WORTH A LOOK?: ****
Madonna’s latest album Confessions II stakes a claim to be the best LP of the year so far and this is a remix of 1 of its many singles with a guest duet vocal with another of the world’s biggest gay icons.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
Runtime: 173 minutes
By Neil Durham
2 years after Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan’s follow-up is a spectacular rethinking of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem with its protagonist reflecting more than ever before on the worth of his heroism.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHEN? Saturday 1 August, opens 11 August and runs through 12 September 2026.
It feels like musical theatre has never been more popular and yet we can’t help but also think that not everything’s ripe to see its characters burst into song.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
WHEN? Sunday 2 August (matinee), opens 4 August and runs through 27 September 2026 RUNTIME: 160 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
X Factor winner Burke (Chicago, Phoenix Theatre) is Chaka Khan and encores with a mash-up of her biggest hits – I Feel For You, Ain’t Nobody and I’m Every Woman – and it’s a joyous end to the story of a complicated woman born ahead of her time in the surprise hit show of the summer.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN? Saturday 1 August (matinee), opens 6 August and runs through 12 September 2026 RUNTIME: 135 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
It’s the extraordinarily moving song Memory – sample lyric: ‘I remember the time I knew what happiness was, let the Memory live again’ – which elevates this Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on T.S. Eliot’s poems in Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
Tracklist: Hey Saint Jude; Intruder; Oh No You Don’t; Lost Time; Jump In; Giddy In A Good Way; Cut Me Dead; Cast A Stone; Pretenders; Paper Planes; Leaving The Scene; Pollyanna Says
Same Sun/Same Sky is the 1st new album for 34 years by The Darling Buds and it draws on the best of the many styles of the band’s 1st trio of LPs to underline why they were so underrated.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN?: Wednesday 29 July, opens 11 August and runs through 19 September 2026 RUNTIME: 180 minutes (with a 20-minute interval but aiming for 150 minutes)
Olivier Award-winner Roger Allam (A Number, Bridge Theatre) is the hilarious best reason to see this farce as bumbling businessman Frank Foster who fails to realise his wife is cheating on him.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHEN? Friday 24 July, opens 29 July and runs through 29 August 2026 RUNTIME: 100 minutes (no interval)
Our performance is stopped almost midway through for what was described as ‘a 1st aid front of house incident’ and we imagine it was in response to the spurting blood as a character’s tongue is cut off.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: *** RUNTIME: 114 minutes
‘Everyone says teenage relationships don’t last’ characters say to each other repeatedly in the apparent conclusion to this groundbreaking series seemingly foreshadowing its imminent Netflix demise.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN? Monday 20 July and runs through 19 September 2026 RUNTIME: 215 minutes (including 2 15-minute intervals)
Can a play ever be too long?
