Yorkshire & Humber Archives - Page 2 of 36

5Mar

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Calamity Jane – Leeds Grand Theatre

All musicals need at least two showstoppers, and Calamity Jane exceeds that bar with songs to spare. Show opener The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away) would be enough on its own for any self-respecting posse of musical theatre fans, but when you throw in the Oscar winning Secret Love, plus an utterly bonkers ahistorical plot, then it’s time to saddle up for a fun night out in Dakota’s Wild West. Calamity Jane is a stagecoach driver in Deadwood where her sparring partner gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok helps keep the peace, and when a local saloon singer is unmasked as a drag act she hightails it to Chicago to persuade famed performer Adelaide Adams to come back to Deadwood. But the brash and excitable Calamity - who as the folk of Deadwood sing is Careless With The Truth - is aptly ...

Pig Heart Boy – Sheffield Theatres Playhouse

5Mar

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Pig Heart Boy – Sheffield Theatres Playhouse

This play with a big heart is based on the novel by Malorie Blackman and newly adapted by Winsome Pinnock, Pig Heart Boy is an emotive and thought-provoking stage play. With the just the right amount of suggestion opposed to detail, this educational production aimed at the young adult audience, provides plenty of room for discussion both before and after. As all good theatre in education, we are introduced to the moral dilemma and allowed to consider, ruminate and make up our own minds as to the ethical/moral issue. Cameron is awaiting a heart transplant after a childhood illness severely weaken his own. With the clock ticking and his life on hold, unable to do the things his friends do and live life to the full, he is offered a pioneering, top secret and some say - unethical option of ...

2Mar

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The House Party – Leeds Playhouse

Miss Julie is one of the great totems of naturalistic writing and that gives Laura Lomas full licence to update August Stringberg’s text from a Swedish mansion to an upscale London apartment as a raucous house party goes off the rails Lomas also makes the main protagonists mismatched eighteen-year-olds as hidden passions and enmities between the trio are slowly exposed over an intense 90 minutes told straight through. Despite the update Lomas does keep to the key principles of naturalism by making the whole scenarios realistic, the characters are most definitely flesh and blood with all the flaws that brings, and they are informed by their heredity and environment. Our Julie is an entitled, but damaged, posh kid who is throwing a boozy eighteen birthday party to spite her absent rich...

Only Fools and Horses: The Hit Musical – Leeds Grand

26Feb

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Only Fools and Horses: The Hit Musical – Leeds Grand

Once upon a time before catch up TV millions of people used to sit around in their millions on Christmas Day to watch hit shows with Only Fools and Horses being an annual festive ratings buster. So, it was obvious it would become a stage show, but what was more surprising that the antics of dodgy Peckham street trader Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter and his gormless bruv Rodney would end up as the sort of musical Cockney knees up you might have dahn the boozer. Thankfully the producers have gone for early Fools and Horses before the show really jumped the shark when the Trotters actually became millionaires, so Granddad is their sidekick rather than that unfunny buffoon Uncle Albert. The TV series was created by legendary comedy writer John Sullivan, and his son Jim, working with comedy grea...

The Merchant of Venice 1936 – Leeds Playhouse

21Feb

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Merchant of Venice 1936 – Leeds Playhouse

There’s always a feeling of trepidation when creatives shift The Bard’s words into a more contemporary setting, but this production of an always controversial play completely resonates with the troubled times we live in This adaptation by former Eastender Tracy-Ann Oberman and director Brigid Larmour is set in 1936 around the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End as working class Jews and their allies stood together to kick Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists off their streets. Here the characters are on both sides of this bitter political battle. Sound familiar? Oberman is the first female Shylock becoming an East End money lender living off Cable Street who strikes a deal with Fascist noble Antonio, which has disastrous consequences for the single mum. This is a l...

21Feb

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Romeo & Juliet – Hull New Theatre

What word describes a ballet that is more than just the choreography? “Drambalet” is the perfect description of the production I enjoyed on Thursday night, when the Varna International Ballet and Orchestra company brought its production of Romeo & Juliet to Hull. This most famous of William Shakespeare’s stories was brought to life by a musical score composed by Sergei Prokofiev, in 1935, who, according to historic reports, endeavoured to model his work on the idea of a drambalet - “a ballet rooted in dramatic storytelling”. And it’s to his rousing music, played live by an amazing orchestra, conducted by Peter Tuleshkov, that the most talented performers danced and acted out the tale of the star-crossed lovers. Set in Renaissance Verona, Italy, the huge backdrop throughout, mo...

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – Sheffield Lyceum

20Feb

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – Sheffield Lyceum

High Flying Fantasy with scrumptious special effects. With Music and Lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman the well-known 1968 children’s musical fantasy film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in its stage adaptation by Jeremy Sams soars into the Sheffield Lyceum. With the original book written by the Bond/007 creator Ian Fleming and direction by Thom Southerland, choreography by Karen Bruce and Morgan Large as Set and Costume Designer this production as all the elements to fly high… literally!! The eight piece orchestra sound ‘toot sweet’ under the baton of MD Jessica Viner filling the auditorium with the familiar and much loved tunes right from the opening Entr’Acte. The Story - Inventor Caractacus Potts transforms an old race car into a magical flying vehicle that transports hi...

19Feb

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

All Blood Runs Red – Leeds Playhouse

An intimating the dog show is always a meta challenge, so you knew there was a need to pay attention as they rigorously stress tested Jean Luc Godard’s idea that ‘a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order’. This company has always played with form and narrative structure as Mancunian actor Morgan Bailey tells the mainly forgotten story of adventurer Eugene Bullard, as he interweaves his own experiences in France playing a black GI in his first feature film. To add another layer he tells the story of wanting to pitch a movie of Bullard’s life after he fled the attempted lynching of his father in the deep south in the early twentieth century. Bailey also wrote this piece with the company’s Co-Artistic Director Andrew Quick, who was also fas...

Mary and the Hyenas – Hull Truck Theatre

13Feb

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Mary and the Hyenas – Hull Truck Theatre

Wednesday evening saw me heading to the theatre for the second time in a week, to review the life story of a woman who, to my great shame, I had never heard of before. Mary Wollstonecraft is her name, and six super talented performers brought her story to life at the Hull Truck Theatre, when it hosted Mary and the Hyenas. The crowds flocked in for this world premiere, written by Hull playwright Maureen Lennon with original music by singer-songwriter Billy Nomates. Born in London, in 1759, Mary’s childhood was spent in the market town of Beverley, a short distance from Hull, in East Yorkshire, after her family moved there in 1768. The show starts at the end of her life, in 1797, as she is giving birth to her second daughter, Mary (who went on to find fame writing Frankenstein). ...

12Feb

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Ghost Stories – Sheffield Lyceum

Psychological Horror with a twist! Tension… Suspense…Atmosphere… Imagination… Unsettling to say the least! Ghost Stories the theatrical experience has recently been made into a film but still remains something unique in its ‘here and now’ form on the stage. This One Act production was written 15 years ago by Jeremy Dyson (Co-writer of the much acclaimed League of Gentlemen) and Award winning Actor/Director Andy Nyman and has played in eight different far flung countries and now Ghost Stories is once again currently touring the UK. Reviewers of Ghost Stories are asked not to divulge the plot or secrets of the show, and I will certainly adhere to that. Thus, Ghost Stories remains a rare thing; in a world of information technology; a modern experience you have to see ‘spoiler free’. ...