The Boy In The Dress
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Until March 8, 2hrs 20mins
This adaptation of David Walliams’s bestseller is about a 12-year-old boy, Dennis, who furtively buys Vogue magazine at the corner shop because the cover reminds him of his mum, who has walked out on his dad.
When the distraught lad tries on a spangly orange dress (designed by a friend) he loves it. Joy is a boy in a frock!
But will he survive the teasing? And will Dennis, the school’s top striker, ever play footie again? Not if the transphobic, Right-wing headmaster (God forbid a panto villain should ever vote Labour) has his way.
This adaptation of David Walliams’s bestseller is about a 12-year-old boy, Dennis (Jackson Laing, one of four actors), who furtively buys Vogue magazine at the corner shop
The show’s new score, of 17 songs, is by Robbie Williams, Guy Chambers and Chris Heath. It should be a big event musically but it’s curiously bland. It’s best when the mood struck is of loneliness, as in A House Without A Mum or when Dennis sings If I Don’t Cry, in the hope of a hug from his older brother, who explains that mothers do hugs, brothers do wedgies.
The young cast, though, is cracking. When I saw it, Toby Mocrei was totally charming as the demure Dennis. Rufus Hound plays his angry, wounded father, and Forbes Masson is the Beano-ish, constantly livid head – singing I Hate Kids – with a guilty secret.
This tendentious yarn is aimed to release the inner Grayson Perry in every male youngster. But if the show never really soars, kids will love Dennis’s loyal friend Lisa (Tabitha Knowles, one of three actors in the role), the exciting football final and a flatulent puppet dog.
But I doubt this will ever rival the RSC’s magical musical hit, Matilda.
The Boy Friend
Menier Chocolate Factory, London Until March 7, 2hrs 25mins
Rating: 
In an age of deafening musicals with ticket prices you need to remortgage for, this 1953 all-dancing English classic is the small-scale antidote. Sandy Wilson alone wrote the libretto, music and dazzling lyrics of this love letter to the Twenties that is set on the French Riviera.
The score features the maddeningly catchy I Could Be Happy With You, and this loyal version, staged by Matthew White, captures the back-kicking, palm-circling energy of the piece – elegantly costumed by designer Paul Farnsworth – even if the characterisations are occasionally a bit thin.
The two leads are as sweet as pie. Amara Okereke (in the part that made newcomer Julie Andrews a Broadway star and was played by Twiggy in the film version) is Polly Browne, the poor little rich girl at a finishing school.
Bill Deamer’s smile-inducing choreography fully occupies this well-drilled cast of manly young chaps and gals who shriek like seagulls
It is love at first sight when she meets humble messenger boy Tony (Dylan Mason) who – quelle surprise! – is actually the son of an English peer.
Madame Dubonnet – played by Janie Dee wiz an outrajoose Fronch accent – is meanwhile fanning an old flame, Polly’s widowed father (the excellent if rather underused Robert Portal).
As the song puts it, it’s never too late to fall in love. Even the two old married English aristos (Adrian Edmondson as a lascivious lord, with Issy van Randwyck his snooty scold) are canoodling by the end.
The show’s spell is threatened by having two intervals. But Bill Deamer’s smile-inducing choreography fully occupies this well-drilled cast of manly young chaps and gals who shriek like seagulls.
A madly melodic, terribly English show that now looks utterly dated – but in the most refreshing way.
The Wolf Of Wall Street
5-15 Sun Street, London Until January 19, 2hrs 40mins
Rating: 
A blizzard of $100 bills, cocaine-fuelled obscenities being yelled, a drunken audience shouting back… A disused office block in the Square Mile is home to this ‘immersive’ version of Jordan Belfort’s orgiastic memoir of sex, drugs and cash, made famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio film.
Ticket-holders are shepherded in groups from boardroom to bedroom to trading floor. The sets are ingenious but all scenes merge into a soulless evening of bad-boy behaviour or, more often, just dullness.
Oliver Tilney and Rhiannon Harper-Rafferty (above) – both better than the material – play the savagely warring Belfort couple
Oliver Tilney and Rhiannon Harper-Rafferty – both better than the material – play the savagely warring Belfort couple.
Relentlessly tawdry and well worth avoiding.