Yorkshire & Humber Archives - North West End UK

25Mar

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Cher Show – Sheffield Lyceum

The Cher Show – A new musical has a book by Rick Elise and is brought to the Sheffield Lyceum Theatre by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC and Croft House Theatre Company. Originally premiering in Chicago in 2018, before transferring to Broadway, the Cher Show had its UK premier with a tour in 2022/23. Celebrating the remarkable story of Cher’s life with its highest heights and lowest lows and set to a back catalogue of 31 songs that encapsulate the longevity and apparent timelessness of her talents and persona … not forgetting her looks that seem to defy time! Then there is the Bob Mackie costumes, always fabulous, always spectacular and always head turning. A six-decade career, an icon and a memory that shaped her life, ‘the power is in the song’. Expertly directed and ...

25Mar

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Fawlty Towers – Bradford Alhambra

Sometimes when a beloved sitcom gets tired and introduces daft storylines like Happy Days did it’s said to have ‘jumped the shark’. That’s something you can never say about Fawlty Towers which ran for just two perfectly formed series in the seventies. Monty Python legend John Cleese and Connie Booth’s masterpiece has regularly won the greatest ever British sitcom title, so the increasingly deranged antics of the world’s worst hotelier, Basil Fawlty, was always going to get a stage adaptation. Cleese has adapted his greatest solo work that was based on a torrid time the Python team had when they booked a stay with a very strange and rude hotelier. In many ways in our febrile political world the always rude Basil’s xenophobia, snobbery and misogyny seem to be back in vogue. Cleese w...

21Mar

By NewsdeskNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Living -The Crucible Playhouse

Sheffield Theatre’s latest production ‘Living’ is the ambitious brainchild of local playwright Leo Butler, chronicling the life of a young family who move into the Burngreave suburb of the city and how politics shapes their lifestyle, relationships livelihoods and belief systems. It’s unflinching and bold, and this is a production long to live in the memory of those fortunate to see it. Sarah Beaton’s set design is simple yet formidable. There’s an impermanent quality to the wooden furnishing of the space that evokes the required domesticity needed for the play to operate within as well as a timeless quality that permits jumping between decades. Projection is used to establish time as well as more dynamic functions which are used with a careful consideration for their artistic merit and...

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical – Leeds Grand Theatre

20Mar

By Phoebe Olivia Sian HobsonNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical – Leeds Grand Theatre

This show is more than good for the soul, an explosive and powerful performance was put on display last night at Leeds grand theatre, and we have Elle Ma-Kinga N’zuzi to thank for it. Completely engulfing her role as Tina/Anna Mae from her voice, accent, style, right down to her on stage presence and iconic dance moves. She had every member of the audience under her spell, thinking that they were truly in the presence of Tina herself. Photo: Johan Persson Picture this glitter, tassels, bright lights, a live band, backing dancers and an upbeat audience, a vibrant and infectious atmosphere combined with Tina turner’s number one hits. This is what it looks like on the surface, but executive producers Tina Turner herself and Erwin Bach work hard to demonstrate Anna Mae’s life on a deeper...

Good News! It’s Been Destroyed – The Beaten Track, Sheffield

19Mar

By Nathan DunnNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Good News! It’s Been Destroyed – The Beaten Track, Sheffield

Bróccán Tyzack-Carlin’s latest live stand-up project has taken its first steps in the capital and Manchester before finding its way to Sheffield, where I was fortunate to catch it. ‘Good News! It’s Been Destroyed’ is a full-length stand-up comedy show that orbits around the hopelessness of current affairs, allowing ourselves to be angry and use the energy of that anger to laugh. It takes on serious topics but is never too serious to be misinterpreted as a reductive polemic. That said, it is full of comical diatribes and carefully crafted anecdotes that will leave your face worn from laughter. Tyzack-Carlin makes our lives easier. He goes by ‘Brogan’, as opposed to the Irish pronunciation and spelling of his name (which he likes to remind us has never caused him any difficulty in his...

The Grand Babylon Hotel – Hull Truck Theatre

13Mar

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Grand Babylon Hotel – Hull Truck Theatre

London’s Savoy Hotel became a second home to the famous author Arnold Bennett, who, it is said, based his 1901 novel The Grand Babylon Hotel on the luxury establishment. And on Thursday evening, watched playwright and ex-Coronation Street actress, Deborah McAndrew’s adaptation at the Hull Truck Theatre. McAndrew is a co-founder (along with the show’s director Conrad Nelson) of the Claybody Theatre, based in Stoke-on-Trent, and it’s that venue’s production, in association with the New Vic, that is gracing Hull Truck’s stage this week. Classed as a “rollicking comedy thriller”, my seat in row B afforded me a grand view of the stage setting - a patterned floor in greys, white and black upon which stood a reception desk, table, chairs, suitcases, brass Bellboy trolley and a butler’s s...

The Ladies Football Club – Crucible Theatre

11Mar

By Jo TillotsonNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Ladies Football Club – Crucible Theatre

The popularity of women’s football has grown exponentially recently, bolstered by England’s back-to-back European titles. And every good movement has a good origin story behind it. And if you are thinking, “I don’t know anything about football, maybe this one isn’t for me…” then give me a couple of minutes of your time while I try to persuade you otherwise. I am not a football fan, at all. It’s not something I grew up with, and it all feels a bit alien to me. But I am a fan of women being brilliant, women telling stories, and women supporting and promoting other women, and that is what you get here. The Ladies Football Club, written by Stefano Massini and adapted for this production by Tim Firth, takes us back to the first moments of women’s football. It is World War I. Most men are ...

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Hull New Theatre

11Mar

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Hull New Theatre

I have a bone to pick with the cast of Hessle Theatre Company. Please have more consideration for the afflicted when you perform Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, as you did at the Hull New Theatre on Tuesday evening. I was the afflicted in question. You see, I had a huge cold sore on the corner of my mouth, meaning every time you made me laugh - which was often - the pesky sore cracked painfully. Luckily for you, the pain was worth it, so you’re all forgiven. This local company continuously dishes out productions that wouldn’t look out of place on a West End stage and the venue was very well-attended on Tuesday. “Joseph” as it’s popularly known, was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics), in 1967 and is still a favourite with theatregoers. ...

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Drama Studio, Sheffield

5Mar

By Nathan DunnNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Drama Studio, Sheffield

The Company brought Oscar Wilde’s philosophical gothic great ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ to Sheffield’s Drama Studio this week, and audiences lucky to attend are in for an impressive, arresting night of theatre. This particular adaptation was born from the brain of George Shore, who co-directs this piece with Mark Todd. Shore’s script is refined and full of wry humour. In many cases the world-building is contingent upon the script, and here Shore exercises expressive vernacular with all the appropriate didactic bombast of Wilde’s upper-class late Victorian realm. I really enjoyed Shore’s reliance on subtext in dissecting the narrative, leaving an air of mystique surrounding the picture and the terms of Dorian’s negotiation with it. It’s a pointed, concise text that Shore has crafte...

Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile – Grand Opera House York

4Mar

By Phoebe Olivia Sian HobsonNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile – Grand Opera House York

Oooooh la la, what a magnificent performance! J’adore Lucy Bailey’s portrayal of Agatha Christie’s renowned murder mystery ‘Death on the Nile’, a truly nail biting and explosive narrative well told, by none other than Hercule Poirot himself (Mark Hadfield). The famous who done it on stage, lived up to its beloved reputation and more, despite the familiarity of the story the anticipation and action still swallow you whole, slowly and then all at once, the same way that the moon encapsulates that last bit of sunlight at sunset. Lucy Bailey’s take, stays both quintessentially Agatha Christie and humble, unravelling the murder case but at the same time humouring the audience with the obviousness of the plot. Mark Hadfield playing Monsieur Poirot fascinated the audience in fi...