Paul Downham, Author at North West End UK

Artistic Director, Gemma Bodinetz announces departure from Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse

10Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Artistic Director, Gemma Bodinetz announces departure from Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse

Artistic Director, Gemma Bodinetz announces departure from Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse After 17 years as Artistic Director of the Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse theatres (E&P), Gemma Bodinetz today announced she will step down later this year. During her successful tenure she helped contribute to Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture, built a Stirling Prize winning theatre for the city, produced a great deal of wonderful theatre including directing many productions that have delighted audiences here and across the UK. Gemma re-invigorated Liverpool as a place of theatrical excellence. She has championed the work of Young Everyman & Playhouse, particularly inspiring many young women into the industry and supported the growing work in communities across the city regio...

Joseph and the Amazing All Star Concert – Online

8Jul

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REVIEWS

Joseph and the Amazing All Star Concert – Online

When we are all deep in the doldrums as our theatres stay dark, here comes a much needed breath of fresh air, bursting onto our screens, in full kaleidoscopic glory and musical majesty - Joseph and the Amazing All Star Concert – Highlights from the Technicolor Musical. With a foreword from the original touring Joseph, Jess Conrad OBE who played the role of Joseph in the 1970/80’s. This concert is true to the original artistic intent, a pure celebration and after so long without live performances, this brought more than one tear of joy to my eye! Based on the Bible story in Genesis with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Joseph was originally written whilst the pair where at Magdalen College, Oxford. However, the original idea for this concert was spotted on the Joseph ...

8Jul

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REVIEWS

Rush – BBC iPlayer

Writer, Willi Richards’s first play, Rush was to have opened in June at Trafalgar Studios 2 following a successful two week run in 2018 at London’s King’s Head Theatre. Although COVID-19 has, for the moment, denied Rush its West End run it is now streaming on BBC iPlayer as part of their Culture In Quarantine series in the form of an online script reading. The play explores the dynamics of a gay love triangle involving Man (Rupert Everett), Lad (Daniel Boyd) and Boy (Omari Douglas). Lad is in a relationship with Boy but at the same time engaged in an affair with the older Man who is himself one half of a civil partnership. Lad, as the link between the two other men, brings them together. It ends with Lad revealing to camera the reasoning behind the decision as to which of them he decide...

New Vic Theatre Reschedule Opening of Marvellous to Spring 2021

7Jul

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NEWS

New Vic Theatre Reschedule Opening of Marvellous to Spring 2021

Marvellous, a brand-new play based on the life of local hero, Neil ‘Nello’ Baldwin, was due to take to the stage in the theatre’s newly refurbished auditorium in September. However, due to the uncertainty around when theatres will be able to safely start rehearsals for shows and also reopen to the public for performances, the New Vic has taken the decision to reschedule the production to a later date and now hopes to stage this inspiring show in April 2021. Theresa Heskins, New Vic Artistic Director said: “A New Vic production like Marvellous takes months of planning, and many people are involved in its creation. From our in-house team to freelance actors and creatives, and of course Neil himself, it is a huge endeavour – and much of the work happens before we even start rehearsals....

Doing The Pub Quiz – Northern Comedy Theatre Zoom Live

7Jul

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REVIEWS

Doing The Pub Quiz – Northern Comedy Theatre Zoom Live

Following on from their live Zoom show ‘Doing Shakespeare’, the new addition to the Northern Comedy Theatre’s repertoire is ‘Doing the Pub Quiz’. Once again, The Felching Players are together, but this time they are using their free time to enter a pub quiz. Teaming up with writer David Spicer who wrote their previous Zoom Live ‘Doing Shakespeare’, The Felching Players are taking on other pub teams in a bid to be victorious. Tom (Robert Stuart-Hudson) set up the team (apparently to get off the booze after his wife left him) and likes to be in the driving seat, organising everyone. The imaginatively named ‘We are Smarticus’ pub team have got through the qualifying round and are now battling against 31 teams to be top dog of the pub quiz league; they just need to g...

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads: The Outside Dog – BBC iPlayer

7Jul

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REVIEWS

Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads: The Outside Dog – BBC iPlayer

One of the strong suites Alan Bennett has always had is his ability to write convincingly for women. The sort of women a boy from a respectable middle-class Leeds family would have known growing up. When he put these women into his writing they attracted the great and good of acting to portray them. Dames Julie, Thora and Patricia are the ones which spring immediately to mind. They are synonymous with the piece. It is therefore interesting to revisit the work with new faces in the frame. I have seen some of his “Talking Heads” presented with new faces on stage, but we are currently being treated with television presentations, so comparisons are inevitable. It is a testament to the skill of Rochenda Sandall that thoughts of Julie Walters (the original Marjory) are thrown out of the windo...

Theatre Cash Injection – A Wise Investment?

6Jul

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Blogs

Theatre Cash Injection – A Wise Investment?

Given we made two appeals for government support for theatres to survive beyond the pandemic it would be churlish not to welcome the government’s £1.57 billion cash injection to protect our world leading cultural sector. Now it’s true that money has to go a long way across theatres, museums and live venues, but considering yesterday we had no support this is a significant acknowledgement that many big and small theatres were on the brink of going under. And, make no mistake, once they went dark the reality was they would never come back like the Nuffield in Southampton. You can’t help but think the National Theatre’s decision to lay off its front of house staff, or the announcement by regional powerhouse the Royal Exchange of potential redundancies must have focused the government’s ...

No Milk for the Foxes – Beats & Elements

6Jul

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REVIEWS

No Milk for the Foxes – Beats & Elements

Working class culture rarely gets a look in anywhere in theatreland and when it does it's all too often patronising twaddle with some pathetic redemptive narrative thrown in to salve middle class guilt. Thankfully this funny and often bleak 2015 work from Beats & Elements avoids that as co-founders Conrad Murray and Paul Cree based this tale of two security guards surviving on the margins of society on their own experiences, and that of their mates Murray’s Spaxx is a half Indian geezer from Mitcham who is whiling away the hours with Cree’s more considered white, working class Marx on a zero-hour contract night shift in the office of a rundown factory. Between chats about life living from one crap payday to the next, their dreams and. insecurities they throw in some top-cla...

Stiles & Drewe: Best New Song Prize 2020

6Jul

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REVIEWS

Stiles & Drewe: Best New Song Prize 2020

In a week when the British theatre industry was despairing at the lack of support for its workers and venues, and when sectors of the country were reopening for business and the performing arts still had no light at the end of the tunnel, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe shone the spotlight on the future of musical theatre, showcasing 15 songs from new works. Stiles & Drewe, themselves known for writing Mary Poppins, Honk! and Soho Cinders among many other hits, have been hosting this competition since 2008; a competition that seeks to promote new musical theatre writing, and perhaps more importantly, encourage new writers in a landscape that must usually seem challenging, and at the moment must be pretty terrifying. Supported by five guest judges: Dan Gilespie Sells (writer of Ev...

6Jul

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West Midlands

Birmingham Opera Company: The Ice Break

Birmingham Opera’s Artistic Director Graham Vick takes a brave leap in transforming this opera by Michael Tippett the first interpretation since 1977 in Covent Garden. An unused warehouse is cleverly transformed into a strange airport terminal where the audience stands and is ushered around to the dramatic action by the chorus; a lot whom are from the local community. Opera can have many connotations, high brow, difficult to understand and perhaps for an old fashioned elite; Vick throws all this on its head with an utterly gripping show where everything is energised for a fascinating heady performance that is contemporary and relevant. It is indeed even more relevant with the Black Lives Movement that has been a regular feature of the last few months. The themes focus on race, rio...