And now for something completely different. We stumbled upon Joey Herzfeld and some of Hooverville at the Carling Academy back in January. Their extraordinarily different sound, great musicianship and stage presence alienated half the crowd and transfixed the rest. Were they mental or brave musical pioneers? We couldn't resist snagging them for an interview purely on the basis of a song called "Cavity Search" and a frenetic gypsy dancing interlude. It went like this.........

The English National Opera are closing their season with what's advertised as a 'lavish new production of the legendary Broadway musical', Kismet. This strange, hybrid stage musical (heavy Russian score mixes with a book filled with light Edwardian exotic melodrama, harems, beggars and murderers from 1071 AD mixing with 1950s lyrics) hasn't been performed on the West End stage for nearly 30 years. With its setting in Baghdad, and an entire song dedicated to......

With the unnering foresight and keenness of judgment that has made it the magazine of choice for London's city gents, the Economist has announced that "The London theatre increasingly turns to movie remakes". This news will of course come as a complete shock to anyone who hasn't lived in London for...ooooh, the past couple of weeks. "Visitors strolling through the West End could be forgiven if they felt they were transported to a video......

Hangdog, anti-war, and always impeccably turned out, French President Jacques Chirac flies into Britain tomorrow to keep an appointment with Tony and also to say hello to his friend Liz. In anticipation of Chirac's visit, the ambassadors over at Windsor Castle have done a bit of rebranding and temporarily renamed the Waterloo Chamber 'The Music Room' (which is funny, because we had a classroom at our school called exactly the same thing). So why......