Yorkshire & Humber Archives - Page 5 of 26

3Dec

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Oliver! – Leeds Playhouse

Over the last few years Leeds Playhouse have offered all sorts of challenging festive spectaculars but this deliciously dark revival of Lionel Bart’s masterpiece Oliver! is the best yet. You need some nerve to take on such a beloved musical, and Oscar laden movie, so the Playhouse’s Artistic Director James Brining has cleverly placed his version in the round. Colin Richmond’s design leaves the cavernous Quarry space full of raised spaces and walkways, becoming the sort of dank and dark Victorian London that Charles Dickens painted teeming with all human life and plenty of menace. Brining is a great director of children, and when a well drilled junior ensemble sings and dances through a lively Food Glorious Food it’s clear a big and diverse cast have used their time in the rehearsal ...

Robin Hood: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto – Leeds City Varieties

3Dec

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Robin Hood: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Panto – Leeds City Varieties

After a long year of often serious shows, and the world in chaos, it’s just nice to sit back in a historic theatre to watch a show as comfortable as a pair of old slippers. The Rock ‘n’ Roll brand is pretty much bombproof from criticism combining a perfunctory attempt at a classic story - which is just an excuse for classic panto madness - while a gang of actor-musicians swap instruments knocking out hits for the young and old. Only in panto could you get covers of The Clash and Taylor Swift songs, that all have tenuous links to the ‘narrative’, and no-one bats an eyelid. This year poor old Robin Hood got the Peter Rowe treatment as this master of the most British of theatrical traditions weaves in sight gags, puppets, pratfalls, fart gags, corpsing, all the classic call and respons...

30Nov

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Nutcracker – Leeds Grand Theatre

After enduring endless plays of Merry Xmas Everyone trundling round the shops you know the festive season is finally here when Northern Ballet stage their annual extravaganza. This year The Nutcracker is back, and once again you have that feeling they’ve run into the props store and gone a bit mad to produce a lavish winter wonderland. David Nixon’s colourful and stylish costumes probably caused a national shortage of sequins and taffeta. It’s a wonderfully bonkers fairy tale as a mysterious magician sends ingénue Clara off on a surreal journey where she survives a battle between giant mice and life size toy soldiers, before being magically transported to a wintery wonderland where meets her Nutcracker Prince. It’s all beautifully realised by designer Charles Cusick Smith who works ...

30Nov

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Pinocchio – Hull Truck Theatre

Theatregoers braved freezing temperatures on Wednesday evening to see a production of Pinocchio at the Hull Truck Theatre. It never got much warmer inside, to be honest - so was glad I wore socks, scarf, gloves, but I never expected to keep them on once seated. But that’s my only gripe on what was a magical night of colour and energy. Everyone knows the age-old story of how poor, lonely carpenter, Gepetto, carved a puppet out of a piece of pine he found in the forest. In this thoroughly enjoyable adaptation by Mike Kenny, the pine was left behind by Stromboli (Patrick Dineen), ringmaster of a travelling circus, who was transporting his puppets, Colombine (Deb Pugh) and Harlequino (Niall Ransome). As Gepetto (James Clyde) picked up the pine log in the forest, it lit up, havi...

Calendar Girls The Musical – Hull New Theatre

29Nov

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Calendar Girls The Musical – Hull New Theatre

I remember buying the original Women’s Institute nude calendar way back in 1999. It might be worth something now - but, alas, it probably went to the great recycler in the sky. Calendar Girls The Musical brought the story of the calendar’s inception to the Hull New Theatre on Tuesday evening. All the action takes place in the village hall of the small Yorkshire village of Cracoe. Under a fabulous vaulted ceiling (a remarkable stage design) we witnessed seven local ladies attending their usual WI meeting. Some took the proceedings seriously, others found them a bit mundane. This motley tight-knit group - Annie Clarke (Tanya Franks), Ruth (Maureen Nolan), Jessie (Lyn Paul), Chris (Amy Robbins), Marie (Paula Tappenden), Celia (Marti Webb) and Cora (Honeysuckle Weeks) - are thr...

Jesus Christ Superstar – Bradford Alhambra

28Nov

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Jesus Christ Superstar – Bradford Alhambra

When Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a rock opera with a provocative title about the last days of Christ one potential investor described it as ‘the worst idea in history’ so with no-one willing to put it on a stage they stuck it out as a platinum selling double album….and the rest is history. Britain’s greatest musical theatre duo loosely based Jesus Christ Superstar on the Gospels and for a show no one wanted it ended up setting a record for the longest run in London. I have a simple proposition for what makes a great musical, and that they always need a minimum of two showstoppers – preferably one at the end of each half – but this is packed full of the duo’s best tunes. Everything’s Going to Be Alright, I Don’t Know How To Love Him, Herod’s Song and Gethsemane are all killer...

21Nov

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Sister Act – Bradford Alhambra

Big Hair. Big tunes. Big Heart. That’s Sister Act in a nutshell as the stage show based on the smash hit Whoppi Goldberg movie where a nightclub singer goes on the run and hides in a nunnery gets back on the road. The sister in question is wannabe star Deloris Van Cartier who witnesses her gangster lover commit a murder in 1970s Philadelphia and goes on the lam. She finds sanctuary in a local convent attached to a dilapidated church under the watchful eye of a Mother Superior who is British for some reason. Culture clash is one of the classic tropes of musical theatre as earthy Deloris finds her own calling training the worst choir on the planet to get hip with the Lord’s word. Shock, horror, Mother Superior and her sisterhood of nuns learn something from the worldliness the flam...

15Nov

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

The Full Monty – Bradford Alhambra

The Full Monty was one of a group of films shining a light on the traumatic impact Thatcherism had on Northern communities, but unlike the risible Billy Elliot it did it by never pulling its punches. Simon Beaufoy has adapted his movie script for a stage version of how six jobless Sheffield blokes fought back to become unlikely strippers and let it all hang out to pay off their debts. The stage version is far funnier than the film, although it still tackles some big themes including class, suicide, ageism, body shaming, gay visibility, and the utter corrosion of the human spirit when you’re cast on the scrapheap. Beaufoy wisely still holds it together round the core theme that hope can spring from despair in often the most unlikely of ways like getting your kit off. For fans of the ...

8Nov

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Dirty Dancing – Hull New Theatre

The first couple of minutes of Dirty Dancing, at the Hull New Theatre on Tuesday night, was in the dark - had the spotlights failed? It soon became apparent the darkness was on purpose and it made the sudden burst of colour that followed even more memorable and exciting. And the excitement lasted until the very last - make that lasting - standing ovation for a production that is nothing short of perfect. We in the packed theatre were transported back to 1963 America and Kellerman’s Holiday Resort. Regular visitors to the resort are Dr Jake Houseman (Jack Loy), his wife Marjorie (Taryn Sudding) and daughters, Lisa (Daisy Steere) and Frances “Baby” (Kira Malou). At 16 or 17 years of age, Baby really is the baby of the family - but, boy, she certainly grows up thanks to Keller...

8Nov

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Life of Pi – Bradford Alhambra

When Yann Martel wrote the mega selling Life of Pi he probably thought it too technically challenging for it ever to become an Olivier winning play, but thanks to the magic of puppetry this epic tale of one man lost on a raft with only a Bengal Tiger for company really works onstage. Life of Pi was such a hit with over ten million readers worldwide that then U.S. President Barack Obama wrote to Martel describing his novel as ‘an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling.’ Obama didn’t specify which God, although most deities get a namecheck here, and you don’t need to believe in a higher power to enjoy Life of Pi. The former President was spot on about the storytelling as aside from the forest of allegories this is a rip-roaring theatrical experience, albeit one wi...