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Everyone’s Talking About Musicals – Liverpool Theatre Festival

5Sep

By Hannah WildeNo Comments

North West

Everyone’s Talking About Musicals – Liverpool Theatre Festival

If, like me, you’re mad about musicals, “Everyone’s Talking About Musicals” is the perfect antidote to the humdrum of everyday life, a feel-good elixir that lets you escape reality and become submerged in the wonderful world of musicals - if only for a brief interlude. Produced by Pearson Productions & Curtis Productions, this show is the second of 16 specifically curated shows that make up this year’s second annual Liverpool Theatre Festival. Designed to kick off the city’s autumnal live entertainment calendar (1st - 12th September 2021), this celebration of the regional arts was first put on in 2020 as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year’s offering was a 9-day festival of drama, comedy, musical theatre, opera and cabaret designed to give the stagnant performin...

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – The Lowry

5Sep

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – The Lowry

His psychometric test might say he’s destined for life behind the wheel of a forklift truck but Jamie New harbours a secret wish - to be a drag queen. Welcome to the hottest ticket in town, as Everybody’s Talking About Jamie opens to a packed house at Salford’s Lowry, the first stop of the UK tour and ahead of the highly anticipated movie adaptation. Based on the real-life story of Jamie Campbell, from Jenny Popplewell’s 2011 documentary ‘Jamie: Drag Queen at 16’, it’s a tried and tested ‘coming of age’ tale that we’ve seen in many other guises – Billy Elliot; Our House; Hairspray to name a few. Here we swap ballet shoes for sequins as we follow 16year old Jamie who lives with his single mum, living hand to mouth and attempting to beat the odds despite jeers and bullying from clas...

Subdural Hematoma – Salford Arts Theatre

4Sep

By Amanda HodgsonNo Comments

North West

Subdural Hematoma – Salford Arts Theatre

Eleanor May Blackburn plays Eleanor May Blackburn in ‘Subdural Hematoma’, a one-act play that appears to draw inspiration from Eleanor’s own experiences recovering from a brain injury. In doing so, she utilises solo verbatim, audio, and physical theatre to share with her audience the many ups and downs of recovering in hospital. Central to Eleanor’s recovery are her family and friends. With poignancy and insight, she notes that as hard as recovering from a brain injury was for her, it was just as hard for those around her. The moments of Harry Potter tales read aloud by her father added fun and universality. While, her mother’s voice, read as diary entries chronicling Eleanor’s recovery, helped the audience visualise Eleanor’s stay in hospital and feel the passage of time. Audio recordi...

3Sep

By Brian MaddenNo Comments

North West

Proper Adult – Altrincham Garrick

Life is funny. When we're young we can't wait to be grown up to do all the things we can't do. And then when we're adults we wish we could relive our youth. That is exactly what 'Proper Adult' by Megan Relph captures. This is a short one woman show where we meet Rachel, who has just turned 18 and has started her first job. Although we soon realise she's not prepared for adulthood. New writing is always something I look forward to in the fringe, you have no idea what to expect. While I felt this was a good production with some nice moments, it was too short to really get emotionally invested in it. In its current format, this would work well as a warm up act, or as a series of short plays performed in one evening. Having said that I do think Relph has the bones of something here and w...

3Sep

By Louise PennNo Comments

North West

Alexithymia – GM Fringe Online

Alexithymia is a term used in psychiatry as “the inability to recognise or describe one’s own emotions”. Although not a core feature of autism, it can affect as many as 50% diagnosed with it. In Madison Weinhoffer’s short theatre piece, which runs at less than twenty-five minutes, we are following the journey of “Friend”, who is a lost being needing assistance to find their way back to who they are. The production starts as more art installation than theatre. Projected images and music add to a general sense of confusion and disorder. The letters which spell the title of the show mix and disintegrate as watch. Friend and voices engage as abstract images are shown on a landscape we can only partly see, but not fully appreciate. Then the show becomes more of a traditional theatre pi...

3Sep

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Dangerous Liaisons – Leeds Playhouse

Sexual power, cruelty and deceit. There surely can’t be a better mix for a ballet, and Northern Ballet’s artistic director David Nixon’s dynamic choreography makes the most of the antics of two French aristocratic sociopaths playing games with people’s minds and bodies because they can. This is Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ timeless tale of upper class amorality as the cunning Marquise de Mertueil sets her sparring partner Vicomte de Valmont the task to seduce the godly Madame de Tiourvel just for sport. But Valmont’s head is turned by de Tourvel with deadly results. Unlike some of their sumptuous productions Northern have gone for a stark stage with minimal period furniture that allows the eye to focus on Nixon’s sensitive and emotional choreography which manfully resists going ove...

25th Anniversary – BURN THE FLOOR – The Reunion

3Sep

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

25th Anniversary – BURN THE FLOOR – The Reunion

Strictly MEGASTARS join forces for reunion performances… The original Broadway production of Jason Gilkison’s BURN THE FLOOR is being recreated for a strictly limited tour in July 2022. “This Burn the Floor 25th anniversary will be such a one-time event for us - all our stars back on stage together again where they all began!” Jason Gilkison THE REUNION features some of the most celebrated alumni of Burn the Floor including Strictly Come Dancing’s Aljaž Škorjanec, Kevin Clifton, Janette Manrara, Karen Hauer, Dianne Buswell, Joanne Clifton, Luba Mushtuk, Kai Widdrington and Robin Windsor, plus more names to be announced. “To get this ‘dream team' back together on stage for a Burn the Floor reunion will be an event not to be missed.” Jason Gilkison BURN THE FLOOR is a breathta...

3Sep

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Noir Goes Stateside!

After a successful streaming run in the UK and Europe, the new play NOIR inspired by 40s and 50s black and white movies, will finally be available in America and the rest of the world as it joins the fantastic theatre streaming site OVERTURE+. Produced by the award-winning UK theatre company Vertigo Theatre Productions, NOIR tells the story of Veronica Smart (Emma Morgan), a beautiful 40-year-old woman with dreams of stardom and a 16-year marriage to Cliff Smart (John Tueart), a successful New York businessman. Now bored with life and the marriage decaying, she wants out, and she will do anything to make that happen. Meeting a group of teenagers at the local school where she works, including the rebellious but broken Jimmy Flynn (Richard Allen), sets in motion a plan that will include ...

Leeds Playhouse’s Alexander Ferris talks about telling refugee stories in Freedom Project

2Sep

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Interviews

Leeds Playhouse’s Alexander Ferris talks about telling refugee stories in Freedom Project

The desperate scenes at Kabul Airport, or people paddling in inflatables across the English Channel, act as a stark reminder we live in a very unstable world and Leeds Playhouse’s Freedom Project aims to highlight the experiences of unaccompanied minors coming to this country. Leeds has a proud history of welcoming people fleeing oppression, and the Playhouse was the UK’s first Theatre of Sanctuary. The programme offers a range of creative spaces for refugees and people seeking asylum to express themselves and create networks of support as they find their feet in a new country. There are now at least 20 similar projects across the country, and this challenging production is performed by Theatre of Sanctuary alumni Hossein Ahmadi and Mohammadreza Bazarbashi, who themselves came here a...

Bamalam Productions: All The Bens – 53Two

2Sep

By Alison BainesNo Comments

REVIEWS

Bamalam Productions: All The Bens – 53Two

I was lucky enough to be invited to 53Two in Manchester for Bamalam Productions’ launch of their new audio drama, All The Bens. Bamalam Productions is a company providing a platform for new and creative talent: they create a collection of audio dramas written by contemporary writers and performed by new acting talent. The company was created by James Steventon and Lauren Sturgess who, after graduating as actors from the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in 2017, have gone on to produce many audio plays and podcast series, some of which have starred famous talents such as Julie Hesmondhalgh (who you might have known as Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street), as well as emerging artists from across the UK. All The Bens is their latest audio play and their first back, following the two ye...