Caroline Worswick

VAULT Festival celebrates a record breaking year as it closes its doors for the last time in its original home

21Mar

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

NEWS

VAULT Festival celebrates a record breaking year as it closes its doors for the last time in its original home

VAULT Festival marked the end of its decade-long run at its original venue, The Vaults on Sunday 19th March, bringing to a close a record-breaking year which welcomed more than 81,000 audience members throughout its eight-week run. The 2023 festival saw more than 4,000 independent artists perform 1,860 individual performances of 553 shows in 11 unique venues throughout Waterloo and South Bank, and featured 271 world premieres and 94 professional debuts, highlighting the colossal loss to the creative industries and audiences if VAULT Festival were unable to return for 2024 and beyond. Since it was created in 2012 as a one-off project, VAULT Festival has grown to become the UK's leading independent festival of live performance. VAULT Festival exists to platform work from underrepresented ...

The Choir of Man supports Comic Relief 2023

13Mar

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

NEWS

The Choir of Man supports Comic Relief 2023

On Red Nose Day the Olivier Award nominated international stage sensation The Choir of Man will dedicate both its shows to Comic Relief. The cast and creative team will also be involved in a top-secret celebrity challenge this year – with more to be revealed! The Olivier Award nominated international stage sensation, The Choir of Man, currently playing at the Arts Theatre in the West End, has partnered with Comic Relief this year. It will dedicate three performances to fundraise for Red Nose Day. These are the evening performance on Thursday 16th March and both performances on Friday 17th March. Audiences at the Arts Theatre will have the opportunity to donate in situ pre and post show, with donation points set up in the theatre, and an on-stage message from ‘The Poet’ Connor Hanley,...

Blanket Ban comes to Southwark Playhouse

12Mar

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

NEWS

Blanket Ban comes to Southwark Playhouse

Following its hit run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, theatre makers and activists Davinia Hamilton and Marta Vella bring their rallying cry for Maltese reproductive rights to Southwark Playhouse. Blanket Ban was performed as part of New Diorama and Underbelly’s Untapped Award, and combines the artists’ lived experience with interviews, stories and video footage of Maltese women who have suffered the life-changing and life-threatening consequences of the country’s blanket ban on abortion. Malta: a country of Catholic kitsch, golden sun, deep blue sea and Eurovision fanatics. It leads internationally on progressive LGBTQIA+ rights, including trailblazing transgender laws — but also has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world. Taking a fondly critical look at their home country and...

Dare you spend Halloween in a haunted West End theatre?

12Mar

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

NEWS

Dare you spend Halloween in a haunted West End theatre?

Theatres are alive. They have a soul. And they all have supernatural stories to tell.... Every theatre has ghosts and sightings, spectral visions reported backstage by terrified actors, mysterious apparitions that walk the stage at night, corridors and stairwells that are avoided by staff who have experienced a sudden drop in temperature... Do YOU believe in ghosts? And are YOU feeling brave? The West End premiere of ‘Do You Believe in Ghosts?’ at London’s Adelphi Theatre on Halloween, October 31st (with more West End dates to be announced), has enough chills and shocks to convince even the most die-hard sceptic! Packed with stories of things that go bump in the night - or the day - and things that just don’t add up, ‘Do You Believe in Ghosts?’ is unlike any other ghost story y...

11Mar

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

After The Act – New Diorama Theatre

On the 18th November 2003, Section 28 Local Government Act 1988 was finally wiped from the statute books. This Act was established to silence teachers and other educators from discussing same-sex relationships in any form. A whole generation of children who were lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or trans were ostracised, taunted by their classmates for being ‘different,’ ‘not normal’. In the anniversary year of its repeal, Breach Theatre are dancing on the grave of this act, which acted like a festering wound, its bacteria growing and infecting society, and in a way, we are still feeling it today. From the beginning, Breach hit the ground running with their passionate musical delivery of this extremely well-written piece of theatre. Taking their storyline from original dialo...

<strong>Blood Brothers (The Play) – Daneside Theatre, Congleton</strong>

8Feb

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

North West

Blood Brothers (The Play) – Daneside Theatre, Congleton

Bringing to the stage the play version of this tale, written by Willy Russell for Merseyside Young People’s Theatre in the early 1980’s, with the pre-requisite that the play must be only 70 mins long; a five hander with no set; and very little lighting as it was to be performed in a school hall. This short play version of Blood Brothers was later lengthened into the Musical that most of us know, and began touring in 1983, with the star of the show – Barbara Dickson. Congleton Players along with director Louise Colohan, have given this play a re-birth, bringing this 1980’s idea into the 21st century. For those who do not know the story, the tale begins with Mrs Johnstone (Sarah Francis) being swept off her feet by her husband (Andrew Bours), but when children arrive in very q...

<strong>Hamlet – Southwark Playhouse</strong>

22Jan

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

Hamlet – Southwark Playhouse

Lazarus Theatre Company offer a different approach to producing a Shakespeare production. Reimagining the classics is their game, collaborating with their artists, they have an emphasis on ensemble work, which was in evidence in this Hamlet production. Lazarus have co-produced this show with Southwark Playhouse’s Shakespeare for Schools Project, and the youthful cast encouraged a younger audience to come along to watch. Hamlet was a reluctant choice for Artistic Director Ricky Dukes, as he felt that it has been exhausted, and there can be an issue of what can we add to a production, but they need not have worried, this production packs a punch and enables Shakespeare’s language to work within this ensemble framework. The opening scene is a case in point, The Voice (...

<strong>35 DAYS TO SAVE THE KING’S!</strong>

21Jan

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

NEWS

35 DAYS TO SAVE THE KING’S!

AS EDINBURGH LOSES OUT ON UK GOVERNMENT’S LEVELLING UP FUNDING, CAPITAL THEATRES IS WORKING WITH THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT, CITY OF EDINBURGH COUNCIL AND THE UK GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE THE KING’S THEATRE DOESN’T CLOSE ITS DOORS FOREVER • City of Edinburgh Council’s bid to the UK Government’s Levelling Up Fund has been unsuccessful. This grant would have been a crucial contribution towards the funding gap for the King’s Redevelopment project caused by inflation, global conflict and changing trade routes. • Capital Theatres, the charity which runs the King’s, has already raised £26m and must find the remaining £8.9m in the next 35 days, in time to sign over the building to the contractors, stay on track with the project, and avoid spiralling costs. • The King’s is vital for the UK’s cult...

<strong>And Then The Rodeo Burned Down – King’s Head Theatre</strong>

21Jan

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

And Then The Rodeo Burned Down – King’s Head Theatre

Coming direct from New York City in association with theSpaceUK, following a successful week-long debut run in Edinburgh and winning the coveted Fringe First Award; Chloe Rice and Natasha Roland have been collaborating for nearly ten years, writing, and performing their own material. Ye hawing their way into the King’s Head Theatre, their rodeo clown show packs a lot into the hour. With country and western music piped into the theatre, the clown puts on her make up ready for the show. Star of the show is the lassoing cowboy, and oh boy, does Dale the clown want to be a cowboy, but our clown has a shadow, someone who wants to be a clown. Dressed in cowboy clothes, the pecking order of life is dissected, with the cowboy representing the top of the food chain and the s...

<strong>Irrelevant comes to Seven Dials Playhouse</strong>

10Jan

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

NEWS

Irrelevant comes to Seven Dials Playhouse

Coming to Seven Dials Playhouse in January, Le Gallienne Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Irrelevant - running from the 9th - 28th January 2023. This new play is written and directed by Le Gallienne Theatre Company’s Artistic Director, Keith Merrill (Entertaining Mr Sloane, The Einstein Letter), and stars Olivier Award nominee Debbie Chazen (The Smoking Room, Midsomer Murders, The Cherry Orchard). Kicking off Seven Dials Playhouse’s 2023 offerings is Irrelevant, a savagely amusing comment on the realities of a career in Hollywood. The play interrogates how talented artists can slip through the cracks and bright futures can suddenly be dimmed. The play centres on Millie (Debbie Chazen), a once-promising young actress, who finds herself chewed up and spat out ...