Sunday, April 19

NEWS

3 nights of theatre celebrating the Workers Theatre Movement
NEWS

3 nights of theatre celebrating the Workers Theatre Movement

Playing at The Hope Street Theatre – Friday 6th, Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th June, 7.30pm. In the 19320 and 30s, all over Britain, working-class theatre groups sprang up all over Britain, under the umbrella of the Workers Theatre Movement. A production that celebrates the Workers theatre Movement and its upsurge of Cultural Activism will be showcasing at one of Liverpool’s best small City-Centre Theatres, the Hope Street Theatre. Included in the 3 nights are a one act play about a 30s Socialist Theatre group, “Unity” by Tom Mclennan, and 3 modern Living Newspapers by local actors, inspired by the work of these Socialist Theatre pioneers. The show – called “Workers Playtime” – can be booked via the Hope Street Theatre website and box office. Tickets £8/£6 from ww...
Bloody Marvellous: A Comedy Show about the Middle Ages to tour UK Fringe Festivals this summer
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Bloody Marvellous: A Comedy Show about the Middle Ages to tour UK Fringe Festivals this summer

Bloody Marvellous brings together Luke Connell’s academic and comedic personalities to offer something distinctive: a comic tour of the medieval world. Rather than the tired medieval themes of kings and battles, it is about medieval ideas, stories and inventions. Featuring props, songs and games, Bloody Marvellous introduces audiences to creatures like sea-centipedes and manticores, dogs with names like Havegoodday, and characters like Eilmer the flying monk. Luke shows off the old world’s taste in tourist tat, and tries to convince audiences that medieval medicine – with treatments involving things like dragons’ blood – was more exciting than the modern kind. The show will be performed at the Newcastle, Durham, Buxton and Greater Manchester Fringes in July before it hits the Edinburgh ...
The National Youth Music Theatre leads innovative new Birmingham partnership project alongside ambitious outdoor theatre finale of its 2025 Season
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The National Youth Music Theatre leads innovative new Birmingham partnership project alongside ambitious outdoor theatre finale of its 2025 Season

The National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) proudly announces FairGround, a bold and inclusive arts festival for children and young people from all backgrounds across the whole of Birmingham. Hosted at City Academy, FairGround will offer free creative workshops in partnership with other leading arts organisations and schools in the city. The festival is committed to providing tailored opportunities for participants that reflect the diverse needs and experiences of its participants. Among those opportunities will be specialist drama and music workshops for newly arrived children who attend CORE Hello - a groundbreaking education programme which supports children from around the world to integrate positively into Birmingham schools and the community. FairGround features a series of four creat...
Marina Abramović premieres most ambitious work of her career at Manchester’s Aviva Studios
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Marina Abramović premieres most ambitious work of her career at Manchester’s Aviva Studios

•Balkan Erotic Epic (9th – 19th October 2025) marks Abramović’s largest-scale performance work to date, featuring a cast of over 70 performers. •Rooted in the artist’s Balkan heritage, this bold new work combines dance, song, and ritual to explore desire, spirituality, and our connection to nature. •Merging elements of performative tradition with sensuality and eroticism, Balkan Erotic Epic reflects Abramović’s ongoing exploration of the body, sexuality, and the limits of human experience. •Tickets go on-sale to Factory International members on Thursday 22nd May and to general public on Thursday 29th May at www.factoryinternational.org   Factory International, the organisation behind Manchester International Festival and the city’s landmark cultural space Aviva Studios, wi...
Leeds Playhouse has announced a Premier League line-up for the world premiere of football play Through it All Together
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Leeds Playhouse has announced a Premier League line-up for the world premiere of football play Through it All Together

It’s a love letter to Leeds United’s eccentric former boss Marcelo Bielsa as Shobna Gulati and Reece Dinsdale play Sue and Howard, a Yorkshire couple navigating a diagnosis of dementia. As they deal with the traumatic aftermath of that news, they find comfort cheering on their beloved Leeds United as they returned to the Premier League during the Argentinian’s glory days in his first two years as he developed a style of flowing football that became known as ‘Bielsaball’. Shobna Gulati is best known for iconic roles including Anita in Victoria Wood's sitcom Dinnerladies and Sunita Alahan in Coronation Street. Shobna also portrayed Mari Hoff in the UK tour of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, and Ray in the West End production of Everybody's Talking About Jamie. Reece Dinsdale is a Yo...
Klezmer Klassica: the Men behind the Play with Music
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Klezmer Klassica: the Men behind the Play with Music

It’s always a boon when there is a recording available of a production you’ve attended and none more so than the recently attended Gideon – a play with music, a collaboration between Richard Fay and Daniel Mawson through their company Modalways CIC. Following the life of a magnetic musician and his family facing impossible choices, its factual narrative is accompanied by a delightful fusion of Klezmer, Czech folk, classical compositions, and jazz performed by a live ensemble. My interest was piqued when noting that the recording labelled as Volume 3 was accompanied by a not entirely related Volume 4, raising the obvious question as to what/where were Volumes 1 and 2? Well, a little bit of delving was to unveil a musical goldmine, but first of all we have to take a step back in time. ...
Run At It Laughing – Wilton’s Music Hall
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Run At It Laughing – Wilton’s Music Hall

Produced by Run At It Shouting and Flying Colours Productions, playwright Mark Ravenhill is behind a fund-raising event, raising money for the Hackney based NIA Project, who help women and children who have suffered abuse.  Ten plays have been developed and directed by Ravenhill using Italian stage actor Flamingo Scala’s collection of scenarios first published in 1611.  These fifty scenarios of commedia dell’arte plays pre-date Shakespeare and his Renaissance theatre contemporaries and were published under title ‘Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative’, in which one was a tragedy, nine were fantasy, and the remaining forty were comedies, and the shows that we have seen over the weekend came from the latter category.  Scala, provided Ravenhill with the framework to work with,...
Embrace and The Bluetones – Liverpool Olympia 120th Anniversary
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Embrace and The Bluetones – Liverpool Olympia 120th Anniversary

The venue may look like it’s been ‘cunningly disguised as a series of newsagents’ (or so says The Bluetones’ frontman Mark Morriss). But those stepping through the Olympia’s inconspicuous doors will find a Grade II listed venue full of old theatrical grandeur that, in its lifetime, has played host to circuses with performing animals, bingo nights, boxing matches and shows from the world’s biggest music acts, including (naturally) The Beatles.  Tonight’s celebration is a showcase of homegrown British music. Two local bands have been picked to kick the party off. RATS bring ska-punk tinged songs with raspy vocals and rapping. Next up is The Real People, showcasing the best of a classic, Britrock back catalogue that makes clear why, in the early 90s, they were called upon to men...
1974 Productions returns to Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre
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1974 Productions returns to Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre

"1974 Productions" returns to Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre this July presenting their first musical collaboration, with "Make Your Mark Productions" presenting I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. With Book and Lyrics by Joe DiPietro and Music by Jimmy Roberts. This celebration of the mating game takes on the truths and myths behind the eternal conundrum known as "the Relationship". Act 1 explores the journey from dating and waiting to love and marriage, while act two reveals the agonies and triumphs of in laws and newborns, trips in the family car and pick-up techniques of the geriatric set. This hilarious musical pays tribute to those who have loved and lost, to those who have fallen on their face and to those who have dared to ask, "what are you doing Saturday night?" Pla...
Out of My Head: Alan Watts Is Alive and Well…Dead – The Cockpit
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Out of My Head: Alan Watts Is Alive and Well…Dead – The Cockpit

Joining writer and performer Jeremy Stockwell for the evening, is Alan Watts…in his head, anyway.  The free-talking, free-thinking, hippie philosopher drifts in and out of Stockwell’s on-stage consciousness, to share life’s questions, but does he have the answers?  And is the glass half full or half empty?  For those of you who do not know Alan Watts (and I was one of those), he was born in 1915 in Kent, and at an early age explored the question of consciousness, exploring it in his own mind, which was at odds with the norm.  He stood out as being different, not really fitting in with the standard beliefs of his parents and peers.  After declaring himself a Buddhist, his exploration of religion, free-love, and philosophical ideas as a school boy, planted the...