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Tales from the Tombstone Tavern: Annie – Ameena Hamid Productions Ltd

23Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Tales from the Tombstone Tavern: Annie – Ameena Hamid Productions Ltd

Tales from the Tombstone Tavern is a new six-part podcast series featuring five iconic monsters from classic horror: Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Wailing Woman, Wolf Man and The Mummy. The five all hang out at the Tombstone Tavern, drinking and exchanging stories, when one evening they talk about how their brand of horror has become irrelevant and today’s scary stories are not what they once were. Directed by Jamie Boucher, the podcast opens with narration by Delmar Terblanche who also wrote the series. Their narration is excellent combining traditional methods of creating atmosphere with a self-mocking philosophical whirlwind about time and its role in life. From the opening the sounds of the pub are created and the atmosphere of a busy bar is created. The group sit good nat...

22Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Meek – Dazed New World Festival

“I’m just a woman who works in a factory, I don’t want any of this!”. These are the words of the heroine of this play, Irene, (played by Maria McColgan) and seemed to me to sum up what the play was all about. A part-time songwriter who is unwittingly drawn into a confrontation with the regime running the country when a love song she has written and performed takes social media by storm (somewhat of an obsession of the character) but is misinterpreted by the country’s religious leaders as a blasphemous attack on their devout beliefs, resulting in Irene being thrown into a prison cell, where the vast majority of the action takes place. Set sometime in the not too distant future in a country not too far from our own, the play centres around the conversations between Irene and her long-time...

22Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

London

Norma – Royal Opera House

Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece Norma had its premiere at La Scala, Milan, on Boxing Day 1831. After a muted initial response, the opera quickly became popular, and is now a mainstay of the repertory, being particularly acclaimed as a vehicle for the lead soprano. The priestess Norma (Sonya Yoncheva) loves Pollione (Joseph Calleja), leader of the occupying force suppressing her people, and has secretly borne two children by him. But Pollione’s love for Norma has withered, and he now loves her fellow priestess Adalgisa (Sonia Ganassi). Meanwhile, the people urgently look to Norma to lead their rebellion. Norma discovers the love between Pollione and Adalgisa. Furiously she gives the signal for war. Pollione is captured, attempting to steal away with Adalgisa. Norma, called upon to announ...

Festive Cheer with Sleeping Beauty at The Dukes

20Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Festive Cheer with Sleeping Beauty at The Dukes

Families can enjoy some festive cheer at The Dukes this Christmas as the Lancaster venue have announced a brand new, socially distanced production of Sleeping Beauty. Performed in the Round from December 11th – 31st, this inventive and exciting new take on the classic tale is co-written and co-directed by Sarah Punshon and Daniel Bye. Sleeping Beauty also reunites the creative talents of the teams behind The Dukes’ recent successful Christmas productions of Aladdin, Peter Pan and last year’s Cinderella. Audiences are invited to join two fairy godmothers as they tell the tale of Rose, a bold and daring young girl whose journey into the unknown depths of the forest puts her face-to-face with hidden castles, magic spells and a wicked, wicked fairy. Will Rose be able to break th...

Brian Conley will star as Ebenezer Scrooge

19Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Brian Conley will star as Ebenezer Scrooge

Alan Menken, Lynn Ahrens and Mike Ockrent’s acclaimed musical of A Christmas Carol to play limited season at Dominion Theatre with Performances begin Monday 7th December 2020. Brian Conley will star as Ebenezer Scrooge this Christmas, as an exciting new, musical staged concert of Alan Menken, Lynn Ahrens and Mike Ockrent's A Christmas Carol will play a strictly limited season at the Dominion Theatre in London. Performances run from Monday 7th December 2020 to Saturday 2nd January 2021. The musical brings Dickens’ timeless fable to glorious life: Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean-spirited miser, does not believe in the power of Christmas. But on a Christmas Eve filled with memorable characters, spectacular songs, ghostly apparitions and journeys to the past, present and future, Scrooge acknowl...

One-Man Comedy By Jonathan Harvey To Tour Starring Andrew Lancel

19Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

One-Man Comedy By Jonathan Harvey To Tour Starring Andrew Lancel

Following its critically acclaimed sell-out premiere at Liverpool Theatre Festival in September, Swan Song, a revised comedy by acclaimed playwright Jonathan Harvey, will commence a short tour this year playing at venues opening to socially distanced audiences. Swan Song, a one-man play starring TV and stage actor Andrew Lancel, is directed by BAFTA award-winning director Noreen Kershaw and produced by Bill Elms. The play will open at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre for four performances over two nights, this will be the first live indoor performance at the theatre since closing in March. The show then moves on to Dukes Lancaster, Alty Fringe at the Garrick Playhouse in Altrincham, The Cresset in Peterborough and the Belgrade in Coventry. More dates are to be confirmed soon. Swan Song w...

Barrie Rutter performs a charity gig for Slung Low

19Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Barrie Rutter performs a charity gig for Slung Low

There are very few actors who you recognise just by their surname but Barrie Rutter is one of them. Rutter founded Halifax based Northern Broadsides as a vehicle for actors from across the north to perform Shakespeare classics and new work in their own accents working in non-traditional spaces. Rutter's socially distanced appearance at the Holbeck Working Men's Club on Saturday 7th November is his first performance since recovering from throat cancer as he talks about his life on the boards and performs excerpts from plays in his infamously unapologetic northern dialect. After being given a part in a school play because his teacher said the Hull fishmonger's son had ‘the gob for it' and he discovered a love of performing. He went onto the National Youth Theatre the...

19Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

All By Myself – Part of the Main Online

Who hasn’t gone on social media during this pandemic and wondered why that person on the screen looks like they are doing so well? The loneliness of the pandemic and the vast outreach of the apps have played a massive part in all of our lives, and All By Myself is a refreshing but worrying “Insta vs Reality”. The piece started with a character on screen, finding a good position, adjusting her clothes and fixing her hair. It speaks well for the actress, Charlie Blandford, that I was not sure if the play had begun or if she was about to introduce it. The character, played intelligently by Blandford, busies herself making a self-care video, when really, she isn’t doing all that great. It is impressive that the character’s relatability is so strong when there is hardly any dialogue. ...

Truth To Power Café – Conway Hall, London

19Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

London

Truth To Power Café – Conway Hall, London

Inspired by his father Mick Goldstein’s friendship with ‘The Hackney Gang’ (six childhood friends - Harold Pinter, Henry Woolf, Mick Goldstein, Jimmy Law, Ron Percival and Moishe Wernick), Jeremy Goldstein has collaborated with the gang’s only living member Henry Woolf to continue his journey of discovery. In the 1940’s and 50’s the gang would meet up and throw around ideas about literature and poetry amongst other things, trying to escape from the problems going on in the big wide world and inhabit their own creative world. Previously, Goldstein Jr had worked on adapting his father’s work ‘Spider Love’ with Henry Woolf. After his father’s death in 2014, Goldstein found a play his father had written and decided to develop it. I had been written in answer to a book writ...

Adding Machine: The Musical – Finborough Theatre

19Oct

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

London

Adding Machine: The Musical – Finborough Theatre

Adding Machine: The Musical was first developed and performed in 2007 in Illinois, before moving to New York in 2008. In 2016 it was revived at the Finborough Theatre in London for a short run. Based upon American playwright Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine, the musical adaptation retains the expressionistic and non-realistic approach of the original. Mr Zero is a faceless accountant in a big company, unrewarded at work and nagged at home by his wife, he loses himself in the numbers his job involves. Things go wrong when instead of the company celebrating him working there for twenty-five years, they lay him off, replacing him with an adding machine. Mr Zero loses his temper and kills his boss, to be arrested, tried and then sentenced to death by hanging. After he dies he finds...