Paul Clarke, Author at North West End UK

Northern Ballet release their first inclusive dance film

9Dec

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

NEWS

Northern Ballet release their first inclusive dance film

In a first for Northern Ballet performers from the company and dancers from their Ability course for adults with additional learning support needs have joined forces in a pioneering dance film created by director and choreographer Ben Wright. Every Little Thing is a Change was developed in a series of workshops at Northern Ballet’s headquarters in Leeds exploring how a touch, a look or a feeling can transport all of us into another world. The film premièred at Northern Ballet’s inclusive dance festival Expressions, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in July this year, and is now available online. An audio described version of the film will also be released. The short film is Northern Ballet’s next step in exploring how inclusive dance can be more closely linked...

Dolly delights in Spring/Summer season at Leeds Playhouse

8Dec

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

NEWS

Dolly delights in Spring/Summer season at Leeds Playhouse

For the first time ever all of Dolly Parton’s biggest hits can be heard together in a new musical comedy, Here You Come Again, which is then cornerstone of the Spring/Summer 2024 season at Leeds Playhouse before it heads off to the West End After a successful US tour, the show is packed with the country legend’s iconic songs, including Jolene, 9 to 5, Islands in the Stream, I Will Always Love You and Here You Come Again. It’s the story of a diehard fan whose fantasy version of international icon Dolly Parton gets him through trying times, but the wit, humour and charm in her songs teaches him a whole lot about life, love and how to pull yourself up by your sequinned bootstraps. It was originally written by two-time Emmy award-winning comedy writer and songwr...

3Dec

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Oliver! – Leeds Playhouse

Over the last few years Leeds Playhouse have offered all sorts of challenging festive spectaculars but this deliciously dark revival of Lionel Bart’s masterpiece Oliver! is the best yet. You need some nerve to take on such a beloved musical, and Oscar laden movie, so the Playhouse’s Artistic Director James Brining has cleverly placed his version in the round. Colin Richmond’s design leaves the cavernous Quarry space full of raised spaces and walkways, becoming the sort of dank and dark Victorian London that Charles Dickens painted teeming with all human life and plenty of menace. Brining is a great director of children, and when a well drilled junior ensemble sings and dances through a lively Food Glorious Food it’s clear a big and diverse cast have used their time in the rehearsal r...

Robin Hood: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto – Leeds City Varieties

3Dec

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Yorkshire & Humber

Robin Hood: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto – Leeds City Varieties

After a long year of often serious shows, and the world in chaos, it’s just nice to sit back in a historic theatre to watch a show as comfortable as a pair of old slippers. The Rock ‘n’ Roll brand is pretty much bombproof from criticism combining a perfunctory attempt at a classic story - which is just an excuse for classic panto madness - while a gang of actor-musicians swap instruments knocking out hits for the young and old. Only in panto could you get covers of The Clash and Taylor Swift songs, that all have tenuous links to the ‘narrative’, and no-one bats an eyelid. This year poor old Robin Hood got the Peter Rowe treatment as this master of the most British of theatrical traditions weaves in sight gags, puppets, pratfalls, fart gags, corpsing, all the classic call and response...

30Nov

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Yorkshire & Humber

The Nutcracker – Leeds Grand Theatre

After enduring endless plays of Merry Xmas Everyone trundling round the shops you know the festive season is finally here when Northern Ballet stage their annual extravaganza. This year The Nutcracker is back, and once again you have that feeling they’ve run into the props store and gone a bit mad to produce a lavish winter wonderland. David Nixon’s colourful and stylish costumes probably caused a national shortage of sequins and taffeta. It’s a wonderfully bonkers fairy tale as a mysterious magician sends ingénue Clara off on a surreal journey where she survives a battle between giant mice and life size toy soldiers, before being magically transported to a wintery wonderland where meets her Nutcracker Prince. It’s all beautifully realised by designer Charles Cusick Smith who works h...

Jesus Christ Superstar – Bradford Alhambra

28Nov

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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 ...

21Nov

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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 flamb...

15Nov

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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 m...

Bradford Opera Festival stage The Barber of Seville…but with a distinctive local twist

14Nov

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Interviews

Bradford Opera Festival stage The Barber of Seville…but with a distinctive local twist

The opening event of the newly created Bradford Opera Festival is the world premiere of a Yorkshire dialect version of The Barber of Seville. To make this happen the festival team have been working with legendary Yorkshire poet Ian McMillan and conductor Ben Crick, who has long had a dream to stage a version of Rossini’s classic tale of class, lust and betrayal performed in the local vernacular. Alex Chisholm who has been a stalwart of the Bradford artistic scene for many years is directing, and she told our Features Editor Paul Clarke why this festival will help democratise a misunderstood art form for local audiences. Of all the great operas, why did you choose The Barber of Seville? This really came from Ben, and he has had this dream for the last 20 years, so it's not just ...

8Nov

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

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 wit...