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Charing Cross Theatre

  • Theatre
  • Covent Garden
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Time Out says

This intimate theatre is a great place to see offbeat musicals at bargainous prices

Step through a brick archway in a dank covered passage, tucked away behind Charing Cross station, and you'll find yourself in this atmospheric but resolutely unglamorous theatre. It started life as a raucous Victorian music hall in 1864, and it still throws a rollicking good knees up, courtesy of the very popular Players Bar, where musical theatre fans gather round the old Joanna for nightly singalong sessions. 

The theatre itself offers none of the frills and furbelows that you'll find on the nearby West End. Charing Cross Theatre has a small raked auditorium, with a 265-seat capacity. Its current artistic director, Thom Southerland, came on board in 2016. Since then, he's had a degree of success using the venue to stage an offbeat and keenly priced collection of chamber musicals. The biggest hits to date have been 'Titanic', which turned the theatre's small stage into the teeming decks of the all-too-sinkable ship, and a stage production of cult film 'Harold and Maude', starring Sheila Hancock. 

Details

Address:
3 The Arches, Villiers St
London
WC2N 6NL
Transport:
Tube: Charing Cross
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What’s on

Bronco Billy the Musical

  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Musicals

What’s that you say? You want a show about cowboys that’s also a soap opera, which also involves disco? And you want it to be one of the year’s best new musicals? Well, slap my thigh and roll up to ‘Bronco Billy’. Adapted by Chicago-born writer Dennis Hackin from his own 1979 film, it’s inspired by his parents, who always wanted to be cowboys. It sees a down-on-their-luck troupe of Wild West entertainers head to Hollywood for an audition they hope will transform their fortunes. They’re accompanied by a chocolate company heiress (in disguise) and pursued by her slimy husband, murderous stepmother, a lawyer and a hitman.   Director Hunter Bird takes the late-’70s setting and runs with it, casting its madcap caper vibe in bright colours and every orange of beige. It’s a beautifully pitched, disco-ball reflection of an era of TV and film, complete with great practical effects and some genre-bending choreography, which feels new and unique. The revolving set also sees the troupe’s van becoming a ramshackle character in its own right. It's all anchored by the well-balanced mix of sweetness and saltiness in Hackin’s script, which is both a sly wink to its inspirations and a touching ode to family wherever you find it, as well as some stupidly catchy songs by Chip Rosenbloom and John Torres. These provide the connective tissue that holds the production’s mash-up of genres together, from telling a love story to revelling in arch soap opera excess. The latter is grabbed with both hands

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