limitations with the savvy of a seasoned performer and gave a convincing performance despite a handful of mixed-up lines and lyrics. I was particularly impressed by Karimloo’s repartee when Mrs. Lovett swapped two lines in “A Little Priest” and he instantly adjusted his own responses so that the exchange still made perfect sense.
Sunday 26 July
To London by train
London, Charing Cross Theatre • One suspects that the decision to turn the 1945 play Dark of the Moon into a musical may owe something to the prominent role it plays as the play-within-the-play in Stranger Things: First Shadow. A kind of gender-reversed take on The Little Mermaid, Dark of the Moon involves the encounter between “witch people” and “regular people,” raising questions of acceptance and fate. Probably the most visually accomplished production I’ve seen in the tiny Charing Cross Theatre, this musical’s heavy gothic aesthetic nevertheless soon wore thin. Fortunately, by Act II I found myself caring about the characters and once again hooked by their fates.
London, Royal Festival Hall • This Proms concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) under Kazuki Yamada brought together three works of particular interest. Francis Poulenc’s Sinfonietta (1948), originally a BBC commission to celebrate the second anniversary of the Third Programme (the forerunner of today’s BBC Radio 3), exudes the French composer’s customary charming melodic and harmonic unpredictability. Then, the same composer’s Concerto for Two Pianos afforded me the opportunity to see the flamboyantly energetic Jussen brothers play what has become one of their signature pieces — their recording of the concerto stands unmatched. Closing the programme, John Adams’s Harmonium, first performed in the UK by the CBSO in Birmingham under Simon Rattle in 1987, filled the hall with a profound sense of poetry, born of the score’s meticulously calibrated minimalism and enhanced by Yamada’s sensitive handling of the massive choral forces.
Monday 27 July
Back to Paris by train
Paris, UGC Maillot • I am not an easy audience for comedies, yet I laughed heartily throughout De la Comédie-Française, a joyful account of the three hectic hours leading up to an opening night at the Comédie-Française. The use of Macbeth as the play-within-the-film added further layers: the Comédie-Française is the so-called House of Molière, while Macbeth itself is the object of a well-known theatrical superstition against uttering its name backstage. All parts were played by members of the Comédie-Française, from the doorman to the make-up artist, demonstrating a refreshing capacity for self-deprecation.
Thursday 30 July
Paris, UGC Maillot • I was not familiar with Hunter S. Thompson’s concept of “gonzo journalism”, but I quickly grew tired of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and its relentless drug-induced descent into a surreal parallel reality, fuelled by the lingering traumas of the Vietnam War. The actors are uniformly excellent, from the two headliners, Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, to the myriad secondary roles — including a youthful Tobey Maguire — but, for all of Terry Gilliam’s visual acumen, the avalanche of outrageous situations and encounters failed to engage me. I was amused by the unexpected appearances of Debbie Reynolds and Barbra Streisand as hallucinatory embodiments of American popular culture, while the soundtrack offered its own surprises, from “My Favourite Things” during the opening sequence to 42nd Street’s “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me”.
And so, for now, the lights dim… until the next act.