Paul Clarke, Author at North West End UK

1Nov

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

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 unex...

25Oct

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

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 ...

11Oct

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Yorkshire & Humber

Dirty Dancing – Bradford Alhambra

‘I like that Johnny, he ticks a few boxes.’ That was one woman’s verdict on ripped Michael O’Reilly who plays the hero of this musical version of the classic kitsch movie, and evidently shared by someone who wolf whistled at the start when he merely sauntered onstage wearing his shades. In fairness to the talented O’Reilly he’s far more than just a six pack as he brings the required swagger and some strong dancing to Johnny who is the moody dance instructor at an early sixties American holiday resort. It’s no spoiler to anyone familiar with film history to reveal that privileged holidaymaker Baby falls in love with the muscled blue-collar dancer. The musical is pretty much a scene by scene recreation of the movie that at heart is a coming of age story at the end of the golden Eise...

9Oct

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Yorkshire & Humber

The Light House – Leeds Playhouse

A lone woman comes through the dry ice holding a lantern and looking serious. So, the initial thought is this one woman show is going to be a hour long misery fest. Thankfully it is the exact opposite as Alys Williams has written and performs a show that is warm, witty, always humane, but never afraid to delve into the challenges that mental health issues pose for those battling with their own minds, and for those around them. Cleverly she uses the standard protocol for what happens when a man goes overboard at sea as a metaphor for how society reacts when someone starts to struggle with their mental health, and it’s a motif she returns to throughout. What really gives The Light House resonance is Williams has based it on her own experience with a partner who does go overboard men...

26Sep

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Rocky Horror Show – Bradford Alhambra

Look, after 50 years of camp genius this show is bomb proof from reviews so all you can do is judge how good the latest production is. The good news is that this is a really solid version of Richard O’Brien’s bonkers tribute to the schlocky 1950’s horror B-movies he watched as a kid in his native New Zealand, complete with some delicious pastiches of rock and roll songs from that period. Unless you have been living in a cave since the show premiered in 1973 - or have never been to a musical - then you don’t need a synopsis of what happens, and to be honest none of it makes sense anyway. What this show does need is two things – a great narrator and a crowd that is up for it as unlike others shows audience participation is not only encouraged but expected. Well, one out of two ai...

Leeds Playhouse becomes foodbank collection point for I, Daniel Blake

21Sep

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NEWS

Leeds Playhouse becomes foodbank collection point for I, Daniel Blake

As the world premiere stage adaptation of I, Daniel Blake comes to Leeds Playhouse they are turning themselves into a foodbank collection point. The film focusing on the struggles of people on the margins in our country has been adapted by actor and comedian Dave Johns, who won the Best Actor award at the British Independent Film Awards and Best Newcomer at the EMPIRE Awards for his role in the film. The proliferation of foodbanks across the UK is a central theme in the play, so the Playhouse is becoming a collection point for South & East Leeds Food Bank, which is part of the Trussell Trust Network with distribution points in Harehills, Beeston, Gipton, Seacroft, Morley, Hunslet, Halton, Rothwell and Belle Isle. The South & East Leeds Food Bank supported more than 14,000 ...

Matthew Bourne’s Romeo & Juliet – Bradford Alhambra

13Sep

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Yorkshire & Humber

Matthew Bourne’s Romeo & Juliet – Bradford Alhambra

This story of two star crossed lovers has been performed in every medium imaginable, so it was inevitable that our greatest choreographer Matthew Bourne would at some stage be lured by Sergei Prokofiev’s iconic ballet score. Be warned this is far from a straight scene by scene version of the Bard’s masterpiece, and Bourne’s interpretation sets this ageless tragedy in the near future. Romeo and Juliet are inmates in the Verona Institute, which might be a closed psychiatric unit for troubled teenagers, or a young offenders institute. That’s up to you, but it has echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale, although the battle between the inmates and the establishment that acts as a surrogate for Shakespeare’s familial conflict is more reminiscent of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Into this antisep...

30Aug

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Yorkshire & Humber

The Mousetrap – Leeds Grand Theatre

North West End UK has a strict no spoilers policy. That’s handy as giving away the twist at the end of this theatrical warhorse would break a solemn pledge made by generations of Agatha Christie fans over the last seven decades. The Mousetrap has been pulling in tourists to its West End production since 1952 just after our late Queen was finding her feet as a monarch, and now it’s out on a national tour celebrating its 70th anniversary. Its record-breaking longevity is even more remarkable as it doesn’t feature Christie’s supersleuths Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, but it is the classic Christie set up where a group of strangers assemble on a boat or a train and - shock horror - one of them is a murderer. In The Mousetrap our cast of strangers assemble in a rambling country house ...

14Aug

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Yorkshire & Humber

Taxi – Old Woollen Mill

Everyone has sat in the back of a cab staring blankly at the driver’s head, and aside from the usual ‘busy day’ chit chat we pay our fare knowing nothing about their lives. So, when John Rwothomack as cab driver Taxi stands at the end of the stage in this converted mill offering us the back of his head, he is asking us to take a journey inside his often troubled mind on a busy night shift. Along the way Andrea Heaton’s words offer us a chance to meet different Leeds folk who jump in behind him, based on co-director Douglas Thorpe’s own experiences as a cabbie. It is an often hallucinatory trip round the city that kicks off with homeless man Mal - who may or may not be the ferryman to the underworld – jumping up on the bar to rant about his life before leading the audience into the pe...

Heathers The Musical – Bradford Alhambra

19Jul

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Heathers The Musical – Bradford Alhambra

Many musicals flirt with darkness before another tune about empowerment and the power of love comes along to take the edge off, but not so Heathers The Musical which offers a relentless diet of serial killing, bullying, eating disorders, homophobia and date rape. It’s based on the deliciously dark eighties movie Heathers which was a welcome antidote to the saccharine John Hughes films who mistook teens for young adults. Here the teens are feral locked in the cliquey hell that is a typically hieratical US high school as the cool gangs, jocks and nerds try to survive into college. Our (anti) hero at Westerburg High School is geeky Veronica Sawyer who accidentally falls in with the bitchy cool gang trio all named Heather, who delight in making everyone’s life a misery to mask their own ...