Matt Ian Kelly Archives - North West End UK

Calendar Girls the Musical – Theatre by the Lake

12Aug

By Karen Morley-ChesworthNo Comments

North West

Calendar Girls the Musical – Theatre by the Lake

Theatre by the Lake has brought the best feel-good production to the heart of the Lake District. Written by Take That’s Gary Barlow and Tim Firth, Calendar Girls the Musical tells the well-known, true story of a Women’s Institute in Yorkshire that produced a saucy nude calendar to raise money for a local hospital – and in doing so created a story that went around the world. This cast of 15 excellent singers, musicians and actors is so strong that when the young actor Sol Taibi, who plays Tommo, son of one of the WI members, was injured, the show went on with gusto, with 14 members of the cast, and the Musical Director, Alex Weatherhill, reading the part, as well as being on stage bringing together the actors as they created the soundtrack. Sarah Groarke, the Chairwoman of ...

Brassed Off – Octagon Theatre, Bolton

The Octagon Theatre in Bolton resounds to the sound of beautiful Brass this Autumn as we open their new season with an adaptation by Paul Allen of the iconic 90’s film of the same name, exploring the effect of the Miners’ strike through the prism of the Colliery band. Set a decade after the seminal events of 1984, Director Liz Stevenson has successfully transferred some of the grit of the original to the stage and added wistful musicality to the mix, but the authenticity of working-class culture is missing, sacrificed on the altar of whimsical nostalgia and an inappropriate feel good ending. The set design (Simon Kenny) evokes the disused grandeur of a closed coal mine, the broken Colliery wheel is suspended above a black circular stage, a conveyor littered with coal and acting as a ram...

Brassed Off – Theatre by the Lake

Music is a universal language, and it has been at the heart of many working class, Northern communities for generations. And audiences at Theatre by the Lake get the privilege this month of hearing and feeling how brass band music welded people together, gave them strength and pride. The stage adaptation of the hit film Brassed Off blasts into the Keswick theatre and touches the soul. The actors who have come together for this production, in association with the Octagon Theatre Bolton, and Stephen Joseph Theatre, are more than triple threats, they are triplet blowing brass players, who blend seamlessly in with local bans people from Penrith Town Band. The bandsmen and women give a great musical and acting performance in this production. The story of the ballot on whether to tak...