Dawn Leigh Archives - North West End UK

26Mar

By Kathryn GortonNo Comments

North West

Evita – Stockport Plaza

Following on from last year’s excellent production of Priscilla comes Romiley Operatic Societies presentation of the popular and multi award winning Lloyd-Webber classic, Evita! This society perform here each year and completely utilises this beautiful, Art Deco theatre with its huge, and I mean huge, proscenium and luxurious auditorium with fabulous sight lines and acoustics. And did they use it well? Oh yes and some. I counted 50 performers on stage in some of the numbers which takes some enormous artistic direction and choreography and logistics to make that work but boy they did and with aplomb. I counted a mind blowing 64 cast members in the programme and that in itself is a remarkable cast size for any production. Evita tells the meteoric rise to fame and popularity as t...

Priscilla Queen of the Desert – Stockport Plaza

Sometimes, reviewing theatre productions can be a bit like pulling hens teeth. You sit there, you get acted at, you clap then you leave. All very nice, but you can’t say very much about what you’ve seen. Then there are the nights when you get blown away by a production. A production so good, you can’t stop saying things about it. I saw one of those tonight. By any criteria you can name, this production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was a joy from start to finish. I guess you will know the plot by now. Three drag queens schlep across Australia in an old bus, (the titular Priscilla). They encounter the sort of people who don’t take naturally to people who are different. They are despised, assaulted in the vilest way. One finds romance, one a family but they all have adventures they wo...

Cats – Stockport Plaza

In my day job, outside of the nights I spend in and around the various theatrical haunts of Greater Manchester, I write about dogs. Yes, I am a canine journalist and yes, that is a real job! Given that my professional life revolves around man’s best friend you would think I would hate Cats but this production was so pleasing that I wanted to take it home, give it a saucer of milk and tickle it behind its ears. However, I did have one problem with the show and I will get the negative out of the way now because there was so much in it to enjoy. My gripe was that for some of the numbers where everyone was singing, I couldn’t hear the words. I don’t know if it was a sound issue but the solo songs were fine. The person I took with me said they had the same problem. As I say, I don’t want to ...