

SOME LIKE IT HOT - I like it classic
When Billy Wilder finally relented and attended the 1993 premiere of the musical version of his 1950 film noir classic “Sunset Boulevard”, the great film screenwriter and director was said to quip he thought the whole thing was silly. One can’t imagine what Wilder would have thought of the new musical adaptation of his perfectly silly 1959 comedy classic “Some Like It Hot”. Notably, the credits for this production avoid any mention of Wilder or his screenwriter partner I.A.L


A BEAUTIFUL NOISE - All About Neil
“A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical” is the kind of jukebox musical jukebox musicals would want to be: a biomusical (Diamond being one of the biggest selling recording artists in history); a sing-along musical (witness the cult response to “Sweet Caroline”); and, a songbook musical. It's a reliable showbiz melodrama too. But, instead of getting cliche rags-to-riches, we get a variant, Flatbush-to-fame, and all the neurosis of a creative performer that that persona


KIMBERLY AKIMBO: Real musical theatre at last
To a Broadway awash in juke-box musicals, musicals based on movies, bio-musicals, and over-produced revivals comes “Kimberly Akimbo” - distinctively original, disarmingly charming, and quirkily dramatic. Written in 2000 as a dark-comedy about a teenage girl who suffers from a rare disease that causes her to age rapidly by David Lindsay-Abaire (who went on to win Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Rabbit Hole’ in 2007), “Kimberley Akimbo” found its way, via regional California


&JULIET: Can't stop the jukebox
“&Juliet: The New Musical” , a jukebox, hip retelling of Shakepeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” should be more aptly subtitled “The Max Martin Musical”. Jammed-packed into a feminist re-imagining of the tragic love story are about 30 pop hits all but one associated with Martin, the Swedish pop songwriter and producer, who, according to the show’s Playbill, is the “genius…behind more hits than any other artist in this century” (well, at least since the 1990s) and “basically the Shak