One of the seven sculpted noses

Scattered around Soho are seven sculpted noses on buildings. A peculiar myth says that if you are lucky enough to find all seven you will be wealthy for evermore.

It is rumoured that the seven noses are the casts of sculptor Rick Buckley’s own nose. He first left casts of his nose in 1996, although he didn’t stop there and left his final cast in 2005.

Many locals and tourists have been walking around Soho trying to find all the noses to see if this myth is true, however, not all seven have been found to date.

Noses have been found on Meard Street, D’arblay Street, Bateman Street and Great Windmill Street. A fifth nose has also been seen on Admiralty Arch, although this is apparently not an original and is not a cast of Rick Buckley’s nose.

Other body parts have been found too, a cast of an ear has been found on Floral Street. So, perhaps this urban myth isn’t true. However, with finding all seven noses resulting in never-ending riches it makes a good tale.

Be it film or novel, the theatre-going public just can’t get enough of seeing familiar stories on stage with a few showtunes thrown in for good measure.

An artist's impression of what the Animal Farm The Musical workshops might look like.

Last time, I looked at a few movies that, in my/Twitter’s humble opinion, would make good West End musicals. This week I was planning on doing something similar with books, until I read the puzzling news that Elton John and Lee Hall are working on a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Isn’t that curious? The best bits of the creative team behind Billy Elliot teaming up again to bring Orwell’s nightmarish Stalinist dystopia to the West End stage. Seems a bit of an odd choice.

Just in case you missed out on Animal Farm at school/college/university here’s the gist: Grumpy old pig calls all the animals of Manor Farm to a meeting, moans about humans and teaches the animals a rousing revolutionary song, he dies. Two young pigs assume command, turn the grumpy old (and now dead) pig’s rantings into a philosophy, they then spark a revolt and the animals expel the drunken farmer from Manor Farm, renaming it Animal Farm.

The pigs teach the other animals to read and write, there’s plenty of food and everyone has a jolly old time. Then the pigs get a bit carried away, create positions of power for themselves, and train up some puppies as a sort of super-cute Cheka (no, really). Eventually the farmer decides he wants his farm back, which seems fair as the pigs haven’t really factored property law into their revolution, and a battle at the cowshed ensues. The farmer is defeated (despite his opposable thumbs and likely access to firearms).

The new society doesn’t really work out, the ‘Seven Commandments of Animalism’ are fiddled with to suit the pigs’ needs and the only well-intentioned pig on the farm is expelled. In the end the other pigs start wearing clothes and hanging out with farmers. At this point pretty much all readers decide that a) pigs are not to be trusted and b) Stalinism/communism isn’t a great idea and capitalism is pretty nice, actually.

As a story, it’s pretty interesting. But can it really translate to the West End stage? The question that particularly bothers me is that of costuming. It seems to me that we only have four options.

• 1) The Lion King style costumes.
• 2) Sophisticated animatronics or puppets a la War Horse.
• 3) Minimalist costumes, just masks or clothing that suggest which animal an actor is supposed to represent.
• 4) Body paints and stick-on tails.

Obviously number four is straight out of the window; having actors painted up like pigs with curly tails stuck on seems a little bit indecent. And silly. Number three seems, to me, to detract from the point of Animal Farm. The story just becomes another dystopian warning without Boxer being an actual horse, or at least a man in a decent horse costume. We know the whole story is allegorical, but it’s nice to have a bit of spectacle on stage.

This leaves us with big costumes or puppets, both are pretty sensible ideas and with Avenue Q closing there’s certainly a gap in the market for a good grown up puppet show. However, as much as I’d like to see a giant puppet pig called Napoleon on the West End stage, I suspect that it’s unlikely. As are Lion King style costumes.

As much as it pains me, I suspect that the minimalist option will be taken, lest a musical featuring singing pigs be considered silly.

No doubt Sir Elton et al know exactly what they’re doing, but right now I really can’t see how this will work. It’ll get audiences, pretty much everyone read Animal Farm at some point during their education and school groups will no doubt descend on this production with notepads a-rustling, but could it ever be a true West End success story?

Will the unsettling surrealism of the novel ever translate to the stage? It’ll be a struggle for a man in a pig costume to be halfway as scary as Napoleon is, or for the gang of earnest young actors who’ll inevitably be cast as the puppy Cheka to actually be menacing in their furry little outfits.

I can’t help but think that this show will be entertaining but will lose all the impact of the novel. However, it’s Sir Elton and he knows music far FAR better than I, so we’ll have to wait and see.

The stars of the 1970 movie Love Story, Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw

First seen at Chichester Festival Theatre in June this year, the new musical is directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, with music by Howard Goodall, book by Stephen Clark, and lyrics by Stephen Clark and Howard Goodall. Casting for the West End production has not yet been announced.

Love Story was originally published on Valentine’s Day 1970 after portions of the story appeared in The Ladies’ Home Journal. It went on to be the top-selling work of fiction in the United States that year and the film was released on December 16, only 11 months after the novel.

The film was popular with audiences and critics; nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1970, winning one for Best Music, and also winning five Golden Globes.

With such a wealth of success behind it, can Love Story live up to its own reputation? We’re about to find out.

This time around, the focus is on Aspects of Love, the 1989 Trevor Nunn/ Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about various love affairs across the generations. The show was based on a 1955 novel by David Garnett, and gave the world the song Love Changes Everything, and made a star of Michael Ball – which we can all be grateful for.

Aspects of Love is on at the Menier Chocolate Factory

This is Aspects of Love’s first major London revival, and Trevor Nunn who directed the original production has taken the reins at the Chocolate Factory, who are building a reputation for their reinventions of well-known shows. Recent Menier productions of La Cage aux Folles and A Little Night Music have gone on to wow Broadway and the West End, and there is no reason why Aspects of Love won’t go on to do the same.

This more intimate Aspects still has the same soaring, anthemic ballads and tumultuous romantic entanglements, but redesigned as a chamber piece it is more affecting than its somewhat overblown big brother.

What is most surprising, perhaps, is that this new streamlined version has come from its original creators and not a new creative force. It’s commendable that director Trevor Nunn chose to have another crack at it, alongside composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has pared-down his original arrangement significantly. The 1989 production had almost 40 scene changes and a 17-strong orchestra, but now makes use of a permanent set and seven musicians – and amazingly – it works. While Webber has successfully reworked his score without losing any of his trademark aplomb, Nunn has surprised further by delivering a staging that has a vitality and friskiness more akin to Spring Awakening than a 20-year-old ALW musical.

The stand-out tune, Love Changes Everything, is still as powerful as ever, but it is now rivalled by other numbers that it previously outshone; particularly Hand Me The Wine And The Dice and There Is More To Love.

Aspects of Love 2010 is a well-cast, well-staged show and this intimate, intense and unashamedly romantic musical deserves to be another huge hit for the Menier.

Review by: Colin Ferguson

That is until the day Bobbie, Peter and Phyllis caught the train and brought colour, life and magic back to the unloved former Eurostar Terminal

After two summer seasons at the National Railway Museum, Mike Kenny’s phenomenal production of E. Nesbit’s novel The Railway Children, complete with a real stream train, will be occupying a section of Platforms 1 and 2 of the disused Eurostar station until early 2011.

A scene from The Railway Children at Waterloo Station

After heading down through the old entrance hall, through the terminal, up the escalators and onto the platforms, the atmosphere has been perfectly set for what you are about to experience. The Railway Children makes full use of its setting, even down to the distance rumbles and clunks of the trains pulling into the main Waterloo station.

The 1000 seat auditorium at Waterloo, created especially for this production, splits the audience between two platforms and the action takes place in the round. Naturally, this means that occasionally your view is blocked, but the fast-pace means those moments quickly pass. The entire theatre is dressed as part of the set, engulfing you in the children’s world. The children narrate their way through the story (which takes a little getting used to) and move you from London up to Yorkshire with only one moment where you will be asked to “really use your imagination.”

For those of you out there who relish the tricks of the theatre, this is a real treat. The stage is constantly moving, with sections of the stage being wheeled up and down, joining the platforms at different places and ensuring there is no bad seat in the theatre. During a scene where the children enter a tunnel, the action moves down onto the tracks and is lit by candlelight. The atmosphere is all-enveloping and uneasy a perfect example of the wonder of this show. The production quality is outstanding, completely seamless, and one imagines a health and safety nightmare.

There is no denying that the most exciting thing about The Railway Children is when The Green Dragon locomotive pulls in between the two platforms – it really is an overwhelming experience to have a steam train pull into a theatre and stop right in front of you.

Whether you go for your love of the classic story, the unique theatre experience or simply the steam train, just make sure that you don’t miss out.

Seeing The Railway Children at Waterloo Station is the best thing you’ll do all year.