Latest news with #DruryLane
The Guardian
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Town, London WC2: ‘This place is a feeder' – restaurant review
Off to Town this week, on Drury Lane. Yes, a restaurant called Town, one word, so a bit of a challenge to find online. Then again, perhaps by the time you're as experienced and beloved a restaurateur as Stevie Parle, formerly of Dock Kitchen, Craft, Sardine, Palatino and Joy, your regular clientele will make the effort to find you. Parle's shtick, roughly speaking, is thoughtful, high-end Mediterranean cooking and warm, professional hospitality, so the longer I thought about him opening a new place in London's theatre heartland and calling it just Town, the more it made sense. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Yes, Town may be up at the less pretty end of this famous road, next door to a Travelodge and in the shadow of the lesser-known Gillian Lynne theatre, but whenever I hear the words 'Drury Lane', I'm whisked back to the impossible glamour of the start of the Royal Variety Performance on the BBC and people in tiaras exiting Rolls-Royces. Drury Lane, the commentator used to say, was the glitzy epicentre of London town, and Parle's new restaurant certainly captures some of the essence of that yesteryear ritz. It's a big, beautiful, ballsy, expensive-looking beast; a sleek, capacious, ever-so-slightly Austin Powers-esque, shiny-floored, caramel-coloured pleasure palace. It has a vivid, neon-green brightly lit open kitchen and thick 3D burgundy wall tiles that speak of expensive ceramic deliveries from the genre of Italian supplier that makes Kevin McCloud clutch his face and sigh, 'Well, this spells problems for the budget.' Thankfully, the budget for Town's decor – and how many portions of deep-fried sage leaves they need to sell to recoup it – is not my problem. All I know is that I was having a jolly old time from the second I sat down to sip on a naked flame non-alcoholic cocktail while feeling like Princess Michael of Kent circa 1988 hiding from a Royal Command Performance. And that was before I'd even glanced at the menu to choose between Town's cod and clam curry with mussels, rhubarb and ghee flatbread and the Welsh lobster with lardo and house XO sauce, or indeed found room for the morello cherry clafoutis with thick cream. Town's menu, I should warn you, is not for anyone with a meek appetite, or those hoping for a Slimming World Body Magic award by the summer. Example: the fresh, warm potato sourdough from the 'snacks' section of the menu comes with a bowl of bone marrow dipping gravy. Order Parle's signature fried sage leaves, and they'll arrive drizzled with heather honey. If you attempt to hide away with the 100-Acre radishes, they come in a thick puddle of miso hummus. This restaurant is a feeder. Other snacks are the likes of gildas, caviar with homemade beef fat crisps and Coombeshead's cured mangalitsa shoulder. Initially, I suspected that Town might be a pre-theatre restaurant designed to scoop up tourists in search of a deal, but it turns out that the food is far too good to rush through in an hour. And anyway, does anyone really want to sit through two and a half hours of Much Ado About Nothing after devouring a whopping great portion of sublime Kashmiri saffron risotto with yet more bone marrow, or a huge pork chop with seasonal onions, a rich, burnt apple sauce and hot mustard? Both of those dishes were finely executed, eminently devourable and teetering on the edge of a bit bloody much. We shared a side of beef fat pink fir potatoes that held good on their promise, because each one came enrobed in thick, bottom-of-the-tin, Sunday lunch-style beef fat. Right now, Town is manageably quiet, but it won't be for long, and nor should it be. Service is bright, crisp, clever and unobtrusive, and the prices are, dare I say, reasonable by London standards these days. There are a hundred places where the hopeful theatreland diner can be ripped off in this postcode, but Town to me is already a trusted friend. The dessert menu offers no let-up on the excess, extra thought and ecstasy, either. We shared a single scoop of pale green Uji matcha ice-cream festooned in crunchy brittle and perched in a pool of sweet miso caramel. Then, the star of the show, a hot-from-the-oven, damp, sticky cherry clafoutis served with much, much too much clotted cream. Parle has taken to theatreland with another sterling performance: a great first act, a strong middle section and a thoroughly satisfying denouement. Unmissable. Five stars. Town 26-29 Drury Lane, London WC2, 020-3500 7515. Open lunch Mon-Sun, noon-3pm; dinner Mon-Sat, 5-10pm. From about £60 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service
Hamilton Spectator
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Michael MacLennan's Finales Celebrates the Art of the Last Number at Burlington's Drury Lane Theatre
Actor and director Michael MacLennan's working relationship with the Drury Lane Theatre has been long and productive. MacLennan, a versatile visionary and devotee of Canadian community theatre, has been involved in thirteen successful musicals at the Drury Lane theatre over the course of ten to twelve years. His first-ever collaboration with Drury Lane was The Secret Garden, based on the beloved novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in 2008. In 2025, he was the director and choreographer of the wildly entertaining musical comedy A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which premiered at the local theatre on May 9, 2025. MacLennan is eager to share his aspirations for his upcoming show, for which he is the director and choreographer yet again, as well as the mastermind. This is the aptly-named and anticipated Finales, set to be performed at the Drury Lane Theatre in the month of June. MacLennan's longtime love for Broadway theatre has inspired him to assemble a variety pack of what he considers to be the best final numbers in the musical show business. Theatregoers can look forward to favourite tunes such as 'Everything's Coming Up Roses' from Gypsy, 'I've Never Been in Love Before' from Guys and Dolls, and 'Don't Rain on My Parade' from Funny Girl. Do you also like Chicago, Waitress, La Cage Aux Folles, and The Witches of Eastwick? They'll be included too. The show will pay ample tribute to twenty-six different Broadway hit classics. MacLennan has agreed to speak out on what he thinks is necessary for a musical show to end well, and why he is ending Drury Lane Theatre's 2025 summer season in this way. Answers have been lightly edited for flow. In your opinion, what makes a solid musical finale? It's something that will entice the audience to come back after intermission at the end of Act One. At the end of Act Two, it's the way of wrapping up the entire story. I've always found finales intriguing because sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, depending on the show. So I've always been sort of fascinated by them. That's what gave me the idea of putting a show together that was strictly the finales of shows. Generally speaking, the finale is one of the more memorable numbers in the show. We have a lot of solos in our own shows. I think a lot of people don't realize that many of the finales in a lot of shows are solos. I think everyone thinks they're flashy, splashy dance numbers, but they're not always so. It was a lot of fun putting this production together and doing the research. I think I listened to about two hundred different finales in order to put this show together. You have to sort of mix it up between ballads, up-tempo, and solos. Duets and trios, too, things like that, to make it interesting. If it were all just one big splashy dance number after another, I think it would get a little bit boring for an audience. So I'm going for a more cohesive, complete evening. What is your overall vision for your finale show? To get it produced! That's always a difficult thing when you're putting together a show, you don't know whether or not there's going to be interest. I've been very lucky that two companies have been interested, so we're going to two different theatres. The first is Drury Lane here in Burlington, and the second is the Maja Prentice Theatre in Mississauga. It was originally going to be only three performances in Mississauga, but then Rick Mackenzie from Drury Lane approached me. That was when a door opened up to go to another location. Now people will see it, and some other theatre company might say, 'Hey, I think that would work in our space, I would be more than happy to bring it here as well!' You just never know. You never know if it is going to have legs and continue on. It was the initial impetus for me to do a few shows, but if it goes to more than two locations, I would be very open to going to other theatres. It's a perfect-sized show. It's ten people and it can fit onto a lot of different stages. Do you prefer a traditional theatre or a cabaret for staging a show? I don't have a preference. But one thing I like about Drury Lane is that it is a smaller space, and it forces you to be creative with your choreography. You also have to be creative with your sets. There is also the people. The people at Drury Lane are really kind,are and the volunteers are so dedicated to that company. The people there really make it a home. It's also a little easier to do because it is a smaller, more quaint space. But the people are dedicated to that. It's been around for at least forty-five years. It's a well-loved theatre in the Burlington area. What future projects do you have in mind after Finales closes at Drury Lane Theatre? I'm actually not returning to Drury Lane for their 2025/2026 season. I'm going to be doing the musical The Prom at two locations. I'm going to be in Georgetown with Georgetown Globe Productions this fall. I'm also going to be doing City Centre Musical Productions' production of The Prom. It's going to be a full year of The Prom. ——————————————————————————————— But, for now, it's time to end with a bang. Finales is set to premiere at Drury Lane Theatre on June 13, 2025, at 8:00 p.m. On June 14, 2025, there will be a matinee show at 2:00 p.m. and an evening show at 8:00 p.m. Tickets can be purchased here. If you are based closer to Mississauga, you can buy tickets for the Maja Prentice Theatre's production here. The show will play at Maja on June 20 and 21, 2025.
Times
15-05-2025
- Health
- Times
Half puds? Tiny plates? How Ozempic has changed restaurant menus
The other week, I suffered a minor bout of food poisoning — nothing too serious, but certainly enough to dent my usual enthusiasm for eating. It was unfortunate timing because, that evening, I was due to sit down to a ten-course tasting menu cooked by a celebrated chef and it was not something I felt I could duck out of. So I put on a brave face, took a tiny forkful of each dish and sent the rest back to the kitchen largely uneaten. This is going to be awkward, I thought, expecting the chef, or waiter at least, to ask if everything had been all right. But no. Silence. They took away the plates without a murmur, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to spend £250 on dinner and barely touch a morsel. 'It's obvious, isn't it?' my wife said as we left. 'They just assumed you are on Ozempic.' Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro — however we know the new class of GLP-1 appetite-suppressing drugs, they are already changing our relationship with food, and with ministers exploring how they can be accessed more widely, their influence is only going to grow. First to feel the pinch? Restaurants, which have already noticed the subtle effects on their bottom line. Chefs are having to reconsider their menus and diners are trying to establish the new codes of etiquette that their reduced appetites require. • Ozempic seems like a miracle drug. But what's it doing to our brains? The restaurateur Jonathan Downey, who has just opened Town restaurant on Drury Lane in central London with the chef Stevie Parle, says that they 'absolutely design dishes specifically for the Mounjaro generation'. The common complaint among restaurateurs is that no one orders pudding any more, so they have their 'skinny slice puddings' such as half-sized portions of chocolate tart, single scoop servings of sorbet and individual spiced doughnuts. More tellingly, they have made main courses available in smaller portions. 'When you are taking Mounjaro it's important to maintain muscle mass, so the focus is on getting enough protein even when your appetite is reduced,' Downey says. 'It used just to be gym bunnies who were obsessed with that, but now it's middle-aged mums and dad-bod men too.' At Town they serve a butterflied sea bass just with lemon, oil and salt, available as a whole or half fish, and 200g steaks as opposed to a more regular-sized 350g one. Cynics might say it's a way of reducing portion size to keep prices down, but Downey says not. 'It sits with the times. We thought we were just giving people more options, but it turns out to be part of the zeitgeist. You have to give people what they want.' What the Ozempic diner really, really wants, though, is the chance to eat less without signposting it to one and all. Hence the return of the small sharing plate. These were popular before, of course, but after the pandemic they were disappearing in favour of longer, no-choice set menus as restaurateurs tried to push up the average spend. Now it's a brave restaurant that forces so much food on a customer. Even the smaller steaks and pork chops at Town arrive at the table already sliced to make sharing easier, and a dish of five asparagus spears draped with slices of lardo was quickly reconfigured, Downey says, to have each spear individually wrapped 'so people could divide it up more easily'. • Ozempic jabs could soon be eclipsed by first weight-loss pill The Times critic Giles Coren has quickly seen the effects. 'It used just to be rich women who never ate anything in restaurants, but now it's all the men too,' he says. 'I met a friend the other day and he was looking a bit gaunt, and I asked if he was on Ozempic and he just laughed and said, 'Of course I bloody am.' Absolutely everyone I know is. 'I love a sharing plate, because it means you can spread yourself across more of the menu,' he adds, 'but the whole point is that you get lots of them. And as soon as you start ordering, your Ozempic mates go, 'Stop, stop, I can't possibly eat all that.' And I'm thinking, but I've only ordered some ham and half a dozen clams. That's going to make for a hell of a boring review.' At least he knows where he stands when his companion is upfront about it. Much more irritating are those people who try to hide their Ozempic habit in plain sight. 'I've got friends who, for whatever reason, don't want to admit they are taking the jab,' says another regular restaurant-goer. 'So they order loads of sharing plates to make a big show of how hungry they are and then push a salad around their plate and hope that someone else will do the heavy lifting. The trouble is, half the table are probably secretly in the same position and you just end up ordering way too much food, and it all goes to waste.' Gareth Birchley, buying director at Burns & German Vintners, who took Ozempic for six months last year, takes the view that honesty is the best way. 'People can be very cagey about it, but I think it's best to be open with your friends and the restaurant,' he says. He spends much of his time eating out with clients and hates the idea of spoiling his relationship with some of the country's best chefs. He recalls a low point in the private dining room of the three-Michelin-star restaurant Hélène Darroze at the Connaught. 'It was kind of embarrassing only being able to eat one mouthful of each course, but at least because I had been honest about the reason it made it less awkward.' In the end he came off the drug when his weight plateaued. 'I wasn't losing more weight, I wasn't having much fun and I was shelling out £400 a month. It wasn't a hard decision to make.' Luckily for his line of work, he didn't feel sick drinking alcohol, which is a side-effect for many, but it did curb his intake. 'The obvious factor is that if you are not consuming so much food, you can't drink as much.' This is another headache that badly hits restaurants' margins. • How to control your appetite without Ozempic 'Last year the typical restaurant revenue split between food and drink was 55:45, but now it's more like 60:40,' Downey says. 'We know people aren't drinking so much.' He has countered this by offering more wines by the glass and carafe and introducing a range of smaller-serve cocktails, such as half-measure martinis. He has also introduced a new category called 'chargers', served in small glasses as aperitifs. The restaurateur Jeremy King has introduced something similar at the Park, in Queensway, with his small-serve 'sharpeners'. For the time being, GLP-1s are a rich person's drug, so it is only the more upmarket restaurants that are noticing the changes. However, as the drug becomes more widely used, as it inevitably will, it's going to be the mid-market chains and fast food shops that will be next in the firing line. Anyone fancy going halves on a Chicken McNugget?
Chicago Tribune
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Of Notoriety: Drury Lane regional stage debut ‘The Da Vinci Code' comes with little guilt
I remember a couple years ago feeling rather guilty sitting in a theater seat at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago in March of 2023 and watching 'The Book of Mormon' on the Wednesday of Holy Week, just days before Easter. Last week, I spent my Holy Thursday in a theater seat at Drury Lane Theatre Oak Brook ready for the regional stage premiere of 'The Da Vinci Code,' based on the popular conspiracy and mystery novel by Dan Brown. Yet again, I was prepared for my own Catholic guilt given the layers and lore associated with the story as it relates to the Roman Catholic faith. What I saw during the almost three hours was a work dazzling yet dark, defiant while delivered with imagination, clever device and a heavy dose of entertaining symbolism laced with some history. I never once felt an urge for a return to my church confessional for another round of penance before Easter. Drury Lane Theatre's 'The Da Vinci Code,' adapted by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel, and directed by Elizabeth Margolius, is a thrill-ride rollercoaster with religious waves emphasizing every scene. While it was a blockbuster hit with book sales for author Brown when it published in 2003, it was never one of the selections highlighted by Oprah Winfrey's book club. The 2006 movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks was also a box office success. I have neither read the novel nor seen the film. My introduction to quirky Professor Robert Langdon, as played by Chicago theatre favorite Jeff Parker and his cryptologist sidekick Sophie Neveu, played so equally wonderful by Vaneh Assadourian, came after the curtain rose at Drury Lane's stage premiere. The deservedly long run for this production continues through June 1 at Drury Lane Theatre. 'It's a provocative play,' as it is described by Drury Lane's Managing Director Wendy Stark Prey, who thought it was the perfect work to kick-off Drury Lane's 2025-2026 season. Drury Lane uses a mostly stark stage to immerse the audience into a world of shadows in the Vatican catacombs, marble and gold adorned altars and jet-setting adventures across the London and Paris landscapes. Video effects and minimal costuming and few props are needed to transport the audience along on this dark adventure following a path of grisly murders and the hope of historical biblical treasures. The rest of the cast of 'The Da Vinci Code' includes Bradley Armacost as Sir Leigh Teabing, an incredible actor who was last seen a year ago on the Theatre at the Center stage in Munster portraying C.S. Lewis in Provision Theatre's one-man show. He is joined by Jennifer Cudahy slipping in and out of the identities of a museum docent to a church volunteer, along with John Drea sharing dual roles of Rémy and Philip with Ray Frewen as Jaques Saunière, Anthony Irons as Bezu Fache, Shane Kenyon as Silas, Janice O'Neill as nun Sister Sandrine, and then later as the identity of Marie and Leslie Ann Sheppard as Collet. Tickets range from $85-$165 at 630-530-8300 and The rest of the season follows with 'Always…Patsy Cline' (June 11 – Aug. 3); 'Dial M for Murder' (Sept. 3 -Oct. 26); 'Sister Act' (Nov. 12-Jan. 11, 2026) and 'On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan' (Jan. 28 – March 22, 2026). Founded by Anthony DeSantis more than 70 years ago, until his passing at age 93 in 2006, Drury Lane Theatre remains a family-run organization under the leadership of President Kyle DeSantis, grandson of the late founder. To date, the theatre has staged more than 2,000 productions and has been nominated for more than 360 Joseph Jefferson Awards.
Chicago Tribune
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: 'The Da Vinci Code' at Drury Lane puts the complicated screenplay of the story on stage
On Good Friday at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace, Easter bunnies cheered up the lobby as the venue prepared for its famed holiday weekend brunch. Meanwhile, the theater was staging a show that (spoilers ahead) posited that Jesus of Nazareth may have borne a child with Mary Magdalene. Quite the disconnect. A trip from your seat to the concession stand was to pass through two entirely different worlds. In all seriousness, it's unlikely that 'The Da Vinci Code' will undermine anyone's faith. You'll likely recall the Dan Brown novel, imagining a vast conspiracy theory involving Leonardo Da Vinci, the Priory of Sion cabal and the Catholic organization known as Opus Dei, all in service of covering up the existence of an ongoing bloodline emanating from Jesus. Brown's mystery, which has sold some 80 million copies over the last 22 years, became a hit 2006 film with Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou and sparked much interest in its, ahem, alternative religious history. It begins with a murder in the Louvre Museum where Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious symbolism and iconography (played at Drury Lane by Jeff Parker) has run into a young cryptologist named Sophie Neveu (Vaneh Assadourian). Together, the pursued pair set out on a fantastical quest, which leads them to an eccentric Englishman named Sir Leigh Teabing, played by Bradley Armacost. Will he lead our heroes to the Holy Grail? How much will we care? Drury Lane's production is directed by Elizabeth Margolius, a genuinely talented visual stylist who can achieve wonders when paired with the right material. And, indeed, there are a lot of cool digital design elements here from set designer Scott Penner and projections maestro Joshua Schmidt. But this script is not a great match for Margolius' skills. It contains so much cascading plot that you can barely keep track of things, even without all of the additional visual accoutrements that mostly confuse, especially in the early stages, when surely unnecessary heavy French accents get in the way of comprehensibility. Things do get better as the show goes on and I admire the aims here, but this chilly show just doesn't gel. I suspect that Margolius wanted to genuinely theatricalize a script that basically just sticks the screenplay of the movie onto a stage and hopes audiences will follow along as the characters flit from place to place. But this uninspired text just cannot support what she is trying to achieve here. It's too pedestrian an adaptation from Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel. Margolius would have better going back to the novel and creating her own, had that been allowed. That said, if you are a fan of the novel or the film and want to be reminded of your experience, you'll likely enjoy at least some of this show, staged with an experienced cast. I'm something of a Da Vinci obsessive myself and I remember reading Brown's novel back in the day and being fascinated anew by this polyglot genius — an artist, futurist, tinkerer and thinker whose depths have yet to be fully plumbed. So there's that. The show does make you want to head to Milan to look again at Da Vinci's mysterious masterpiece. I did ask the Easter Bunny what he thought of these ritualistic nightly goings on, presumably within his earshot, but alas I got no response. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@ Review: 'The Da Vinci Code' (2.5 stars) When: Through June 1 Where: Dury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes Originally Published: April 21, 2025 at 10:45 AM CDT
