{"id":44939,"date":"2025-04-23T22:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T22:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/44939\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T22:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T22:05:10","slug":"review-cancelling-your-trip-to-broadway-heres-what-to-see-and-skip-on-londons-west-end-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/44939\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Cancelling your trip to Broadway? Here\u2019s what to see (and skip) on London\u2019s West End instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The cast of Dear England (2025) at the National Theatre.Marc Brenner\/Supplied<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re hitting pause on future travel to the United States, you\u2019re not alone. In March, 32 per cent fewer Canadians <\/b>drove across the American border<\/a> compared with the same period last year, and the tourism industry shows no signs of recovery as U.S. President Donald Trump continues to wage his unpredictable trade war.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too soon to tell if many of the approximately 3.8 per cent of Broadway tickets sales attributed to Canadians will go unsold this year. Ordinarily, I\u2019d be heading to New York myself right around now, to catch up on recent Broadway hits as well as the rash of Canadian work geared to play the Big Apple this summer.<\/p>\n

But like many Canadians, I\u2019m sitting out this year\u2019s southern travel plans.<\/p>\n

This April, however, I had the chance to catch a few shows on London\u2019s West End, and I hardly missed my usual springtime jaunt to the Great White Way. If you\u2019re planning a trip to England \u2013 <\/b>and maybe missing out on a planned excursion to the Great White Way \u2013 here\u2019s what to see (and skip) in three of the country\u2019s most storied theatres.<\/p>\n

What to see: <\/b>My Neighbour Totoro <\/b>and <\/b>Dear England <\/b>(or anything at the National Theatre, really)<\/b><\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re an established Studio Ghibli fan or don\u2019t know anime from Adam, don\u2019t miss director Phelim McDermott\u2019s inspired take on My Neighbour Totoro, adapted from Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s 1988 film of the same name. The show, playing at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, uses intricate, gargantuan puppets to conjure Totoro \u2013 an imaginary creature sometimes described as a cross between a bear, a badger and an owl \u2013 and his fellow fantastical friends, as well as environmental details like soot sprites and rolling country roads. McDermott preserves Miyazaki\u2019s legendary whimsy and cheek, resulting in a theatrical experience that hardly feels its two-and-a-half-hour runtime.<\/p>\n

When we meet sisters Mei (Victoria Chen) and Satsuki (Ami Okumara Jones), the girls have just moved to the countryside from Tokyo, along with their doting father (Dai Tabuchi). The children\u2019s mother (Phyllis Ho), meanwhile, is in hospital with an unspecified sickness \u2013 dad and the doctors hope the fresh air will help her recover.<\/p>\n

Soon enough, four-year-old Mei meets Totoro, suggested onstage by a massive, inflatable puppet covered with fur. Over the course of the play, Totoro appears when the girls most need him \u2013 when they\u2019re caught in a storm and need shelter from the rain, for instance, and when Mei goes missing in the show\u2019s surprisingly harrowing second act.<\/p>\n

McDermott\u2019s Totoro pays homage to the film without directly copying it \u2013 key plot details occur during the curtain call, a lovely response to Miyazaki\u2019s habit of concluding storylines during end credit sequences. Truly, if you find yourself in London, you must make time to pay Totoro a visit \u2013 though you may struggle to avoid purchasing a plush pal of your own to take home.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, playing until May 24 at the National Theatre, is Dear England, James Graham\u2019s ode to England football manager Gareth Southgate. No need to know anything about the sport if you don\u2019t already \u2013 Graham\u2019s script, which feels like a cross between The Master Plan<\/a> and Ted Lasso, brings you up to speed on penalty kicks and statistics without beating you over the head with them.<\/p>\n

Rupert Goold\u2019s production uses an ingenious blend of projections, sparse set pieces and a rotating stage to get to the root of Team England\u2019s problems: Why can\u2019t the team win? And how might Southgate overcome decades of lost confidence to change that? It\u2019s a top-notch production of an impressively didactic script \u2013 let\u2019s hope it gets added to the National Theatre\u2019s digital streaming service before the World Cup heads to North America next year.<\/p>\n

And even if you miss Dear England, be sure to save room in your next London itinerary for the National Theatre, which is surrounded by trendy bars and restaurants, generally features excellent programming and houses a terrific bookstore for plays and hard-to-find books about drama.<\/p>\n

What to skip: <\/b>The Devil Wears Prada<\/b><\/p>\n

You\u2019d think The Devil Wears Prada, now playing at the ion Theatre, would result in a fairly bulletproof musical adaptation. If such screen-to-stage hits as Legally Blonde, Heathers and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels are to be taken as evidence, movies often make great inspiration for theatre.<\/p>\n

The Devil Wears Prada has all the ingredients for excellence: It\u2019s based on a beloved film with a massive cult following, features tunes by none other than Elton John, and stars Vanessa Williams in the role of Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep in the film).<\/p>\n

But the musical struggles to take off, with a book by actor Kate Wetherhead that neither updates Prada\u2019s story to 2025 nor registers as a period piece of the early 2000s. (The costumes don\u2019t help that problem \u2013 most of them look like they\u2019ve been pulled off the rack from the Primark across the street from the theatre, yet the haircuts and clunky cellphones in the show remain staunchly situated in 2006.)<\/p>\n

John\u2019s songs, too, are instantly forgettable, save for Seen, an anthem for queer youth sung by Runway exec Nigel (Matt Henry) late in the second act.<\/p>\n

Williams is fine as Priestly \u2013 reprising a Streep role is a tough ask, but Williams mostly makes Miranda her own \u2013 and Georgie Buckland shows off serious pipes as Andy (played by <\/b>Anne Hathaway in the film).<\/p>\n

But alas, those performances aren\u2019t enough to make The Devil Wears Prada sing. The show needs serious work if it\u2019s eyeing a transfer to New York or Toronto. And if it does? Gird your loins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The cast of Dear England (2025) at the National Theatre.Marc Brenner\/Supplied If you\u2019re…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[8047,748,393,4884,257,24789,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-44939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-aud-url","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-noastack","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114389550622285679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}