John Shand Posts

November 2, 2026 / Concert Reviews

City Recital Hall, October 28 8.5/10 Jazz is partly the art of surprise. If you can surprise your bandmates, with whom you’ve improvised on the repertoire’s material myriad times, there’s a fair chance you’ll surprise the audience. But if you pile surprise upon surprise, they swiftly cease to work. Jazz…

October 23, 2026 / Theatre Reviews

Hayes Theatre, October 15 6/10 It’s official: you can now make a musical from anything, even a subject more suited to a trashy teen flick. And if you’re as talented a first-time director as Chiara Assetta, you can daub enough lipstick and mascara on it to disguise its many defects.…

October 19, 2026 / Theatre Reviews

Reginald Theatre, October 14 9/10 Theatre can be trick, truth, ritual or mirror. Cruise is all of those and more. Penned by British playwright Jack Holden in 2021, it’s a love letter to London’s energised gay scene of the 1980s, to those who died of AIDS and to the “veterans”…