Etta Murfitt Archives - North West End UK

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake – Birmingham Hippodrome

8Feb

By Peter KinnockNo Comments

West Midlands

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake – Birmingham Hippodrome

This elegant old bird glides into the Hippodrome after swooping across the world for nearly thirty years and proves itself to be in turns vibrant engaging, compelling and comic. Matthew Bourne first envisioned and delivered his barn-storming creation to the world back in 1995 way before most of the cygnets in tonight’s performance were even hatched and it maintains and sustains its artistic integrity, vision and panache without a single feather out of place. Bourne has given the world something stunningly unique and intelligent which remixes the familiar tropes and tunes of the Tchaikovsky ballet rearranges, reimagines and reupholsters them in a breathtakingly new, yet recognisable, manner using the swan imagery as a metaphor for our young princess’s sexual awakening coupled with a thri...

14Mar

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

Blue Beard – The Lyceum, Edinburgh

In the early 1400s, a French nobleman, Gilles de Rais, was found guilty of kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering children. He got away with his heinous crimes for longer than he should due to high birth rate and fear, amongst the lower classes, of retribution, should they speak up. This true story became the legend of Blue Beard and the children he murdered morphed into a series of murdered wives, whose mutilated bodies Blue Beard hid in the cellar. The fairy tale explores and warns of the perpetual fear, always in society, of abuse and cruelty forced upon the innocent and the weak. Emma Rice has reworked this famous Bartók opera into a modern-day musical, balancing fresh, boozy, party-loving female confidence against the scales of ongoing malevolence towards specific, known, w...

14Feb

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Bluebeard – HOME, Manchester

Lighter nights and the promise of Spring is in the air as I sit in Tony Wilson Place outside HOME, Manchester’s gorgeous arts venue, which is finally delivering on its promise of new and interesting devised work as well as the best in challenging theatre from the UK and beyond. ‘Bluebeard’, the new offering from Wise Children, the company formed by Emma Rice in 2018, certainly falls into the latter category and offers an evening of music, magic and bizarre humour with a hard-hitting message wrapped in sumptuous theatrical style. We are led into this world by Mother Superior (Katy Owen), resplendent in the eponymous beard of the title, relating the cautionary tale of Treasure (Patrycja Kujawska) and her two daughters Trouble (Stephanie Hockley) and Lucky (Robyn Sinclair) as they become i...

5May

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Wuthering Heights – The Lowry

“How is anyone expected to follow this? All the names sound the same and everyone is so very, very cross with me!” So, laments Mr Lockwood, new tenant of literary anti-hero Heathcliff, and our introduction to an irreverent and unique take on the Emily Brontë classic. For those not familiar with the text, it follows Heathcliff, taken in as an orphan from the docks of Liverpool to the wild moors of Yorkshire by the well-meaning Mr Earnshaw. He is bullied and resented by Earnshaw’s son Hindley, but finds solace in his friendship with daughter Cathy, which evolves into an intense and toxic love affair. The fact that Emma Rice is the wizard behind tonight’s curtain is the first and biggest clue that the famous novel is likely to have been turned on its head. Her short-lived tenure as A...

Romantic Anonymous Live Broadcast – Bristol Old Vic

24Sep

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

South West

Romantic Anonymous Live Broadcast – Bristol Old Vic

Wise Children and director Emma Rice serve up a delightful musical comedy confection based on the quirky French film Les Émotifs Anonymes, written by Jean-Pierre Améris and Philippe Blasband, with this real-time broadcast from Bristol Old Vic. Angélique (Carly Bawden) is a gifted chocolate maker inhibited by social anxiety and Jean-René (Marc Antolin) the boss of a failing chocolate factory. Angélique is so timid, she faints when people look at her; Jean-René is so awkward he relies on self-help tapes and is prone to embarrassing sweating. When Angélique takes a job in Jean-René’s struggling factory, a fragile love affair unfolds. Funny, tender, and painfully awkward in moments we will all recognise, Romantics Anonymous – book by Emma Rice, Lyrics by Christopher Dimond, Music by Mich...