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PRIDE

WHO could resist the musical Pride? 

It is perhaps the best new British musical since Standing At The Sky’s Edge (sorry, Paddington).

Before discussing its enduring merits, however, we should face the possibility that younger audiences might need reminding just how big a deal Pride was. 

People from all walks of life, many of whom had been treated harshly by their family, employers and community because of their sexuality. In this moment they could be themselves and feel united with people who had gone through similar experiences

Everything on stage is valuable, even when the action seems thin. For me it’s both a celebration and a protest. 

There’s wit and heart galore in Stephen Beresford’s very shrewd, sweetly charming script – one he has adapted for the stage – teaming with composers Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde, under Matthew Warchus’s direction. Where the 2014 film played it restrained, this version goes full throttle: louder, brasher, unapologetically sentimental.

Anyway: the plot. 1984, Mark launches Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, insisting his community and the striking Welsh miners face the same enemy. What starts as an uneasy pact between London activists and the pit village of Onllwyn blossoms into genuine kinship, forged under Thatcher’s boot.

Bunny Christie’s scaffold set is the real workhorse—morphing in seconds from protest rally to nightclub to a bleak doctor’s waiting room, keeping the pace electric. Five narrators steer the story, tossing in cheeky asides to the audience, and the show doesn’t flinch from the grim stuff: slurs, family rejection, the AIDS crisis all land with real weight alongside the razzle-dazzle. A true expression of this instant hit.

Certainly, the score is the show’s ace card—no lazy ‘80s pastiche here, but a genuine mashup of Welsh choral swells, disco strut and rock-fuelled ballads, sometimes colliding within a single song. Willowy Samuel Barnett’s Jonathan steals scenes outright: a cabaret-flavoured number about his HIV diagnosis swerves from quip to gut-punch, and he later tears up a working men’s club with a blistering disco solo. 

There is scarcely a false touch. The book tricks you with tropes, then twists out of shape.

Lewis Cornay’s Bromley carries the coming-of-age thread, his fumbling self-doubt exploding into a brash, hilarious coming-out anthem. On the Welsh side, Darren Lawrence brings understated grit as union boss Cliff, while Kirsty Malpass, Gillian Elisa and Sarah Pugh give the women serious bite (especially during a riotous Soho jaunt).

Lizzi Gee’s choreography and the cast’s easy chemistry sell the slow-building camaraderie between the two camps, and the production knows exactly when to wink at its own soppiness without ever deflating it. Crucially, it never dodges the wreckage; grief and loss get just as much stage time as triumph, which is precisely why the hope hits so hard. Act two is genuinely moving. 

The show’s core message, finding common ground across difference—lands with fresh sting, given the current backlash against queer rights. It’s a maximalist, no-holds-barred retelling: bolder, funnier and rowdier than its cinematic parent, but the raw honesty beneath the glitter is what earns every tear and every laugh.

A very pleasurable surprise. Just one word of advice: take tissues.

Pride runs at National Theatre until until 12 September before transferring to Bridge Theatre from 12 November

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Burlesque: The Musical – Don’t Shoot The Messenger

Gather round. It’s time to check in on Burlesque the Musical — not to add to the noise, but to make sense of it.

The show, adapted from the Cher and Christina Aguilera film, has never had an easy ride. Its West End run at the Savoy was dogged by workers’ complaints — over hours, conditions and costumes that weren’t ready in time — several of which were flagged to Equity. TR Heels Ltd, the company behind the West End production, posted a £9.4m loss in reserves for the year to July 2025, with roughly £13m owed to creditors.

In the same period, its sole director also arranged loans of over £800,000 to other production companies in which he holds a controlling interest; a detail that raises more questions than the official line, that funding a show upfront is “standard practice,” really answers.

Creatively, the show has now burned through three directors. Todrick Hall, who joined for the West End transfer and wrote original songs, told me and The Stage that his experience had been “quite the rollercoaster,” alleging he was still owed royalties under a contract he refused to sign until songwriting credits were resolved. Producers denied any dispute existed. Racky Plews has since taken over for a version of the show billed, apparently without irony, as “completely new.”

Then came the tour: the ongoing attempt at one. Woking, the planned opening stop, never happened: three postponements, all blamed on “technical issues,” pushed the premiere back more than a fortnight to Sunderland instead. The promised London run at the Arts at Marble Arch was quietly shelved until 2027.

Producers insisted the tour was “fully financed and on a secure footing,” pointing to 90,000 tickets sold and almost £4m in advance box office. The claims didn’t stop the chaos: cast and crew reportedly learned of a Sunderland preview cancellation via WhatsApp with barely a day’s notice, even as producers maintained ATG was “behind us to ensure financially this is stable.”

Once the tour did open, illness took over where technical faults left off. Four performances were scrapped in Sunderland in under a week, including press night, after producers cited a virus among principal cast. Stoke-on-Trent’s opening was pushed back a day for the same reasons the production always reaches for — “technical requirements.” Wales fared worse: the Wales Millennium Centre matinee was halted forty minutes in, and that evening’s show cancelled an hour before curtain, leaving audiences and fans who’d arranged hotels, childcare and dog-sitters with nothing. Glasgow’s King’s Theatre — the tour’s first raked stage — looms next, with insiders reportedly nervous about how the production will fare.

Still, across four tour stops, not one week has gone by unscathed: Woking cancelled outright, Sunderland losing roughly seven in ten performances, Stoke’s opening axed. Meanwhile a new wrinkle emerged with the release of the West End cast recording; Equity reportedly had to step in again after a required union-brokered royalties agreement between producer, distributor and cast hadn’t been secured before release. Sigh.

Money troubles, sick casts and reshuffled schedules are one thing. The bigger story may be who now owns the buildings this show performs in. ATG Entertainment — which runs the Savoy, the Sunderland Empire and dozens of other venues — has agreed to be bought by Ari Emanuel’s Mari Group in a deal reportedly worth around £4.5bn. ATG’s leadership has been quick to reassure producers that “current commitments continue” and relationships remain unchanged. But The Stage’s editor summed up the industry’s unease in a single word: “scary” — a reaction echoed by an earlier government committee report flagging ATG, alongside Live Nation and AEG, as a risk to competition.

Companies House filings show TodayTix, now under the same ownership umbrella, taking security over entitlements owed by a production company linked to Burlesque’s own producer — a reminder of how tightly interwoven this show’s finances already are with its landlord’s.

Unions, for their part, keep sounding the same warning. Equity and BECTU say they’re supporting freelancers hit by cancelled shows, with BECTU’s Philippa Childs noting that permanent crew have generally been paid, but casual venue staff are far likelier to lose out — “the issue will be with the people working in the different theatres.” Both the show and ATG maintain all payments are up to date.

Reviews, where the show has actually made it to stage, by local blogs have been largely positive. Not one credible outlet among them, though. Certainly, ticket sales, by contrast, are reportedly collapsing as word of the delays spreads. Whatever comes next — Glasgow’s rake, the next illness, the next “technical” excuse — the pattern by now writes itself. If you’re holding tickets, request a refund. And if you’re watching from the industry, the real story isn’t a haunted curse. It’s what happens when investment, welfare and basic contingency planning are treated as optional until the whole thing falls over in public.

God help us all.

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Wallflower at the Orgy

This week, a letter arrived from Reed Smith LLP, acting for the producers of Burlesque the Musical. “You have been engaged in a damaging and vicious campaign of denigrating our client, the production and the producers Adam Paulden and Steven Antin,” it said. “Much of what you have written is untrue or misleading.”

Wow. I want to sit with that for a second, because theatre is a town of middlemen, and I am not a hobby journalist. I just found my way into this story of a crazy musical and wanted to tell it as clearly as possible, with as much understanding as possible: or, as Nora Ephron used to say, as a wallflower at the orgy.


Call it old school: cultivating a network of well-placed, anonymous sources and telling the inside story. That approach means I’ve been sucked into this story myself. And everything I’ve heard (from literally everybody connected to this show, past, present and beyond) paints a portrait of a musical in disarray, with incompetent producers at its centre. This was a company that was, in a real sense, shattered from day one of operation.

Let’s stick to facts. The show has taken £1,287,306 in Glasgow, £1,530,912 and £3,029,501 across two Manchester runs, and £5,451,592.90 at the Savoy — £11.3m across two years. Not one penny has gone back to investors. Zero. A box office advance is not production capital, and it is not profit. It’s money sitting in escrow from people who’ve bought tickets for shows that haven’t happened yet — a liability, not a windfall, until the performance is delivered and the sale matures. Treating it as a win is either a category error or a convenient one.

The company’s own filed accounts record net current liabilities of £9,444,685 as at 31 July 2025, and state plainly that the going-concern basis rests entirely on an unnamed investor’s continued willingness not to call in what’s owed.

Still, a lawyer I know put it to me this way: “It looks like Tough Love Ltd is the new producing entity, on the back of finance from RS24 Investments Limited against a debenture dated 22 July 2026 on the business’s assets. The actual finances of Tough Love are a mystery, since it’s a new company and no accounts have been filed yet. TR Heels is hopelessly insolvent, and I suspect any creditors still owed money, if any, will have to whistle for it.”


Well, quite. It’s almost like a real-life staging of The Producers: concoct the cost, raise the money, engineer a flop, stay rich. I’m not going to speculate on the motives of my sources here, only to say they are very, very good ones, and that everything in this blog is something I’ve concluded is accurate and true.

Anyway: developments. People didn’t want to touch this story. Some felt tainted by it, others too frightened to go near something this toxic. It took a reporter at the Sunday Times 12 months and the spectacular derailment, sorry “postponement” of the UK tour and Marble Arch London run last week to. As of tonight, The Daily Telegraph is investigating reprobate Paulden and Antin’s financial affairs.


Needless to say, if you’re in power, you don’t get to threaten writers and journalists just because they don’t like what’s being said about them. F— that.
This is not producing live theatre on impulse or whim. There is no method to the madness.


So yes, thank you for reading. And thank you to those of you who have reached out with messages of support.
In terms of what happens next, the train will hit the wall.

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Sweeney Todd

NOT for nothing did Stephen Sondheim once say: “I wanted to write a musical like a horror movie. I wanted to scare people.” 

With the tasty pairing of Ramin Karimloo and Meow Meow leading an acting company of 11 and a band of 7, this staging is anything but cautious. And what a cast.

Cautious as I am about superlatives, I think the term “one-of-a-kind masterpiece” must be applied to Sweeney Todd. This Birmingham Rep production is a knockout. 

In a world where climate and energy shocks drive a relentless cost of living crisis — where people skip meals, children go hungry, and diet-related illness runs rampant — the suggestion is that there is something completely insane about a society where the gap between rich and poor is so great.

Anyway. The plot: a skilled barber with a grudge returns to Victorian London to seek his revenge on the judge who wrongly convicted him. Karimloo is a melancholy Sweeney Todd “the demon barber of Fleet Street” whose menace is growing. He is our quiet beefcake ‘Mr T’ who transforms into a mass murderer. 

“And no wonder with the price of meat what it is.”

Mrs Lovett is an amoral loner too — desperate enough for love that she becomes an accomplice to cannibalism. Meow Meow – baker of the ‘worst pies in town’ – is perfect in the grasping role: we laugh as she’s overtaken by her love of profit and her lust for Sweeney. 

She is never funnier or more disconcertingly lovable than during ‘A Little Priest’, that ingenious hymn to the delights of cannibalism. 

There is some great singing and some terrific performances too: Shem Omari James is a lyrical sailor, Jo Stephenson is Sweeney’s imprisoned daughter, David Bedella a oily judge, and Julius D’Silva his sadistic henchman — all first rate. Leo Munby’s musical direction and Kelsh Buckham-Drage’s sound design ensure every word is audible.

By Act 2 blood lust spirals out of control with appalling consequences as Sondheim’s rasping and jittery music winds its way into urban anxiety, it has an unusual integrity of vision. Wow. 

“Inconspicuous Sweeney was, Quick and quiet and clean ‘e was.”

Tinovimbanashe Sibanda’s expressionist movement direction is a shrewd corruption of everyday movement. It’s a brilliantly delivered, vivid, sometimes frightening staging of this penny-dreadful murder story. 

Whichever way you slice it – Joe Murphy’s nearly three-hour unfussy production uses the vast Rep stage imaginatively, lit so the main characters seem to appear in shafts of the animated staging and Rory Beaton’s lighting as if from heaven, or vanish into the furnaces of hell. The result is quietly lethal. 

All in all, the show is a hit (Sir Matthew Bourne was sat behind me) and is selling out. 

This is unmissable.

Sweeney Todd runs at Birmingham Rep until 15 August

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Burlesque The Musical: naked capitalism and fraud *allegedly

“There is a fear of being run down, fired, or aggressively pursued,” someone said down the phone, in an unscheduled call, about the shitshow that is Burlesque The Musical 3.0.

Totally normal. If you missed this, Burlesque the Musical has ‘postponed’ its London opening – and cancelled its run at the new Arts at Marble Arch venue, hours after also delaying the start of its UK tour. The stage adaptation of the 2010 film, executive produced by Christina Aguilera, had been due to preview in London from 12 September, following a sold-out 2025 season at the Savoy.

Anyway, I guess we can avoid a recap no longer. Amazingly, hapless producers Steven Antin and Adam Paulden told cast and crew by email that the show’s momentum “has never been stronger,” without having to worry about boring little things like employment law or public opinion. Everything they do – and everything they neglected to do – now constitutes some sort of fuck-up extended universe.

Uselessness abounds. Inevitably, the UK tour, originally set to open at Woking Theatre tonight, has been pushed to Sunderland in August, with Woking dates shunted to November. Photos from the Woking venue showed cast rehearsing on a bare stage, no set, no lighting department, no sound. Crew have been introduced to a fourth production manager in a matter of weeks, a churn rate that speaks for itself.

I would say life comes at you fast, but of course it doesn’t.

Mmm. Certainly, BECTU union head Philippa Childs did not mince words. “We are extremely disappointed by the situation on the London opening of Burlesque the Musical,” she said. “The ‘postponement’ to 2027 will mean that freelancers will miss out on months of expected income, leaving them in financial difficulty.” She added that producers had indicated they would “endeavour to provide alternative work where possible,” but that the union was “seeking more detail on this,” a polite way of saying nobody’s holding their breath.

Then again, that’s the pattern here: reassuring statements followed by a lack of specifics, while the people actually delivering the show carry the risk. Producers insist the tour is “fully financed and on a secure footing” and that “the future of Burlesque has never been brighter.” So everything’s fine!

The Company filings admit the whole operation depends on the goodwill of one unnamed backer, with loans already secured against box office takings that haven’t happened yet. A recent bid to raise a further £3.2m, partly earmarked for a venue registered to the producers rather than the production company, reportedly found no takers.

At time of writing, industry estimates on Sunderland’s box office put sales in the low to mid twenties as a percentage of capacity, well short of covering running costs with barely a fortnight until opening. Closing that gap would mean more than doubling current sales in days, something several in the industry describe as fantasy.

Anyway: none of this is new for a show whose 18 months have included three directors, a public falling out with former creative lead Todrick Hall over royalties and credit, and repeated warnings from Equity over conditions during its West End run. What’s consistent is the gap between the language in the press releases, “strategic,” “razzle-dazzle,” “brighter than ever,” and the language from the people actually owed money and answers. 

Furthermore – and perhaps even more importantly – unions are left chasing payments. Crew are left high and dry or reshuffled. And the producers, so far, are left issuing statements with typos that promise everything and confirm nothing. Again. 

Are there any bright spots? It’s foolish to count too many chickens, but we do have to take our smiles where we can. And the peasants – the audiences – just have to suck it up. The majority self-employed creative teams shafted. The owners of the new Marble Arch Theatre left with a hole in their programming. Casual staff – on minimum wage – left without shifts.

As is the fashion of the era, we must now ask ourselves: what did we learn? There was a standout lesson, and I’m afraid it is the same one we’ve taken in this blog before: Do not get into bed with theatrical chancers. 

This week, I have been in conversation with industry figures, Unions, tabloid journalists, Arts editors and more. The currents of social media proved themselves far greater and deadlier than any of the industry’s motley crew of enforcers, traditional crisis PRs and NDA experts, and ultimately impossible to control. 

But so many silences remain deafening. I am asking you dear reader very specifically what the industry should do to focus on how it could help in more active ways than thoughts and prayers.

Update 27/7/2026

Producers of Burlesque the Musical have instructed solicitors to send me (and others) a letter over my reporting on the show’s finances and the postponed tour.
I don’t accept their complaint and won’t be apologising for anything.

My reply below.
A joyous heart always,
Carl W x

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The Trouble With Burlesque

This week, I had to laugh stumbling on Cher’s ambivalence about the movie musical Burlesque: “I drove all of them crazy,” she told the Irish Independent in 2010, admitting the character she played “wasn’t exactly who she turned out to be on screen.”

Writer-director Steven Antin, hearing she was wavering, tracked her down at Sony’s offices — “stalking Cher for an hour and a half,” as he put it.

“Terrible director! Really terrible director. And really terrible script.”Not my words, readers (although, having said that …), but the words of Cher in 2013. 

The Hollywood Reporter published a report that director Antin and Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper, a longtime couple, had collaborated on the film were said to have “jaw-dropping” clashes on set. 

During one incident, someone reportedly poured an iced tea over Antin’s head, forcing Antin to recoil backwards into a rack of clothes. 

Righto. It should be said, right from the start, that more than a decade on, the stage version is once again proving its own kind of nuts. 

The UK tour opens in Woking later this month, but word from the rehearsal room is of a chaotic working environment, a frustration echoed by more than one member of the creative team who’ve spoken to me directly about what’s going on behind the scenes: “Cast members come in every day complaining about how they’re not being taught the show.”

Oh God. Meanwhile, at Marble Arch, owners of the new London theatre are said to be hedging their bets — holding talks with three or four alternative productions in case the current production never makes it to the venue.

Steven Antin
Steven Antin

Then there’s the money. Todrick Hall, who contributed a lot of original music to the show, has described a “rollercoaster” experience working on it, and is reported to be owed royalties in the region of £100,000. Lawyers for Antin have, of course, rejected that claim. 

Either way, sources point to a dispute over royalty splits on several songs — including “Pretty Girls,” “Dirty Martini” and “Fabulous” — with suggestions Antin is seeking a cut despite no credited songwriting input, though this has not been confirmed.

Whatever the truth of this latest dispute, the pattern emerging is a stage adaptation of a film even its own star now publicly disowns, trailed by unresolved money questions and more off-stage drama. 

Frankly, you could draw your own conclusions by reading the company accounts for Burlesque The Musical and TR Heels Limited — suspicious circular loans, an operation that could be filed under T.W.I: trading while insolvent. (Listen, I just type this stuff.) 

As it goes, questions abound from various sides of the fence. Around twenty people have declined to comment on the record — some bound by shadowy legal tools, others simply too rattled by their time in Antin’s orbit to revisit it. “It took every ounce of my strength and resilience, along with the help of my agent and union to survive it,” one told me. 

Another: “I don’t want my name tied to the show. I’ve been reminded there are ways to ruin my career, and I don’t want to push any boundary that might invite a targeted attack.”

And: “It’s a line on the CV people will be scrubbing.” 

That’s showbiz – try not to choke on it.

Anyhoo: back to Antin The Terrible. I imagine he ends each day plotting the next one; hunched over his homemade shoebox auditorium, moving marionettes of his cast and crew to game out scenarios in which he always has the last word.

Put candidly… That, in the end, is the cautionary sadness of the form: the daylight only ever falls on the parts we let it. Antin’s track record is merely a reminder of how uncomfortable that daylight can be. 

And of a widely regarded thug who seems rather more practised at taking credit for work he never did.

Still, it feels inevitable that another tiresomely chaotic narrative should be cranking up around this diabolical show. It is an apocalyptic playlist on perpetual shuffle. As I hit publish on this blog, I have received word that the sound team and trucking company have not been paid and have downed tools.

As is the fashion of the era, Musical Theatre is a game played for the highest stakes.

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Here’s Your Definitive Guide to Edinburgh Fringe 2026 (you’re welcome)

Right: Edinburgh Fringe.

Chichester Festival Theatre, Curve in Leicester and Belfast’s Lyric Theatre are all bringing shows to this year’s Fringe as part of Pleasance’s Edinburgh National Partnerships scheme, but best of the bunch is Badgers.

Sherman Theatre is backing something equally compelling in Amnesia, a one-woman show about a care worker living in Rhyl, written and performed by Kimberly Hart-Simpson, directed by Kate Wasseberh and produced by Hat Trick Productions with Theatr Clwyd.


Shedinburgh is back too, this time at Assembly Checkpoint from 7–30 August. Bryony Kimmings’ brilliant one-woman show Sex Idiot — inspired by her discovery that she’d contracted chlamydia — is a highlight, and the purpose-built venue will also host work-in-progress shows from Rosie Jones, Sara Pascoe, Lorna Rose Treen, Mischief, Sabrina Mahfouz, Nick Helm and Sh!t Theatre.

At The Space on Niddry Street, two shows sit well together: Without Compromise Theatre’s Collateral Damage follows three women trying to reconnect after trauma tears their family apart, confronting grief, silence and whether some wounds ever truly heal, while Shark Bait Theatre’s Hope This Helps! at the Space takes a lighter tack, satirising wellness culture and life online through five eccentric internet addicts attempting a digital detox.


Over at the Traverse, the season leans into world, UK and European premieres alongside co-productions from Scottish and international theatre-makers, staged across both auditoria and partner venues around the city.

In my opinion, the centrepiece is Cathy, written and directed by Eilidh Loan, which marks Elaine C Smith’s return to the Traverse main stage after 26 years. (Full disclosure: I will be working with the team on this show – but it is a lovely, tender piece of new writing) Anyway. Smith plays a widow navigating grief and family tension in the run-up to Christmas, alongside Alan Orr, Sally Reid and Michele Gallagher.


For something more random, the Gilded Balloon (15–31 August, 1pm) has A Man Proposes to a Balloon, Or Possibly Something Worse — a dark comedy that does exactly what it says on the tin. Elsewhere, Liberace & Liza – A Tribute arrives at the Fringe after a West End run at the Harold Pinter, and Goodbye Dandelion — recipient of the inaugural Underbelly Futures Fund Award — brings a humorous, moving new work from writer-performer Maddie Rice and composer Marcus Rice.

At Underbelly Cowgate’s Iron Belly (5–30 August, daily 15:40), Bailey Edwards’ darkly comic Play Dead follows Echo, devastated by a breakup and convinced that kidnapping his ex’s dog is somehow a good idea. Over at the Palais du Variété in Assembly George Square Gardens, magician Ben Hart — of Britain’s Got Talent, Killer Magic and The One Show fame — returns with The Labyrinth, a dark, funny and astonishing journey into the hidden patterns that shape our lives.

Also worth a look: Lil Wenker’s brand-new clown horror comedy Boyking, taking aim at unchecked greed and the pathological pursuit of power.

For nightlife crossover, Relish Theatre’s Acid’s Reign — part club night, part cabaret — runs at Forth, Pleasance Courtyard, throughout August. Nearby, Sad Bride offers a queer, dark comedy drawn from real experiences of the wedding industry, exploring the pressure of performing womanhood online.

And at Pleasance Courtyard: Beyond (5–31 August, 9:30pm), Elf Lyons — winner of the 2025 Sky Arts Award for Comedy — brings The Woman on the Edge, inspired by the breakdown of her engagement while she was alone on tour in Australia, still expected to walk onstage every night and entertain as though nothing was happening.


Don’t miss Alice Fraser’s Oh Man! — sharp, whip-smart comedy at Monkey Barrel’s O’Neill’s (The Tron) that’s well worth the trip.


For something more classic, Stockard Channing directs David Westhead in Samuel Beckett’s darkly humorous Krapp’s Last Tape at Upstairs at The Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place.
Over at Gilded Balloon at the Museum, Celebrity First Dates star Tom Read Wilson performs his quirky The A-Z of Me, while Gilded Balloon’s Patter House hosts Benjamin Quirk’s Twink Death, travelling all the way from Perth, Australia.

If you missed it last year, see Flo & Joan’s One Man Musical at Pleasance Beyond — a delicious skewering of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. For a late-night laugh, Underbelly Cowgate (9:55pm) has Moon Team IIIV, a one-man multimedia comedy sci-fi odyssey from BBC New Comedian Award semi-finalist Will BF.
And rounding things off, You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next) is the winner of the Summerhall Mary Dick Award and supported by Hall for Cornwall and it unpacks the complex relationship between a disabled person and their carer.


I am looking forward to being back in Scotland – this year at the start of the bananas festival.


In any event, I hope you have found some use in this guide to what the Fringe world has on offer —and share your tips.


Bye for now,


Carl x

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Todrick Hall: “If people come away from the process of putting on a musical feeling traumatised, then I don’t think it’s worth it.”

When I reached out to Todrick Hall, I was struck by how many confusing and frequently still-unresolved twists and turns there have been. What in the name of sanity? 

Let’s be clear: the stuff that actually was occurring and public was wild enough. 

And so, a YouTuber, rapper, Broadway star — and now also, the self-proclaimed unsung hero of Burlesque The Musical, based on the 2010 film written and directed by Steven Antin.

That’s the story Hall tells about his tumultuous journey with the troubled production, one that’s left him feeling “used,” “erased,” and in a protracted fight for a “life-changing” sum in unpaid royalties.

We are talking on the telephone ahead of the show’s return at Marble Arch this Autumn. Hall was the musical’s driving creative force, penning eighteen and a half of its daunting 25 songs (plus reprises), playing Sean, and taking over as director and choreographer from Nick Winston. The production churned through creative teams — sets, costumes, lighting, all replaced — but Hall remained its constant. 

Until he wasn’t. Flash-forward six months, Hall discovered he’d been cut from the show’s new iteration not from the producers, but via Instagram, during London rehearsals for his own musical Midnight. “It felt like a slap in the face,” he declares. “There’s no way to deny that my gift has had a huge impact on the show. I felt a little bit used because now they’re going to cherry pick parts of my talent to use in this new version.”

We are two minutes into a conversation about his experiences. Behind the scenes, it was a chaotic ride. During previews at the Savoy, actors’ union Equity intervened over unspecified “issues.”Rumours swirled of cast members dashing to Primark to buy wigs because costumes weren’t ready — a tale Hall laughingly dismisses. “That Primark story is iconic,” he chuckles. “If people were going to Primark, it was to get socks. Unfortunately, it is not true,” he adds. 

Amazing indeed.

For pretty much everyone else, following the ins and outs of this musical is one of gathering chaos and rising disbelief. Jokes aside, he says he poured his heart into the show – one with significant structural and creative issues: “My experience with Burlesque has been quite the rollercoaster. I treated that show as if it were my own child,” Hall says. “I understood how passionate the producer was — I did not ever want to disappoint him or myself. I was willing to do everything to make sure we had a show on stage. But it was really difficult.”

Then there are the royalties. Hall alleges he’s owed a sum he describes as “life-changing” (rumoured to be £100,000) for his work as director, choreographer, and songwriter. “My DNA is still in that show,” he asserts. The producers’ response when he’s tried to collect? “That has been tricky,” he admits. “I do genuinely believe that someday soon I will get that money; we are in conversation. I’m fine with waiting because I believe it is going to come.”

‘Life’s not fair, it’s fabulous’ 

Elsewhere, a peek into TR Heels Ltd’s accounts, the company behind Burlesque, reveals a financial house of cards. Net liabilities skyrocketed from £5.87 million to £9.44 million in just one year. Trade creditors are knocking, owed £9.52 million, while cash reserves sit at a paltry £67,499. Yet, TR Heels has handed out over £800,000 in interest-free loans to other productions under the same leadership. 

Meanwhile, Burlesque on Stage Limited conjured up a £80,000 fixed asset from thin air, no paper trail in sight. Simultaneously, its current assets and creditors mysteriously quadrupled. For a show already grappling with a revolving door of creatives, these fiscal smokescreens add an ominous layer to the off-stage drama. The most riveting numbers in this production might just be on its balance sheets.

And I can reveal that Antin’s script control provisions are allegedly a masterpiece of paranoia — every script must be watermarked, numbered, colour-coded, printed only by Antin, distributed only by Antin, breathed upon only by Antin, and apparently blessed by Antin before it may exist in the physical universe.

Writer and producer Steven Antin & ‘producer’ Christina Aguilera

Hall has described his relationship with Antin, the show’s writer and co-producer, as “difficult,” alleging he was treated unfairly. “Listen, Steve kindly congratulated me on my show Midnight. Ultimately, he has the money and you need it — and if you don’t have the stamina, you just concede. His life perspective is very different from mine, so I allow some grace.” 

The crux of their clash, in Hall’s telling: credit. “I respect Steve. He is from a different era though. My experience with burlesque has been quite the rollercoaster. I do believe they’re going to pay me, but if you’re asking me now whether I have received the money I am owed, I haven’t.”

“There’s a lot of nuance, because the contract has not been signed. But I don’t plan on signing that contract until only the people’s names who had to do with writing the songs are [credited] with writing the songs.”

“For aeons, throughout history, white people have taken credit for work black people did. Straight people have taken credit for work queer people did. I am both of those – I’m a double minority, and I’m proud of that. But I am fundamentally against someone saying they wrote music that they didn’t write. I don’t want someone’s name on music that I wrote who did not write that music.” 

“I have respect for Steve Antin because I believe he has a level of passion that I think is rare in this industry. He is adamant and protective over every single detail of his show, and I find that admirable,” says Hall.

Through it all, Hall kept the brief Savoy run afloat — at times, he jokes, singlehandedly. “During the West End run, my character stated that his back was sore ‘from carrying the show.’ No matter what version of Burlesque they get to, they wouldn’t have got there without me. I have more music in that show than anyone.”

He continues: “If I get my royalties, I will be happy as a bird and I will be cheering the new casts on. There’s a chance that someday I will play Sean again; I loved that character. I do want there to be a world where if the show were to come to Broadway, I would participate in it.”

But that chapter of his career has closed, and a new one’s begun with Midnight. “When you’re working with people and you don’t share artistic visions, there is always going to be friction,” he reflects. With Midnight, he promises something “baked with love” that will sweep audiences away. “It’s an American story, and I am excited New York is going to get to see it.”

“We’re making art here at the end of the day,” he adds. “If people come away from the process of putting on a musical feeling traumatised, then I don’t think it’s worth it. There’s already so many awful things going on in the world — musical theatre should not be one of them.”

  • NOV 2023

ANNOUNCEMENT

Manchester production announced — creative team assembled

Directed and choreographed by Nick Winston. Produced by Adam Paulden, Sue Gilad & Larry Rogowsky, Steven Antin and Christina Aguilera. Sets by Soutra Gilmour; costumes by Ryan Dawson Laight. Audiences enjoy the show — but reports of “total chaos” behind the scenes begin to circulate.

  • MAR 2025

WEST END

West End run announced — overhauled creative team revealed

Version 2.0 brings new music by Todrick Hall and Jess Foley, with additional material by Kate Wetherhead. New producers include Jason Haigh-Ellery and Clint Culpepper alongside the original team.

  • 15 JUL 2025

EQUITY DISPUTE

Performers’ union Equity steps in ahead of opening

Equity confirms it is “engaging with both members and the producers over a number of issues.” Director and choreographer Nick Winston has been replaced mid-process by cast member and co-writer Todrick Hall — one of several significant creative team changes in the run-up to opening. Producers decline to comment.

  • JUN 2025

CELEBRITY SHADE

Diane Warren fires warning shot — before the show has even opened

During the preview period, Oscar-nominated songwriter Diane Warren — who wrote You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me for Cher’s character in the original film — posts on Instagram flagging that her song has been cut and the show is now only “lightly inspired” by the movie. She tags Cher. The post is subsequently deleted.

“So it appears Burlesque is no longer an adaptation and more lightly inspired by the movie… The cast who didn’t move from Manchester with the show have had a very lucky escape. Cutting ‘You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me’ though? These reviews are going to be very telling.”

  • 22 JUL 2025

OPENING NIGHT

Burlesque opens at the Savoy — and confounds expectations

Most critics, braced for a flop, are pleasantly surprised — awarding three or four stars. The Guardian and LondonTheatre go further, giving five stars and singling out Jess Foley’s central performance as “sensational.” TimeOut remains disappointed. Warren’s warning goes largely unreported.

  • 28 JUL 2025

FALLOUT

Todrick Hall speaks out about “bullying” — takes mental health day

Writing on Instagram, Hall shares screenshots from online forums speculating about problems on the show. “Imagine waking up every day and reading these comments from strangers… then having to go on stage night after night, smile and try to perform.” He attends Evita and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on his day off.

  • 1 AUG 2025

FINANCE

Producers take out emergency loan — £6m debt disclosed

Companies House filings for TR Heels Ltd reveal creditors are owed £6.42m. The production has separately taken a debenture — a loan secured against assets — from Finstock Capital, a firm specialising in “short-term financial solutions.” Producer Adam Paulden’s company Adama Entertainment received £304,700 in fixed fees and £11,119 in royalties.

  • SEP 2025

EXPANSION

Japanese production announced via Instagram

Producers announce plans to bring Burlesque to Japan.

  • SEP 2025

CO-PRODUCER CONVICTED

Listed co-producer sentenced for Covid grant fraud

Suzanne Gilad — listed as a co-producer of the UK production — is sentenced in Brooklyn for fraudulently obtaining more than $69,000 in Covid-19 small business recovery grants by filing falsified records. Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez states she “took advantage of a public health crisis by falsifying records to secure government aid that was meant to keep struggling small businesses afloat.”

  • JAN 2026

COLLAPSE

Japanese production cancelled

Four months after the announcement, the Japan run is quietly shelved.

  • FEB 2026

PIVOT

Producers launch crowdfunding platform for theatre

Adam Paulden and new partner Jonathan Newman launch StageLight — an “all-or-nothing” seven-day crowdfunding model for stage productions. Contributors receive experiences (opening night tickets, backstage access, meet-and-greets) rather than financial returns. The pair cite the “challenging theatre landscape” as motivation.

  • MAR 2026

SACKING

Todrick Hall dropped — and finds out via Instagram

A rebooted production is announced with Hall erased from the credits and promotional materials. He tells podcaster Mickey Jo that he learned of his dismissal from social media, not from the producers.

  • JUN 2026

THIRD DIRECTOR

Racky Plews appointed — third director in two years

Plews, whose credits include I’m Every Woman: The Chaka Khan Musical, will helm a new pop-up production at Marble Arch and a subsequent tour. Producers Antin and Paulden frame the appointment as a deliberate shift: “We believe this story would ultimately benefit from a woman’s perspective.” The retooled production has yet to launch.

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rewrite the stars

FIVE STARS.


That was the verdict from several theatre critics I genuinely respect on a regional musical I’d been quietly plotting to see. Then this weekend, a message landed from a trusted friend — avid theatregoer, 64 years on the theatrical planet:“Oh my god. Seriously bad. Terrible in every conceivable sense. Let me save you the trip — it’s gobsmackingly bad. May even be the worst production I have ever seen.”

I found myself at a critical crossroads.


Here’s the thing about five-star reviews: there’s always a reason not to give one. Fault can always be found. To award five stars is a leap of faith — to put your head above the parapet, courage of convictions front and centre. Critics deserve credit for that. Not five stars, obviously. It is their job, after all.


But what is the star-rating economy actually worth in 2026?


Still, I’ve been thinking about this since falling down a rabbit hole with a Sunday Times Money investigation into Vodafone employees writing fake Trustpilot reviews on customers’ phones — without their knowledge. One victim said it best when he updated his fraudulent five-star entry: “I was disappointed to find that you felt it necessary to write a review on my behalf. That was a bit naughty of you.” Vodafone’s Trustpilot rating, for the record, climbed from 2.08 to 4.7 in three years. Draw your own conclusions.

Theatre is not immune. I recently studied a West End poster — big summer opening, a Dame attached — plastered with four- and five-star quotes from publications I’d never heard of. The broadsheets gave it two stars, almost unanimously. So who do you trust? How do you cut through the noise?

Anyway. It gets murkier. Anyone can start a blog; democracy and disaster in equal measure. And I’m increasingly convinced some theatre bloggers are quietly outsourcing their opinions to artificial intelligence. I ran one prolific reviewer’s High Society write-up through four AI-detection tools. Between 60 and 70 per cent machine-generated, each one suggested. I mean…


Yet every show this person reviews is apparently a contender for best of the year. Remarkable stamina. Suspiciously consistent enthusiasm.

I once pulled up a PR for slapping a four-star West End review across all the tour publicity — as if the two productions were remotely the same thing.


The touring cast was severely diminished, there were reports of it being a total shambles, and yet there it was: four stars, front and centre, borrowed from a completely different show that audiences were never going to see.


So. Are reviews important to audiences? Yes — though rarely the sole deciding factor. Do strong star ratings drive bookings? Absolutely, particularly in publications people actually trust. Are star ratings reductive and frequently unfair? Almost certainly. Will they disappear? Not a chance.


But here we all are for now, zero stars are now commonplace. Five stars are distributed like loyalty points. The system is visibly broken and widely known to be so — and yet here we all are, still counting, still printing them on posters, still letting them do the heavy lifting.

Please understand that I claim no superiority for all this stuff. What is undeniable, however, is that reviews should be a record of a moment in time – a kind of elegy.
Apart from sheer convenience, why bother with star ratings? Especially now.

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RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award Winner Lily Dyble: “The landscape’s really hard right now. And who gets to do it?” 

Want to spot tomorrow’s directing talent? Look no further than the resident or associate director listed in your theatre programme. 

Last weekend, Lily Dyble stepped into the Globe’s courtyard with the unhurried calm of someone who has learned to trust herself under pressure. 

She is this year’s winner of the Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award — and in the current climate, that distinction carries more weight than ever.

Photo credit Matt Chandler

Dyble has served as associate director to Joe Mantello on Stephen Sondheim’s Here We Are at the National Theatre — a connection that led directly to Broadway and an associate directorship on the starry Death of a Salesman. A remarkable trajectory.

But that pipeline is under threat. Producing theatres are making less, squeezed by years of stagnant funding. Less production means fewer opportunities for directors, actors, and every kind of theatre freelancer — and ultimately, a talent development pipeline running dry.

Patrick Marber, one of the directors she names as a formative influence, recently told The Stage that it’s “a really hard time” to make a living as a director, with even well-established figures struggling to land work. Dyble doesn’t flinch at this. “The landscape’s really hard right now,” she says. “And who gets to do it?” 

The award, she makes clear, isn’t a trophy. It’s a lifeline.“I hit a point in my practice where without meaningful intervention I couldn’t scale up, I couldn’t go any further. And then this happened.” 

Born and raised in Manchester, Dyble is a product of precisely the ecosystem she now champions. Free music lessons. The Hallé Youth Choir. A Northern brass band. “I went to a state school where I was really lucky that so much access to the arts was still free” she says — and she means it without sentiment. She knows how easily that luck could have gone the other way, which is why paid placements and access remain causes she returns to again and again. The first assisting job she took was unpaid. She worked back 139 hours to do it. “Getting in the room is so much of it.”

Much of her career has been built through associate work — a role she defines with precision. “It’s a really intimate relationship. You’re a sounding board. You operate as a real partnership.” 

She credits Marber, alongside Nick Hytner, Joe Mantello, and Nadia Fall, as directors she’s learned from profoundly. But it’s the other female creatives — Marianne Elliott, Bunny Christie, Vicky Mortimer — whose teams she watched obsessively as a student, spending every spare penny on tickets, trying to understand how those collaborations functioned.

“It’s a really short window of your career where you get to have that privilege of sitting in another director’s room,” she says. “It goes really quickly.”

Her chosen piece for the award is Sally Cookson’s Jane Eyre, and the choice is anything but academic. She first saw the production at eighteen in Bristol. “I remember when Jane walked across the gantry and it set on fire, sitting there and being so overwhelmed and thinking – that’s what love should feel like. It’s messy and it’s complicated, it defies a straightforward answer”. The RTST will also make a grant of £60,000 to support the costs of the production. 

Now directing it herself, across regional venues including Chester — close to where she grew up — she’s drawn to what the play demands: courage in uncertainty, clarity under pressure. “It gives a theatrical language to those feelings that you can’t articulate. Jane’s internal world is such a vast, emotional landscape.”

Right now she’s in rehearsals for an all-female Glengarry Glen Ross at the Old Vic. A new musical is finding its next home. Jane Eyre awaits. She is, unmistakably, moving. “Holding on,” she says. “Holding the line. Keeping the faith.” In a hard time for directors, that’s not a platitude.

It was a wonderful starry reception hosted by Sir Ian McKellen. RTST chairman Sir Geoffrey Cass said: “We warmly congratulate Lily Dyble and the runner-up, Sophie Drake, and applaud the six other directors on the all-female shortlist.”

So in more ways than one, UK theatre directors need a sustained ecology of work, not isolated chances. Without sufficient opportunity and invaluable schemes like RTST that come with cash to keep talent rooted in the regions, the next Dyble simply won’t emerge.

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