Paul Downham, Author at North West End UK

Cast announced for The Barn Theatre’s LIVE ‘One-Shot’ song cycle Now or Never

29Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Cast announced for The Barn Theatre’s LIVE ‘One-Shot’ song cycle Now or Never

The Barn Theatre have today announced the full casting and creative team for upcoming livestream Now or Never. Now or Never is a British song cycle with an exciting and ambitious digital twist. Now or Never is a song cycle written by associate artist Matthew Harvey, which follows 7 people as they each take a defiant act of positivity in their last week on Earth. The inaugural cast of Now or Never includes Eloise Davies (Be More Chill, Grease), Ahmed Hamad (Rent, Stay Awake Jake, The Boy in the Dress), Matthew Harvey (Les Misérables, Violet, Jesus Christ Superstar, Murder Ballad), Irvine Iqbal (The Boy in the Dress, Aladdin, Broken Wings), Lucy St Louis (Man of La Mancha, Motown, Beautiful), Katie Shearman (The Sound of Music UK Tour, Evita) and Courtney Stapleton (Dear Evan Hansen, S...

29Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Hairy Hands FM – Chronic Insanity

Hairy Hands FM is a new immersive audio experience by Nottingham-based company Chronic Insanity that seeks to recreate a century-old urban legend inside your room. The story is derived from the real-life sightings of a pair of mysterious ‘Hairy Hands’ that motorists blame for causing numerous road accidents in Dartmoor, Southwest England since the 1920s. Combining binaural sound design with an interactive web app design, the 20-minute experience invites audiences to tune in to a fictional local radio station wherein something dark lurks about and the radio host asks for your help to put away this mythical creature once and for all. Written and directed by Joe Strickland with Hannah Parsons on production and sound design, this show was commissioned by New Creatives – a talent development sc...

Don’t lose your head, SIX is heading to Blackpool this summer!

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Don’t lose your head, SIX is heading to Blackpool this summer!

SIX the international smash hit musical will head to the Opera House Blackpool from Wednesday 07th July – Saturday 10th July 2021 as part of a major UK Tour. Multi award-winning, with a spectacularly successful sound-track storming charts across the globe, this sell-out Tudor take-off has ‘an incredibly strong and powerful message. Boundary-pushing, genre-redefining’ (The Australian) and is ‘pure entertainment’ (The New York Times). Tickets from £20.00 are on general sale now! Picture: Pamela Raith Michael Williams, Winter Gardens Blackpool Managing Director, said “We are delighted to announce that SIX, will head to Blackpool this July. The smash hit show has wowed audiences across the globe and gained a loyal and devoted fan base, it’s a fantastic addition to our reopeni...

Love Letters becomes the first socially distanced play… for the second time!

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Love Letters becomes the first socially distanced play… for the second time!

Bill Kenwright presents the anticipated return of A.R. Gurney’s heart-warming play Love Letters to the Theatre Royal Haymarket for a strictly limited season of only 32 performances from 19th May – 13th June 2021. Directed by Roy Marsden, Love Letters received probably its best ever reviews when Martin Shaw and Jenny Seagrove were reunited in the play last year. Their special chemistry led to highly acclaimed performances in this uplifting tale of long-distanced love and enduring friendship. The critically lauded production of Love Letters originally opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket to a clamour of four star reviews on 3rd December 2020. It was the first post-lockdown play to open in the West End since the pandemic began, before sadly being forced to close on 14th December due to...

Fake Escape in association with The Old Red Lion Theatre present SAVING BRITNEY: Prologue

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Fake Escape in association with The Old Red Lion Theatre present SAVING BRITNEY: Prologue

Fake Escape in association with The Old Red Lion Theatre present SAVING BRITNEY: Prologue, a digital short written by David Shopland with Shereen Roushbaiani Streaming exclusively online 5th – 25th April 2021 It's Jean, B*tch. A few months ago, Britney Spears superfan Jean was ready to tell the world her story live from the Old Red Lion Theatre in the heart of Islington... until the government, in the words of Noughties boyband Blue, 'got the city on Lockdown.’ Undeterred by another pandemic body-blow, Jean has agreed to host a very special and exclusive Facebook Live session only available digitally via the Old Red Lion Theatre website. Join her as she attempts to make sense of the pop princess in the age of conservatorship, cyberbullying and the #MeToo movement. Co-devised by...

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS, NWE UK Live

Bruce Joel Rubin celebrates 10 years of Ghost the Musical

On the 10th anniversary of the World Premiere of Ghost the Musical at the Opera House in Manchester, Oscar winning writer of the movie Bruce Joel Rubin sits down with our senior editor and Ghost the Musical super fan Paul Downham to discuss how the film transferred to the stage. https://www.youtube.com/embed/nSuL0ozzd00 Advertisement (contains affiliate links)

Inside – Orange Tree Theatre Live Stream

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Inside – Orange Tree Theatre Live Stream

In the first of two instalments of a series curated by OT Literary Associate Guy Jones, Inside looks at the lives of three women who feel that they have been forgotten by the world. In a world premiere livestreamed from Orange Theatre Company’s auditorium, the three 30-minute plays are part of the Orange Tree Theatre’s digital project, OT On Screen. The first of the three plays is written by Deborah Bruce called Guidesky and I and we walk in the shoes of Diana (Samantha Spiro). Diana is a mature single woman who is feeling the affects of the long lockdown, having recently lost her mother. We find Diana leaving her flat to go and clear out her mother’s house, having also lost her job recently. Her frustration is vented on Guidesky 125, who is the online customer s...

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Testament – Via Brooklyn Theatre Co

It is doubtful that the words “thank the Lord for COVID” have been uttered many times across the last year, but without the pandemic it is unlikely that UK audiences would have been lucky enough to witness this current New York production of British Writer Tristen Bernays’ breathtaking play, TESTAMENT. The piece was originally written in 2017, but has been adapted for film by Lucy Jane Atkinson, and is presented online by US theatre company Via Brooklyn. TESTAMENT is a powerhouse production of biblical proportions and truly testament to how the world may have adapted to life living in a lockdown, but how humanity has remained unchanged for thousands of years. It shows us just 4 individuals and a therapist on a stage. Simple enough as a concept, but it examines deeply the basic human nee...

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Scaramouche Jones – Ginger Quiff Media

Tell me, what will you recount in the last hour of your life? What will be the events, the people, the things that spring to mind while you while away the time? And this is the start and end point of Scaramouche Jones. Powerful. Persuasive. Passionate. This one-man show starring Shane Richie is absorbing and thought-provoking. Playing the role of a tragic clown in a digital revival of Justin’s Butcher’s award-winning play, Richie takes us through his unfortunate life with such intimacy and honesty, the screen bleeds. From the time of his bastard birth to a brothel whore, to a slave ship, to a snake-charmer’s side-kick, to being the plaything of Italian Royalty to being a grave digger in a concentration camp, Scaramouche Jones has bitterly lived through some of the most pivotal mom...

Angela – Royal Lyceum Theatre/Pitlochry Festival Theatre online

28Mar

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

Scotland

Angela – Royal Lyceum Theatre/Pitlochry Festival Theatre online

Mark Ravenhill has taken us to some dark places over the years but none more so than with this unflinching account of his beloved mother Angela’s final dementia journey. But this debut audio collaboration between the Royal Lyceum Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre is as much about class, thwarted ambition and shared memories as it is about a condition that affects nearly a million people across the UK. From the moment the young Angela – subtly played by Matti Houghton – changes her name from the too ‘common’ Rita to Angela you sense this is an intelligent working class woman with artistic ambitions. Her short am dram career is cut short by marriage to engineer Ted, and any ambition to take it further disappears. A pertinent point when the acting profession is increasingly posh an...