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17Mar

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Animal Farm – Leeds Playhouse

People can be beasts so what better way to explore the mysteries of the human psyche than through a bunch of animals who rise up to take over a farm. George Orwell’s Animal Farm was on one level an allegory as anthropomorphic animals banish their brutal human masters to create their own society, but underneath the metaphors it remains a pin sharp examination of human nature. The novella was inspired by Orwell’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War when Stalinist zealots undermined the leftist Popular Front letting Franco’s Fascists take power and serves as a salient reminder that it takes only one monster to smash democracy. Animal Farm is celebrating its 8oth anniversary just as populism rears its ugly head across the world, so there has rarely been a more important time for it to b...

17Mar

By Angela KellyNo Comments

North West

The Magic Flute – The Lowry

The Magic Flute is arguably an opera that welcomes many newcomers to the world of an opera performance for the first time. Directed by James Brining for Opera North, this particular opera is certainly aimed at all ages. With singing and spoken dialogue, plus screens at the side of the stage to follow the words, it is a reassuringly easy opera for all to follow. The Magic Flute is an opera with two acts and with music by Mozart. The story is essentially about Prince Tamino who is yearning to discover love. It relays his quest to do so and provides audience with a story centred in a world of make belief. Prince Tamino is given various trials to ensure he can gain the love of Princess Pamina. He is accompanied by Papagano, the bird man and the two completely opposite characters share ...

13Mar

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

The Little Prince – London Coliseum

A dazzling flight of imagination, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s, ‘The Little Prince’ has long enchanted readers with its poetic storytelling and profound themes. In this visually stunning and spellbinding adaptation at the London Coliseum, the tale is reimagined as an immersive blend of dance, aerial acrobatics, haunting audio, and digital projection. The result is a mesmerizing theatrical journey that captures the novella’s heart with elegance and innovation. Following sold-out performances in Paris, Sydney, Dubai, and a season on Broadway, and under the expert direction and choreography of Anne Tournié, the production unfolds in a dreamlike style, relying on movement and imagery rather than traditional dialogue, but accompanied by beautiful storytelling narration. At the centre of this c...

Klezmer: Old and New – Manchester Jewish Museum

13Mar

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Klezmer: Old and New – Manchester Jewish Museum

Out with the old and in with the new? Well, sometimes it’s actually better to bring together the best of them which in this case resulted in a wonderful evening of klezmer, performed by Susi Evans and Szilvia Csaranko – a klezmer clarinet and accordion duo – with support from the Michael Kahan Kapelye, in the beautiful surround of this former Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. Evans and Csaranko perform tunes from old manuscripts, collected in Jewish villages in Ukraine between 1912-1914 and only recently rediscovered in Kyiv. With no defined chords, these are melodies played by generations of klezmer musicians at Jewish weddings and other celebrations, contemporaneous with the likes of Beethoven and undoubtedly influencing the operatic opus of Offenbach and Verdi, and these informed the...

Pricilla Queen Of The Desert – Edinburgh Festival Theatre

13Mar

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Pricilla Queen Of The Desert – Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Pricilla Queen Of The Desert is a campy and energetic story of self-acceptance, queer love and learning that whilst not everyone will like or get you, the ones who do are the most important. We follow three drag performers as they travel from Sydney to Alice in order to perform an important gig for Anthony’s wife. Here we get all the fun bickerings of a group of drag queens as well as a not so nice look into the stigmas and hate that comes within the role. It’s not all glitz and glamour and between all the catchy musical numbers (and there’s a lot) we can find an insight into the troubles of those within the drag scene, from transphobic comments to parental struggles and even violence. Our cast is headed by the wonderful Greg McCafferty playing the role of Tick, a character strugglin...

A Streetcar Named Desire – Crucible Theatre

13Mar

By Tracey BellNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

A Streetcar Named Desire – Crucible Theatre

All that exceptional theatre should be. An A-Z of how it should be done! Tennesse Williams’ Pulitzer Prize winning classic tale of emotional issues is given a splendidly simmering but still honest revival at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield this month. We are instantly transported to the heady, sultry streets of New Orleans in the 1940’s where a jadedly delicate and neurotic southern belle, Blanche Dubois seeks solace with her sister Stella and her brutish husband Stanley. As a battle for Stella’s heart is warred between Blanche and Stanley and the southern stifling heat is only matched by the intense heat of the futile feud. Blanche’s southern belle charm and airs and graces are transparent to Stanley and secrets of the past are unearthed, thus both sisters must choose between reality...

13Mar

By Sadie PearsonNo Comments

London

Weather Girl – Soho Theatre

A fiery tragicomedy and scorching analysis of our climate crisis, Weather Girl at Soho Theatre is a rallying cry for the necessity of protecting our planet. Weather Girl follows Stacey (Julia McDermott), a Californian weather girl who may look like a bleach-blonde-Barbie ‘perfect woman’, but in reality, is anything but. With a Stanley cup full of Prosecco, she is neurotic, impulsive, and a self-confessed alcoholic. See, California is on fire, and this is a fact which Stacey cannot stomach. As the wildfires consume her home, her life begins to be consumed with it. At the heart of this piece the question: how lost are we from nature, and therefore, from our humanity? Watkins delivers a script which boasts a multi-layered exploration climate change to match it’s multi-layered narrative....

12Mar

By Hannah EsnoufNo Comments

North West

Blood Brothers – Liverpool Empire

A centenary celebration is a milestone in itself, but having Liverpool’s iconic musical back in the city’s legendary theatre for its one-hundredth birthday is a new level of special. Audience members may have watched Blood Brothers countless times, I being not from the city, have only studied Willy Russell’s play, never seeing it performed. So, I had all hopes this would live up to expectation. Bringing Sean Jones back to re-imagine Mickey was a stellar move by Bob Tomson and Bill Kenwright. He was at home in that character and his ease in the role from age seven to eighteen is nothing but smooth and effortless. Together with Joe Sleight’s equally natural and charming Eddie, they make a magnicent pair, full of vivacity until the very end. This musical will never die. Just like the Em...

12Mar

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

The Glass Menagerie – The Yard Theatre

When the audience walked into the theatre, an actor was spray painting the wall of the stage, and smoke was being pumped into the air, a fitting start for an exceptional and anarchic evening of theatre. Tennessee Williams' classic play focuses on the Wingfields. Abandoned long ago by their father, the family are waiting on the promise of change, symbolised by the 'gentlemen caller' a figure who might come into the family's life and marry the daughter, Laura (Eva Morgan), giving her 'security', allaying her mother's (Sharon Small) fears, and allowing the son, Tom (Tom Varey), to be free of his obligations to them. What follows is a tender exploration of repressed desire. Photo: Manuel Harlan Jay Miller's direction is teeming with creative energy and takes an anarchic approach to sp...

The Space Between the Sheets – Lion and Unicorn Theatre

12Mar

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Space Between the Sheets – Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Gripping from its opening moments, this sixty-minute play is a two-hander that invites audiences to saddle on up and hang on for dear life. Detailing the one-night encounter of a Stratford born boy and a Texas bred girl. The Space Between the Sheets gets into all the nit, grit, and gristle of cross-cultural connection without even getting out of bed. Sexy and fun as Estelle’s “American Boy” and heartachingly funny as a Dolly Parton medley, the rare and gentle thing this play explores isn’t as butterfly-like as love but has many of its flighty and fascinating qualities. Writer and star Kelsey Ann Moebius takes on the role of the capricious outsider, a young American actor in London fizzing with loneliness and bristling with indignation at the fractured society that has left her so...