299 stories by "Johnny Fox"
When I was a student, I worked in a care home. Somewhere in a drawer I have a half-written short story about an old lady in a similar institution who remembers, through the fog of Alzheimer…
Smart and authentic writing meets a riveting West End debut in Firebird at Trafalgar Studios. In his first venture to the downstairs studio at Hampstead Theatre, Ed Hall has found a remarkab…
With such an abundance of grand guignol, it's best perhaps to let the music propel you through the three indulgent hours. Although not peppered with telly advertising favourites, Vincenzo Be…
Wayne's 'World' has been kicking about since the late 1970's when he wrote this famous prog rock album around the same time Pink Floyd produced Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall and complet…
Press nights are strange. So are Americans. At Hand to God, I sat in a part of the stalls surrounded by gushy younger American men fawning over Upper East Side matrons whose combination of s…
How charming is Barnes? And how posh " even the flats above Londis have chandeliers.
Nothing but waves of goodness and gentility, then, as we find the OSO arts and performance space carve…
What do you call a biographical play which is as unquestioning in its adoration of its star subject as it is blinded by self-obsessed camp homosexual fandom? Is there a genre called fag-hagi…
The surrealism takes your breath away. Two years ago London raved about Adrian Lester, a British actor of Jamaican descent, playing Othello at the National. Now we can rave about the same Ad…
I can't think of another play set like One of Those entirely on a train " Hecht and MacArthur's On The Twentieth Century is the most persistently rail-bound but starts and ends in theatres, …
My parents loved Marty Feldman. Given I'm no spring chicken that tells you how far back into the recesses of black-and-white television you'd have to delve for the career and admittedly the …
I'm still not sure what to make of The Dazzle " in the least comfortable fringe theatre newly created in the West End, up 76 steps and with a padlocked lift the first mystery is how Westmins…
If it tells you nothing else, The Picture of Dorian Gray reminds you Oscar Wilde was a playwright not a novelist and this, his only work of prose fiction, emerges as a script with merely min…
Having just come back from the Nazi Documentation Centre at Nuremberg, I must be one of the few reviewers who went to Big Brother Blitzkrieg because of its fascination with Hitler rather tha…
Whenever reviewers can't readily categorise a new play they reach for a mixture of comparisons " so The Long Road South could be 'half Far From Heaven, half Death of a Salesman' in that it's…
People, people who need people are, allegedly, the luckiest people in the world. I'd argue that those who are emotionally and financially self-sufficient have a hell of a bigger reason to fe…
Director and producer Thom Southerland and Danielle Tarento solidify their reputation for salvaging ancient wrecks off the American coast. Having rescued Titanic equally from the icy waters …
History-Boy-made-good Jamie Parker is beyond excellent, refining Sky Masterson with a crisp intelligence and occasional glimpses of hesitant motive and the inner workings of a genuinely thre…
If you enjoyed the ITV Sound of Music 'live' " or even if like me you thought Kara Tointon wasn't really up to it and the whole production felt a bit clunky " you may have been struck by how…
Can you remember rationing? Fondly? Do you perhaps have in your attic a lavender-scented aunt who likes to bang on about how good life was before the internet/microwave pizza/non-stick pans…
Dear Santa, in 2016 can we please have no more fringe pantos put on for fifty quid? I want transformations, flying and glitter. Thank you.
We already know from Sarah Brightman's confessional on the Graham Norton show that she married Andrew Lloyd Webber not because he was the handsomest boy in the playground but because 'he did…
Let's get it off our chests now: it will have you 'in suspense', it 'goes with a swing' there's plenty of 'gallows humour', it's a plot that 'leaves you dangling', jerking with 'twists and …
For a period in history of which I had almost no knowledge, I found it wildly entertaining and equally informative " excellent on the personal relationship between Anne and Sarah Churchill a…
As diminutive interpreters of popular song go, Edith Piaf outshone Paige 'as daylight doth a lamp' and entered French national consciousness close behind 'Marianne' as a symbol of triumph of…
How do you like your musical theatre? An occasional treat for your Nan's birthday? A full-on Christmas outing to the latest Disney blockbuster via Pizza Express for mum, dad and the kids a…
