North West Archives - Page 6 of 174

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

24Oct

By Angela KellyNo Comments

North West

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

Arguably the most well-known of all Roald Dahls novels, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is being performed at Altrincham Garrick Playhouse this week. Directed by Joseph Meighan, it is also a story with very popular film versions and so is a brave undertaking for any theatre to perform.For those few who have never heard of the story it is essentially about young Charlie Bucket and a winning golden ticket that entitles the holder to a rare entry into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Wonka, the eccentric and largely unseen owner of the factory, meets Charlie and the rest of the winners and the story ensues with much surrealism, a lot of sugar and some strange 'umpa lumpa' people along the way!Charlie Bucket is performed by Rui Yang Lau. He performs as Dahl described Charlie in his novels. W...

Come From Away – Northwich Memorial Court

23Oct

By Damian RiverolNo Comments

North West

Come From Away – Northwich Memorial Court

This evening The Musical Theatre Company transported us to Gander and treated us to the emotional true story of 7000 people who were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland on September 11th 2001, when the world stopped and lives were changed forever. TMTC are one of the first amateur companies to get the rights to Come From Away and they put everything into telling this story with as much truth and emotion as humanly possible. With Direction from Ben Ireson, Musical Direction from Michael J Scott and Choreography from Ceris Shadwell, you can feel that they’ve thrown all they have in to this story and along with the incredibly talented cast and the on stage band, you become lost in this world and go from laughing to crying within seconds. Come From Away is a complete ensemble piece with the...

23Oct

By Johanna RobertsNo Comments

North West

Breaking the Code – Liverpool Playhouse

Occasionally, a production comes along that is so remarkable on so many levels you know it is going to stay with you for a very long time, and the current production of Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code fits that bill. I say ‘current production’, as I first saw this in London with Derek Jacobi, so my expectations were understandably high. However, this revived production surpassed all those expectations and then some. While the central element of Turing’s life is his work at Bletchley Park in breaking the Enigma code, the play reaches back into his boyhood and afterwards to his life as an academic to explore what inspired his brilliance at mathematics and cyphers and how society’s attitude towards his homosexuality drove him to suicide. The first two scenes, where the action jumps f...

22Oct

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Albert Herring – The Lowry

English National Opera’s first official foray North sees director and designer Antony McDonald delightfully serve up Britten’s 1947 witty comic opera Albert Herring exposing the whimsy and hypocrisy at the heart of post-war British society. Lady Billows (Emma Bell) and her committee’s – aide Florence Pike (Carolyn Dobbin), headteacher Miss Wordsworth (Aoife Miskelly), vicar, Mr Gedge (Eddie Woods), Mayor, Mr Upfold (Mark Le Brocq), and Superintendent Budd (Andri Björn Róbertsson) of the local constabulary – attempts to identify a May Queen for the village come unstuck as they realise all the local girls are lacking the necessary virtuosity. The only option is the shy and reserved Albert Herring (Caspar Singh) who works at his mother’s (Leah-Marian Jones) greengrocers, where he is regula...

22Oct

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Fiddler on the Roof – Palace Theatre

This 2024 Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production has been cleverly restaged for an extensive UK tour, landing at the grand old Palace Theatre on Oxford Road for a two week stay from this evening, Whilst retaining all of the energy that makes this one of the most popular and profitable musicals in theatre history, Director Jordan Fein manages to place a liberal and humanitarian message about the plight of refugees in amongst a fantastic evening’s entertainment. The story centres around Anatevka, a village in Tsarist Russia at the start of the 20th Century, where Tevye (Matthew Woodyat) is the local Milkman, a pious soul struggling to bring up his five daughters with his wife Golde (Jodie Jacobs) in poverty, subject to the cruel whims of an uncaring system. His three oldest girls...

Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir

20Oct

By Johanna RobertsNo Comments

North West

Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir

This afternoon saw Vasiliy Petrenko making one of his welcome returns to the Philharmonic Hall, this time to conduct the orchestra in three pieces: Liadovs’s Baba-Yaga; Haydn’s Concerto in D Major for Cello and Orchestra (following a change in programme) and Shostakovich’s monumental Symphony No. 7. Baba-Yaga, while lasting only three minutes, gave the orchestra ample opportunity to demonstrate their flair for storytelling, creating drama and tension to convey the menace of the iron-toothed witch stalking the forest in search of human children to eat, though the final chord suggests that – this time at least – her prey escaped. While the original programme had scheduled a concerto by the Russian-born composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas, reduced rehearsal time due to the breakdown of the...

19Oct

By Harry AltyNo Comments

North West

Black Power Desk – The Lowry

Set with the backdrop of the Black British civil rights movement in the 1970s, Urielle Klein-Mekongo’s original musical Black Power Desk shines a light on the underrepresented figurehead activists of the time. This heart-felt, humorous and powerful piece showcases that although times have moved on, the struggles of our cast of characters are just as relatable today. Mixing in real news reports from the time, the musical quickly creates an authentic representation of the mistreatment of the Black community during this era of British history. Our story centres around two sisters, Celia and Dina, who must navigate their place in a world that seems poised to tear them down, whilst also discover who they are after the passing of their mother. From the moment Rochelle Rose enters the stage as...

The Perfect Murder – Rainhill Village Hall

17Oct

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

The Perfect Murder – Rainhill Village Hall

Director Rosetta Parker is guilty as charged for delivering the perfect murder drama with this production of Hugh Janes’ adaptation of a Jeffrey Archer short story. Set in England, the play centres around the murder of a young woman, and as the drama unfolds, it becomes clear that John (Peter Cliffe) is somehow involved in it and he confesses as such to his wife, Elizabeth (Tracey Duffy), who is determined to keep him out of prison. The police are soon on the case in the form of DI Simmons (Gerald Walker) and Sgt Davies (Rob Williams) and as they – and us – are bombarded with clues and the occasional sleight of hand, it is Paul (Dave Asbridge) who ends up getting charged. But did he commit it though? At No.4 Court of the Old Bailey the Judge (Liz Munro) has to decide with the c...

17Oct

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

North West

Young Frankenstein – Hope Mill Theatre

Mel Brooks’ musical adaptation of the 1974 black and white horror comedy Young Frankenstein made its UK debut in Newcastle back in 2017, before taking the West End by storm. Now, in celebration of Hope Mill’s 10th anniversary, this spine-tingling spoof has been reanimated for the spooky season. When esteemed neurosurgeon Dr Frederick Frankenstein learns that he has inherited his infamous grandfather’s estate, a trip to Transylvania soon entices him into revisiting Victor’s outrageous experiments. Slick direction from Nick Winston ensures an excellent blend of sci-fi and silliness transfers from screen to stage; from flouting horror film tropes to dancing with double meanings, one scene effortlessly flows into the next as Dr Frederick and co descend into chaos. This remains both a sat...

16Oct

By Dan GrimesNo Comments

North West

1984 – Harlequin Theatre, Northwich

I have never visited the Harlequin Theatre in Northwich before and, my goodness, what a little gem it is! Unprepossessing from the outside, this 96-seater black box theatre is tucked away amidst cul-de-sacs and industrial units on the outskirts of Northwich town centre. It’s an intimate venue, which the Harlequin Players are clearly very adept at using to its full potential (it has been their home for forty-one years now). It proved to be the perfect space for their latest production, an in-house adaptation of George Orwell’s seminal dystopian novel, 1984. The narrative of the play centres on Winston Smith, an Ingsoc Party worker in the Ministry of Truth, and his conflict, both internal and external, with the regime, of which he is part. Set in a horrific near-future where totalitar...