It’s not often that a 130-year-old show feels brand new and utterly original, but director Thom Southerland and team have achieved just that in the marvellously colourful interpretation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, The Mikado, currently playing at the Charing Cross Theatre.
A smattering of the production shots below.
A railway arch, a pile of rubble, a lot of mud, an obstacle course to get to the location, an electrocution risk only avoided by a fortuitous last-minute equipment switch, a very wet producer, costume designer, actor and photographer, all to get some apt publicity shots of star Alastair Brookshaw for The Grand Tour. The escape-the-Nazis musical caper will open at the Finborough on 1 January. 
Jacques Brel smoked a lot, sang a lot and left behind some memorably not anodyne songs.
They’re revisited in wonderfully Technicolor style by Gina Beck, Daniel Boys, David Burt and Eve Polycarpou in the new production of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, now playing at the Charing Cross Theatre.
Production shots from “Grim” — a wonderfully fun new musical now playing at the Charing Cross Theatre.
The show tells the tale of the unlikely love affair between high school kids Grim (hobbies include swinging a scythe and collecting cloaks in every shade of black) and Cupid.
And we’re back for the production photos of the European premiere of the Ahrens and Flaherty musical Dessa Rose — now open at Trafalgar Studios.
It’s really rather good.
Ironically, about the last place you’d expect to take rehearsal shots would be on the stage of an actual theatre, least of all one as capacious as the Charing Cross.
So I got up to quite a bit of mischief doing everything I never normally get to do for the rehearsal photos of Dessa Rose, now open at Trafalgar Studios.
Those keen (and, if internet chatter’s to be believed, there are many of you) for a peek at the production images should check back in an hour.
There’s not much I can say about shooting the poster and advertising imagery for Dessa Rose, coming soon to Trafalgar Studios.
Stars Cynthia Erivo and Cassidy Janson worked every angle and every emotion like they’d been born for the camera.
Costume designer Pippa Batt delivered in spades on virtually no notice.
Associate director Jen Bakst not only kept us to the schedule like a Japanese train but managed to double as a rather good photographic assistant AND stop me falling over.
And executive producer Andrew Harmer got us from the studio to Richmond Park and back again as if chasing the sun via every traffic jam in London were his raison d’être.
All I had to do was turn up and click.
(PS I’ve included a behind the scenes shot courtesy of Mr Harmer that demonstrates perfectly why my career’s doomed the moment I need a hip replacement.)
Bringing the London School of Musical Theatre’s 2014 stay at the Bridewell Theatre in the City to a close, Spend Spend Spend tells the story of Viv Nicholson.
Nicholson, notoriously, won big on the pools with her husband in the 60s and announced that she was going to “spend, spend, spend”.
Given that she has a whole (highly entertaining) musical dedicated to her travels from rags to riches and back again, it’ll come as no surprise to learn she was true to her word. And then some.
I seem to have been shooting a lot of musicals lately.
This is good for me because shooting a musical is a bit like going to the gym. This is less good for my shoes because shooting a musical is a bit like going to the gym in inappropriate footwear.
Shots from the London School of Musical Theatre’s first show of its two-show 2014 season at the Bridewell Theatre, Violet. If you want to see it (and you should; it’s very good), the run ends tomorrow night.
Violet tells the tale of a disfigured girl who takes a bus ride to meet a faith healer whom she hopes will heal her scars, and who learns that other things are rather more important on the way.
With the London School of Musical Theatre but weeks away from their return to the Bridewell Theatre, I thought I’d revisit the second of their shows there last year, Applause.
Applause, based on the film All About Eve, is basically an instruction manual for aspiring stars who happen to be psychopaths. Think of it as Fatal Attraction meets Fame and you’re there.
