WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
TRACKLIST: Favourite; Stay Wild; Velvet Lies; Masquerade; Running With The Night; Bad Love; Let’s Go Outside; Brand New; Need A Little More Time; Forever Young; Waiting For The Sun To Shine
Masquerade is, quite simply, Bananarama’s best album since their 1987 hits-packed, career-high Wow!
Frontman Neil Hannon celebrates 30 years of his band by performing 10 of his albums in full across this 5-night residency in the Barbican in central London. The run begins on 31 August and continues on successive nights until Sunday 4 September. We last saw the band at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith in 2019 at a show which won our Best Gig monsta that year. Barbican residency review Tickets
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2
WHEN?: Saturday 16 July, booking until 20 August 2022
Hollander is doubtless 1 of this country’s greatest living theatre and TV actors and here as Boris Berezovsky his performance is sweary, larger than life and unforgettable.
By Neil Durham and Carron Stacey, A Humdrum Mum
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN?: Sunday 11 July 2022, tour runs to 23 September 2022
SETLIST: Chic Cheer; Dance Dance Dance; Everybody Dance; I Want Your Love; I’m Coming Out/Upside Down; He’s The Greatest Dancer/We Are Family; Like A Virgin/Material Girl; Modern Love; Spacer; Lost In Music; Thinking Of You; My Feet Keep Dancing; Get Lucky; My Forbidden Lover; Let’s Dance; Le Freak; Good Times/Under Pressure/Rapper’s Delight
Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon credits guitarist Rodgers with saving the group in the 80s as he joins the band to play songs he collaborated on them with.
By Carron Stacey, A Humdrum Mum
WHEN?: Saturday 9 July 2022
Five surprises of the day: 1. Hearing Urban Cookie Collective play The Key: The Secret live during the Megamix section. Singer Danielle Barnett is also a life coach and public speaker!
By Carron Stacey, A Humdrum Mum
WHEN?: Sunday 10 July 2022, touring until 11 September 2022
SETLIST: Wild Boys; Invisible; All Of You; View To A Kill; Notorious; Pressure Off; Union Of The Snake; Come Undone; Give It All Up; Hungry Like The Wolf; Friends Of Mine; Ordinary World; Tonight United; Planet Earth; Hold Back the Rain; The Reflex; White Lines; Girls On Film/Acceptable In The 80s; Save A Prayer; Rio
A lifelong Durannie. I mostly only sing along to the first two albums, plus a few extras I like. Yes, I’m one of those fans.
By Aline Mahrud
WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
WHEN?: Saturday 9 July (matinee), runs to 3 September 2022 RUNTIME: 160 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
There’s a seemingly unscripted moment at the final curtain call when Bonnie Langford completes the highest kick of the show, with her leg above her head, that makes you think about what could have been.
By Aline Mahrud
WORTH A LOOK?: **** RUNTIME: 140 minutes (including 20-minute interval)
WHEN?: Sunday 3 July (matinee), running to 16 July 2022. Goes to Edinburgh Festival before a UK tour. UPDATE: Transfers to Southwark Playhouse and runs through 8 December to 17 February 2024 Tickets
Take the villainess from Disney’s Little Mermaid, pepper her backstory with feminist credentials and you have this part-parody new musical with some hugely memorable songs.
By Aline Mahrud
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN?: Monday 4 July, touring until 18 September 2022
SETLIST: No Small Thing; The Tipping Point; Everybody Wants To Rule The World; Secret World; Sowing The Seeds Of Love; Long, Long, Long Time; Break The Man; My Demons; Rivers Of Mercy; Mad World; Suffer The Children; Woman In Chains; Badman’s Song; Pale Shelter; Break It Down Again; Head Over Heels/Broken; Change; Shout
‘Funny how – time flies.’ The last time Tears For Fears played in Shepherd’s Bush in south-west London it was to mime to the edit of single Sowing The Seeds Of Love in 1989 for BBC1’s Wogan.
