Friday, March 29

Yorkshire & Humber

Jesus Christ Superstar – Bradford Alhambra
Yorkshire & Humber

Jesus Christ Superstar – Bradford Alhambra

When Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a rock opera with a provocative title about the last days of Christ one potential investor described it as ‘the worst idea in history’ so with no-one willing to put it on a stage they stuck it out as a platinum selling double album….and the rest is history. Britain’s greatest musical theatre duo loosely based Jesus Christ Superstar on the Gospels and for a show no one wanted it ended up setting a record for the longest run in London. I have a simple proposition for what makes a great musical, and that they always need a minimum of two showstoppers – preferably one at the end of each half – but this is packed full of the duo’s best tunes. Everything’s Going to Be Alright, I Don’t Know How To Love Him, Herod’s Song and Gethsemane are all killer...
Sister Act – Bradford Alhambra
Yorkshire & Humber

Sister Act – Bradford Alhambra

Big Hair. Big tunes. Big Heart. That’s Sister Act in a nutshell as the stage show based on the smash hit Whoppi Goldberg movie where a nightclub singer goes on the run and hides in a nunnery gets back on the road. The sister in question is wannabe star Deloris Van Cartier who witnesses her gangster lover commit a murder in 1970s Philadelphia and goes on the lam. She finds sanctuary in a local convent attached to a dilapidated church under the watchful eye of a Mother Superior who is British for some reason. Culture clash is one of the classic tropes of musical theatre as earthy Deloris finds her own calling training the worst choir on the planet to get hip with the Lord’s word. Shock, horror, Mother Superior and her sisterhood of nuns learn something from the worldliness the flam...
The Full Monty – Bradford Alhambra
Yorkshire & Humber

The Full Monty – Bradford Alhambra

The Full Monty was one of a group of films shining a light on the traumatic impact Thatcherism had on Northern communities, but unlike the risible Billy Elliot it did it by never pulling its punches. Simon Beaufoy has adapted his movie script for a stage version of how six jobless Sheffield blokes fought back to become unlikely strippers and let it all hang out to pay off their debts. The stage version is far funnier than the film, although it still tackles some big themes including class, suicide, ageism, body shaming, gay visibility, and the utter corrosion of the human spirit when you’re cast on the scrapheap. Beaufoy wisely still holds it together round the core theme that hope can spring from despair in often the most unlikely of ways like getting your kit off. For fans of the ...
Dirty Dancing – Hull New Theatre
Yorkshire & Humber

Dirty Dancing – Hull New Theatre

The first couple of minutes of Dirty Dancing, at the Hull New Theatre on Tuesday night, was in the dark - had the spotlights failed? It soon became apparent the darkness was on purpose and it made the sudden burst of colour that followed even more memorable and exciting. And the excitement lasted until the very last - make that lasting - standing ovation for a production that is nothing short of perfect. We in the packed theatre were transported back to 1963 America and Kellerman’s Holiday Resort. Regular visitors to the resort are Dr Jake Houseman (Jack Loy), his wife Marjorie (Taryn Sudding) and daughters, Lisa (Daisy Steere) and Frances “Baby” (Kira Malou). At 16 or 17 years of age, Baby really is the baby of the family - but, boy, she certainly grows up thanks to Keller...
Life of Pi – Bradford Alhambra
Yorkshire & Humber

Life of Pi – Bradford Alhambra

When Yann Martel wrote the mega selling Life of Pi he probably thought it too technically challenging for it ever to become an Olivier winning play, but thanks to the magic of puppetry this epic tale of one man lost on a raft with only a Bengal Tiger for company really works onstage. Life of Pi was such a hit with over ten million readers worldwide that then U.S. President Barack Obama wrote to Martel describing his novel as ‘an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling.’  Obama didn’t specify which God, although most deities get a namecheck here, and you don’t need to believe in a higher power to enjoy Life of Pi. The former President was spot on about the storytelling as aside from the forest of allegories this is a rip-roaring theatrical experience, albeit one wi...
The King and I – Leeds Grand Theatre
Yorkshire & Humber

The King and I – Leeds Grand Theatre

The King and I is without doubt one of the great musicals with a sensational score but has been in recent years a problematic piece as the original play and movie had something of a white saviour narrative to them. This intelligent and sumptuous revival directed by Bartlett Sher is now much more about the repercussions of culture clashes as widowed British teacher Anna and her son travel to Siam to teach the many children of an autocratic king. He is keen to embrace western values to protect his country from the imperialist vultures circling around his small kingdom as civil war rages in America. The King gambles that western values will make him stronger, but he soon discovers through smart and feisty Anna that what he hopes to import into a centuries old Siamese culture brings une...
Greatest Days – Hull New Theatre
Yorkshire & Humber

Greatest Days – Hull New Theatre

The pre-show stage setting greeting theatregoers at the Hull New Theatre on Tuesday evening, must rank as the oddest. It was a line of washing, and I wondered what that could possibly have to do with the production - Greatest Days, the official Take That Musical. But it’s often the little things that make an impact - and this line of washing was actually blowing in the wind. A clever touch of realism. And that simple prop came to highlight the mundanity of one of the surviving characters. I say “surviving” as there is a fatality, but my lips are sealed as to who pops their clogs. It’s 1993, and five 16-year-old schoolgirls are fans of boy band Take That who are enjoying their first UK number 1 hit, Pray. The five - Rachel (Olivia Hallett), Debbie (Mary Moore), Heather (Kitt...
Beautiful Thing – Leeds Playhouse
Yorkshire & Humber

Beautiful Thing – Leeds Playhouse

Let me take you back to a time when the British government introduced legislation banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools trying to silence educators and the only gay role models on the TV were tired old parodies. It must seem scarcely believable to Gen Z, but for those of us who lived through those dark days it’s a delight that Beautiful Thing has been revived on its 30th anniversary as its core message that love is love was the perfect antidote to the rampant homophobia given credibility by Mrs T. Jonathan Harvey’s warm and funny play was part of an artistic response at the time to bigotry,  including the much rawer My Beautiful Laundrette. Harvey went on to write hundreds of episodes of Corrie, so there is a touch of soap opera as sensitive teenager Jamie...
Annie – Hull New Theatre
Yorkshire & Humber

Annie – Hull New Theatre

What a fabulous, uplifting start to the week - all thanks to a cute, little, red-haired orphan called Annie, whose story is told in a production of the same name. A jam-packed Hull New Theatre was the setting on Monday evening for this smash-hit show, which has come direct from London’s West End. At curtain up, the stage featured metal bedsteads and sparse bedding, in an orphanage run by the drunken, cruel Miss Hannigan (Craig Revel Horwood). With unkempt hair, make-up, sloppy negligee and a fridge-full of booze, the Strictly Come Dancing star is perfection in the role, bringing much hilarity to proceedings as well as a fine singing voice. Equally perfect in her role is young Zoe Akinyosade as Annie, who is on stage for over two hours - no mean feat for a nine-year-old. With a...
Ailey 2 – Hull New Theatre
Yorkshire & Humber

Ailey 2 – Hull New Theatre

Storm Babet was no deterrent to the hardy souls who ventured out on Friday evening to watch Ailey 2 at the Hull New Theatre. This energetic troupe of modern dancers - I counted 12 in all - come to the city as part of a UK tour. Ailey 2 has been described by the New York Times as being the “younger version of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater” - a company founded in 1958 by choreographer, dancer and visionary, Alvin Ailey to bring African-American dance to the world stage from its base in the Big Apple. From what I witnessed on Friday evening, Ailey’s quest has been a huge success. At curtain up, the stage - left, right and centre - was enveloped in black, as were the dancers who emerged in the gloom to a hypnotic, and very loud, drum beat. They moved individually, sometime...