Since retiring as a musical theatre performer, Stuart has maintained a busy professional career in commercial sectors ranging from media and sport, to risk management. As a member of the Critics’ Circle, he regularly attends and reviews press nights for drama productions, musicals, opera and dance.
By Stuart King Wednesday, July 2 2025, 14:05
Back in my youth, 1995 to be exact, I spent a year performing in a production of EVITA (8 shows a week, 300 performances in all). Hal Prince’s original staging, direction and choreography, resulted in a polished production with a cast crammed full of theatrical old-hands, in which I felt every inch the inexperienced newbie. Here we are, 30 years on and everyone is once again talking about Eva Perón.
Rachel Zegler (Eva Perón) & cast of Evita. Credit - Marc Brenner.
By Stuart King Monday, June 30 2025, 10:35
Eugene O’Neill’s final major work, set during the 1920s on a run-down Connecticut farm, brings some star power to Islington’s Almeida with Ruth Wilson paired opposite double Oscar nominee Michael Shannon.
David Threlfall and Ruth Wilson in A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Almeida Theatre. Credit Marc Brenner.
By Stuart King Thursday, June 26 2025, 22:53
With such strong source material and an accomplished and technically adept cast, the temptation would have been to simply create a safe, uber-polished piece of dance theatre. Instead the creators of QUADROPHENIA have managed to skirt any potential mundanity by delivering a remarkably fresh and vibrant piece of storytelling - almost a British West Side Story (sans the schmalz). The result, offers Matthew Bourne some competition for supremacy in the genre, with many cast members having previously performed with his New Adventures company.
The cast of Quadrophenia at Sadler's Wells. Photo Johan Persson.
By Stuart King Tuesday, June 24 2025, 12:56
SHOWMANISM — whilst the premise for this one man show is an undoubtedly odd contrivance, it is the very theatricality of the end result, which marks it as an unmistakably inventive and original work.
Dickie Beau in SHOWMANISM. Credit Amanda Searle
By Stuart King Saturday, June 21 2025, 12:32
The overwhelming majority of UK citizens will not have heard of Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti better known as multi-lingual singer Dalida who was born in 1933 to Italian parents based at Cairo, Egypt, where her violinist father died of a brain abscess when she was 12. As the show recounts, it was the first of many tragedies in the short life of the chanteuse, which eventually led to her committing suicide in 1987.
A Tribute to Dalida, Peacock Theatre
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