Hercules has been reduced from legendary hero to close to zero by a laboured new musical version of his derring-do, based on the 1997 animated film, writes PATRICK MARMION
PATRICK MARMION: Now in the West End after winning five Tony Awards on Broadway, it re-creates one of the most notorious episodes of sex, drugs 'n' rock and roll excess in all of pop history.
The show is surely still best known from the 1971 film starring Chaim Topol as the hard-working, God-fearing milkman Tevye with five feisty daughters to marry off.
PATRICK MARMION: For sheer intensity of generational bonds, they are hard to beat - as we discover all over again in the new stage adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera's epic Marriage Material.
Rachel Joyce's highly emotional 2012 best-seller which has now become a musical about Harold Fry and his unlikely pilgrimage to make up with an old friend dying in a hospice 500 miles away.
The frightened women huddled in a dormitory in the German town of Bunzlau listened to the sounds of battle getting nearer - with rising hope in their hearts...but their relief would soon turn to horr…
The National Theatre has really pushed the boat out for the last show by the late god of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim, but not even they can make this mongrel sing.
The Hollywood star has chosen to make his stage comeback - after 37 years - in Samuel Beckett's 50-minute monologue about a rueful old git, surveying the paltry wreckage of his life.