Strictly fans may be disappointed there’s not more hoofing but Sleepless at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre well deserves a visit
Sleepless
Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre Until September 27, 2hrs 20mins
Hats off to the producers. This is the first fully staged musical since lockdown. It’s easy, relaxed entertainment – a weepy in Wembley – though you’ll need to wear a mask and sit in a sparsely populated auditorium.
Sleepless – a musical version of the film Sleepless In Seattle – even has Covid undertones, as the lovers are mostly socially distant, to the tune of about 3,000 miles.
Although this is no tonsil-baring barn-burner, the show comes with a sizeable cast, a slickly projected set design and a live 12-piece band. How they got it all together under current restrictions is a miracle.
The 1993 film famously featured Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, roles taken here by boy-band member (The Wanted) Jay McGuiness and Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh (both above)
The 1993 film famously featured Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, roles taken here by boy-band member (The Wanted) Jay McGuiness and Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh, both former Strictly competitors who were also paired in the musical Big.
Widower Sam (McGuiness) is in Seattle with his young son, grieving for his dead wife. America falls in love with this insomniac architect when he’s forced to pour his heart out on a radio chat show that his boy Jonah has called up.
Listening in is Annie (Walsh), who falls in love through her radio.
Set in 1993 – no Trump, no Twitter – what you get is a play with music. Composer Robert Scott and lyricist Brendan Cull have supplied a nice suite of songs of jazzy nostalgia.
Walsh sings well and doesn’t try to be Meg Ryan. McGuiness lacks a bit of presence but he is well bonded with Sam’s lively son (I saw Jobe Hart in the role). It all ends as it should, at the top of the Empire State Building.
Strictly fans may be disappointed there’s not more hoofing. And movie fans may miss the film’s great soundtrack of American classics. But this heroic venture in a theatrical desert well deserves a visit.
Beat The Devil
Bridge Theatre, London Until October 31
Rating: 
Beat The Devil is a monologue, lasting less than an hour, about the grim realities of Covid-19. While you might think you’ve had quite enough of that subject, the promise of Ralph Fiennes performing David Hare’s play, directed by Nicholas Hytner, makes this a bankably solid offering.
Hare had Covid-19 at the beginning of lockdown and describes the havoc his symptoms wreaked on him – and how the ‘mad phase’ of this capricious virus played out in tandem with a period of incompetency within our Government.
It’s a wryly amusing, vivid account of suffering a very serious illness, but also righteously furious at the failure of our political leaders to respond adequately to the pandemic.
Hare’s exasperated incredulity – brought to life by Fiennes with just the right mix of weariness and fire – is shrewd and succinct. It is essentially a middle-aged man ranting at the news, but Hare is an unusually articulate one, documenting political failures amid a national crisis with impassioned outrage.
Holly Williams