Menier Chocolate Factory

Kicking off a run of three musicals in a row at the Menier, ‘The Third Man’ is, of course, an all-singing version of Graham Greene’s classic Orson Welles-starring film noir. It has to be said, it’s a pretty daunting prospect to adapt: the film is regarded as one of the greatest ever made, with a distinct harsh black and white aesthetic, and Welles’s performance is perhaps the greatest ever supporting turn in film history. The somber world of bombed-out, factional post-war Vienna does not obviously lend itself to a musical. But then a lot of stories that shouldn't work as musicals do, and director Trevor Nunn has been at the helm of several of them, most notably ‘Les Miserablés’.  In any case, ‘The Third Man’ – by old-time pros George Fenton (music), Christopher Hampton (book) and Don Black (lyrics) – is at least an intriguing prospect, and there’s no denying the greatness of the source material, Greene’s twisty thriller about Holly Martins, an American who arrives in the Austrian capital to see his friend Harry Lime, only to discover that he’s died in a car accident. But has he? Fatefully, Holly decides to stay on to investigate the matter.

Co-creator of a clutch of iffy early ’00 musicals – most notably ‘We Will Rock You’, but also Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘The Beautiful Game’ and ‘Love Never Dies’, plus ‘Tonight’s the Night’, a semi-forgotten Rod Stewart jukebox affair – It’s fair to say that Ben Elton has had a long time to think about what he’s done. Now he’s finally returned to the world of musical theatre with ‘Close Up – The Twiggy Musical’, a biographical affair about the original supermodel, who epitomised Britain in the Swinging Sixties as much as The Beatles. Following the one-time Lesley Lawson from obscurity in working-class Neasden to global fame and damehood, it sounds like ‘Close Up’ will be a jukebox affair soundtracked by classic ’60s and ’70s tunes (or the ones they can get the rights to, anyway). It’ll be directed by Elton himself, with the casting of Twiggy TBC.

The Menier follows up two new musicals that could probably go either way – an adaptation of classic film noir ‘The Third Man’ and Ben Elton’s Twiggy musical ‘Close Up’ – with the literal thing the Southwark powerhouse does best: A Stephen Sondheim revival. The first one it’s staged since the great man’s death in 2021, this production of ‘Pacific Overtures’ is a collaboration with Japan’s Umeda Arts Theatre and has already played warmly received seasons in Tokyo and Osaka. One of Sondheim’s highest concept and least commonly staged musicals, the 1976 work imagines a Japanese playwright creating a play about the Americanisation of Japan. It is pretty darn tricky to get your head around, but all the more reason for actually staging a thing, especially in a co-production that hopefully ducks suggestions of Orientalism. Matthew White directs.