Caroline McGinn

“It’s fun at first, but you can’t sustain nearly three hours of theatre on patter, strolling songs and knob gags.”

“This cocktail of evasions, delusions and selfishness slips down with delicious ease.”

“Every time they open their mouths to sing, any quibbles with the production are forgotten and the audience is rapt: finger-tapping, off-beat clapping, irrepressibly grinning.”

“The real mystery of the world's longest-running theatre show is not whodunit but, in its currently mediocre state, whydoit at all?”

“It’s a stunning achievement, which takes the popular but very different elements of retro pop music, agitprop and soap opera, melts them in the crucible of 50 years of social trauma and forges something potent, gorgeous and unlike any big-ticket musical I’ve seen before.”

“The RSC's 'Matilda' is the best British musical in years.”