Sunday, December 29

NEWS

Northern Ballet launch autumn season with a world premiere at Leeds Playhouse
NEWS

Northern Ballet launch autumn season with a world premiere at Leeds Playhouse

Northern Ballet launch their autumn season with the world première of three exhilarating new dance pieces under the banner Made in Leeds: Three Short Ballets at Leeds Playhouse from 10th – 17th September. Yorkshire audiences will be the first to see new works from award-winning choreographers Mthuthuzeli November, Stina Quagebeur and Dickson Mbi performed by Northern Ballet’s world-class dancers.  Olivier award-winning Mthuthuzeli November’s Wailers is described as "a work that gives thanks to life. To its struggles, beauty and its people. Those with us and no longer with us. It is a prayer for guidance." Stina Quagebeur, Associate Choreographer with English National Ballet, presents Nostalgia billed as "an exploration of that familiar state of longing, poignancy and piercing...
Corrie legend Paula Lane stars in Oldham Coliseum Theatre’s revival of Jim Cartwright’s Road
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Corrie legend Paula Lane stars in Oldham Coliseum Theatre’s revival of Jim Cartwright’s Road

Corrie legend Paula Lane leads a strong case for Oldham Coliseum Theatre’s timely revival of Jim Cartwright’s raw and powerful Road. Well-oiled narrator Scullery takes the audience along his run down Lancashire road in 1987 where’s no jobs and little hope. but there’s a party to go to that’ll take you from the gutter to the stars and back again. Sound familiar? Ironically Paula Lane who was Kylie Platt in the Street plays the equally feisty Lane in Road and is joined by Coliseum regular Richard J Fletcher as feckless Scullery. Lancashire playwright Jim Cartwright’s debut play mixture of humour and pathos was voted third best play of the 1980s being revived many times, and even being produced at the Lincoln Centre in New York featuring cast Kevin Bacon and Joan Cusack.   ...
Cast announced for revival of Nine Night at Leeds Playhouse
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Cast announced for revival of Nine Night at Leeds Playhouse

The cast has been announced for a revival of Nine Night celebrating the rituals of a traditional Jamaican wake. The production at Leeds Playhouse from 24th September to 15th October invites audiences into a traditional Nine Night Jamaican wake for family matriarch Gloria. As the story unfolds her children and grandchildren gather to mark her passing during a night full of humour and deep sorrow as they share memories, good food and grievances older than Gloria’s well-loved dining table.    This new production of Natasha Gordon's comedy follows a successful West End run in 2018 which was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy and won three awards in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards. Its three-week run in Leeds is staged in...
Two Ukrainian Plays at The Finborough Theatre in connection with Worldwide Play Readings: Belarus and Ukraine
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Two Ukrainian Plays at The Finborough Theatre in connection with Worldwide Play Readings: Belarus and Ukraine

In September 2020, the Belarus Worldwide Readings Project organised hundreds of international theatre companies, groups, schools, and individuals, to present readings, videos, and discussions of Andrei Kureichik’s new play Insulted. Belarus(sia), in solidarity with the people and theatre companies of Belarus. In late February 2022, the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings Project, was formed by John Freedman (a writer and translator, who first translated Insulted.Belarus(sia) into English), and Maksym Kurochkin, a Ukrainian playwright and leader of the new Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv. Supported and funded by CITD (The Centre for International Theatre Development), they commissioned 23 Ukrainian playwrights to create new historical plays to be performed around the world to raise money fo...
Full casting announced for national tour of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses
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Full casting announced for national tour of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses

Pilot Theatre has announced the casting for their tour of Sabrina Mahfouz’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s best-selling young adult novel of first love, Noughts & Crosses, that is set in a fictional dystopia. Sephy is a Cross and Callum is a Nought in a world with strict racial and social divides. As violence breaks out, Sephy and Callum draw closer, but this is a romance that will lead them into terrible danger. The cast directed by Pilot’s Artistic Director Esther Richardson will be led by Effie Ansah and James Arden in their first leading roles as Sephy and Callum. Emma Keele who was on the national tour Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time plays Meggie, Nathanial McClosky is Jude, Amie Buhari takes on Jasmine and Steph Asamoah is Minerva. Chris Jack is Kamal,...
Casting revealed for The Importance of Being Earnest at Leeds Playhouse
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Casting revealed for The Importance of Being Earnest at Leeds Playhouse

The cast has been revealed for Denzel Westley-Sanderson's retelling of Oscar Wilde’s most outrageous comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest, which premieres at Leeds Playhouse from 5th -17th September before heading out on a UK tour. Westley-Sanderson is melding Wilde’s sharp wit with chart-toppers and  contemporary references to offer a sassy promising an unique take on the classic satire about dysfunctional families, class, gender and sexuality.  The cast includes Daniel Jacob, who has gained international recognition as his Drag Queen alter ego Vinegar Strokes, who plays the iconic Lady Bracknell. Jacob is joined by Midsomer Murders’ Phoebe Campbell as Cecily making her theatre debut, the experienced Valentine Hanson as Merriman/Lane and Joanne Henry as Miss Prism wh...
National Youth Theatre of Wales and Theatr Clwyd present, a brand-new comedy as part of exciting partnership
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National Youth Theatre of Wales and Theatr Clwyd present, a brand-new comedy as part of exciting partnership

National Youth Theatre of Wales and Theatr Clwyd are co-producing their first full length production together, The In-Between. The show will open at Theatr Clwyd before heading to The Sherman Theatre, Cardiff. This brand-new comedy has been written by one of Wales’ leading playwrights Gary Owen (Iphigenia in Splott) and BAFTA-nominated actress and writer, Alexandria Riley (Pembrokshire Murderers, In My Skin). A new comedy about growing up. Fay is finished. Her tutors at the music college are telling her she’s failing. She’s giving everything she can - and it’s not enough. Fay’s not going to fail. She’s going to do the mature, grown-up thing. She’s going to quit. All she has to do is walk to college, hand in her letter and she’s free from the struggle and the worry. ...
Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical announces West End closing
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Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical announces West End closing

Producers have announced that the hit production Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical which received its world premiere performance at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue on 1st October 2021, will play its final performance in London’s West End on 8th January 2023.  The critically acclaimed show has been playing to ecstatic crowds since October 2021 at the Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue and it was nominated for 4 Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical winning the award for best orchestrations. Following the West End, the production will embark on a UK-wide tour with full details to be announced soon. The production is also planning multiple international engagements, with discussions underway in Europe, North and South America. A cast recording featuring the original cast i...
Cast announced for world premiere of<br>The Book Thief
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Cast announced for world premiere of
The Book Thief

Ahead of its world premiere at the Octagon Theatre Bolton this autumn, the musical adaptation of The Book Thief announces its cast. Directed by the Octagon’s Artistic Director Lotte Wakeham (One Man Two Guvnors, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Peter Pan, Octagon Theatre) and choreographed by Tom Jackson Greaves (Amélie, Criterion Theatre), the script is penned by award-winning author Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper) and Timothy Allen McDonald (adaptor of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka and James and the Giant Peach), with music and lyrics by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson (Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, Walt Disney Animation Studios) and musical direction, orchestrations and arrangements by Matthew Malone. This spellbinding production is based on Markus Zusak’s worldwide best-selling novel and follows...
OCD Me debuts at Edinburgh Fringe 2022
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OCD Me debuts at Edinburgh Fringe 2022

Sure, we all get a bit stressed sometimes. We all feel a bit isolated, ashamed, and terrified; convinced that the minutest of our actions may somehow have catastrophic effects on our loved ones… or is that just me? Sarah was diagnosed with OCD a decade ago. She’s been managing it pretty well, but it’s hard living in a world that tells you to follow your gut when your gut wants you to touch the door handle 64 times. She wants to tell you her story and let you know that there’s much more to it than the stereotypes we see on TV, like obsessive handwashing (though in Sarah’s case that’s definitely part of it). Written and directed by Aisling Smith, OCD Me is a one-woman comedy about living with obsessive compulsive disorder. OCD Me is a semi-autobiographical piece about obsessive comp...