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Outstanding New Season Announced at Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

31May

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Outstanding New Season Announced at Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

After over a year in the dark, the new management team at The Altrincham Garrick Playhouse comprising of Artistic Director Joseph Meighan and Operations Director Sarah Louise Reilly have announced an outstanding new season as they bring live theatre back to the town. Highlights include a northern premiere of Disney’s The Little Mermaid and the return of their ever popular pantomime which this Christmas will see Peter Pan flying across the Garrick stage. The season opens with Curtain Up from Monday 20th - Saturday 25th September 2021 at 7.30pm. Curtain Up! Light The Lights! You’re invited to join a celebration of all things Musical Theatre as we kick start our Autumn/ Winter Season with a collection of your favourite songs from your favourite shows! A stylish and elegant evening...

31May

By Gemma PrinceNo Comments

South East

Clean: The Musical – Brighton Fringe

Based on the winner of Brighton Fringe 2019’s Best New Play, Clean: The Musical from Different Theatre explores the lives of a group of women in Brighton’s historic Roundhill area (or Laundry Hill) from the 1880s to today. The story begins in the present with Tasha (Holly Ray) sitting in her old family home which was once a laundry house after many years away living abroad. Tasha looks back on what life may have been like for women in the area throughout history. Throughout the musical, the present-day stories are interwoven with tales from the past, allowing the audience some reflective yet insightful moments. The split-screen editing of the characters shows that these women are connected in their experiences. From mental health and sexuality to women’s rights and grief, Clean ex...

31May

By Luke StephensonNo Comments

North West

Sleeping Beauty – M&S Bank Arena

Live theatre is back after over. A year of wanting and hoping it was amazing to be in an auditorium waiting for the curtain to rise. Sleeping Beauty at the M&S Bank auditorium until the 6th of June. The show had Gareth Gates (Les Miserable and Pop Idol), Bippo who is the comedy relief in the show, and Emma Grace Arends as Beauty amongst a small chorus. The show is approx. 2 hours long with one interval. Watching the show I felt it was rather flat, it’s opening weekend energy is meant to be high but I just felt underwhelmed. The music over shadowed the microphones so some parts of the vocals were lost. Moving on some lines were muddled up and Gareth Gates entered too early for his scene. Bippo however, rescued it well. It came to a point where it was a live rehearsal not an opening w...

30May

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

NEWS

Ripples – A Play (A Work-in-Progress)

It was lovely to be back at The Vaults to take a look at ‘Ripples’, which is a work-in-progress play. The show is presented at the Fringe Futures Festival, an innovative collaboration between the Pleasance & VAULT Creative Arts, providing an opportunity for early and mid-career artists to try out work at various stages of development in front of a live audience. How many times have you watched something going on around you, and then when asked a question about what just happened, you cannot give a detailed answer? Our mind plays tricks on us and fills in the detail that we cannot remember, so we think we know what happened, but that may not be entirely the case. Inspired by her own experience of this when she was young, Xi Chen (Director), was convinced that ...

Ballet legend David Nixon steps down from leading Northern Ballet

30May

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

NEWS

Ballet legend David Nixon steps down from leading Northern Ballet

Northern Ballet have announced their longest serving Artistic Director David Nixon will step down in December 2021 after twenty years leading the Leeds based company. Under the Canadian-born Nixon they have created 29 full-length ballets with 23 one-act works added to their repertoire, as well as 14 original full-length musical compositions. As an innovative choreographer and designer Nixon has created 13 original full-length ballets for Northern Ballet, including Wuthering Heights, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Great Gatsby and The Little Mermaid, and has restaged and adapted a further six productions. But more than that Nixon turned a company based in the North into a national and international force building a world class company that always nurtured and pushed new talent to e...

Cinderella’s Ugly Sisters have their say at Leeds Playhouse

28May

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

NEWS

Cinderella’s Ugly Sisters have their say at Leeds Playhouse

Fairy tales are always ripe for retellings of the original story and this time it is Cinderella’s Ugly Sisters who get to tell their side of the story at Leeds Playhouse. The Not So Ugly Sisters, created by Leeds-based theatre company Wrongsemble in co-production with Leeds Playhouse and Red Ladder Theatre Company, is a family friendly show where there are always two sides to every story. Dolly is resting on her broom counting the passers-by outside the salon window, while her sister Barb watches the phone that never rings. It’s the morning of Cindy and Prince Smarming’s big royal wedding – but Dolly and Barb are not invited – and Hell hath no fury like a hairdresser scorned. Photography by Anthony Jones Leeds actors Daisy Ann Fletcher and Lucy Rafton star as the h...

No Strings Attached – King’s Head Theatre

28May

By Jessica BattisonNo Comments

London

No Strings Attached – King’s Head Theatre

“You asked ‘who are you then?’ I don’t think I know the answer to that.” The debut play by Charles Entsie marks the King’s Head Theatre’s return to live performances after 436 days. Directed by Aileen Gonsalves, the audience are exposed to, and reminded of, the lengths gay men feel they must go to hide in the closet. Sorcha Corcoran’s skeletal car structure against a concrete backdrop, set in an underground car park, brilliantly highlights the claustrophobia felt by the two men. At very different stages in their lives, they are equally lost in trying to find themselves, “tired of just surviving”. The play is riddled with their anxieties, distraught and pain, despite attempts to suppress. Utilising Gonsalves’s own method, of the audience feeling what the actor does in each moment, ...

28May

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

Public Domain – Vaudeville Theatre

There is a fresh breeze blowing through the world of musical theatre from the general direction of Forristal and Clarke. This very on-trend musical does not hold back in its dissection of social media, and as we emerge, bleary eyed from the latest lockdown, it is making a very relevant point. It is all too easy to reach for the smart phone, iPad or laptop to see what is going on outside your front door, when you cannot leave the house, we are sociable animals and need interaction. Hidden, lurking behind this online socialisation is a world of capitalism, where every click is monitored, every search is logged. With this in mind, ‘Public Domain’ attempts to give us a musical, collating the words of others, via Tweets, Instagram posts and You Tube videos. T...

Touching The Void – Bristol Old Vic at Home

27May

By Kiefer WilliamsNo Comments

REVIEWS

Touching The Void – Bristol Old Vic at Home

After a successful and critically acclaimed West End run, David Greig’s tense play based on Joe Simpson’s bestselling mountaineering memoir is brought to the live streaming platform by Bristol Old Vic. Touching The Void is a play about the human spirit and the need to survive under extreme and dangerous circumstances. The story is set in the perilous Peruvian Andes where climbers Joe (Josh Williams) and Simon (Angus Yellowlees) are facing the treacherous descent of the infamous Siula Grande Mountain. Greig’s lean and powerful script plays out like a nail biting thriller as we see both climbers struggle to survive not just the unforgiving weather conditions but the mountain itself. When one of the climbers slips during their descent, all bets are off as the real tension builds and ...

27May

By Carole GordonNo Comments

London

Here Come The Boys – London Palladium

After more than a year starved of live theatre, it is not surprising that the socially distanced and masked audience for Here Come The Boys is champing at the bit, wildly enthusiastic, and totally up for an evening of sparkling entertainment. And they certainly get that in this show. Here Come The Boys toured to sold-out theatres in 2019 and the performers are clearly as keen to get back into the swing as the audience. The four lead dancers, calling themselves the "Kings of Dance", are Strictly stars present and past Aljaž Škorjanec, Pasha Kovalev, Graziano di Prima and Robin Windsor. They are joined by Nadiya Bychkova representing the ladies, Strictly finalist Karim Zeroual as dancer and MC, and a large dance ensemble. The vibe of the show is Strictly on steroids, a dance p...