Wendy Mae Brown Archives - North West End UK

18Dec

By Adam WilliamsNo Comments

North West

Cinderella – Opera House

From the moment the curtain rose on the Opera House stage there was magic in the room and everyone was transported into a world of laughter and light. It had fun, frolics, wit and so much warmth that they probably could have turned the heating off in the theatre. This was a panto with a distinctly northern edge. It was laid-back and friendly, with enough jokes to keep the kids amused but also plenty of gags for the adults that would easily sail over younger heads. Topical jokes were thrown in and there were a few ad-libs when things on stage didn’t go as planned. This show was early on in the run, but you could feel that the cast was having a great time. Everyone knows the story of Cinderella and there was little jeopardy or drama on stage. This panto was not particularly concerned w...

30Jun

By Peter KinnockNo Comments

West Midlands

Waitress – Wolverhampton Grand

As far as I can see, Waitress has been a huge success internationally with various runs on Broadway, West End and around the world and it was undoubtedly loved by the audience last night who greeted it like an old friend, laughing and cheering in equal measure at appropriate moments. Everyone seemed very familiar with the piece - apart from me. Nope. Never seen it, never heard of it. Didn’t recognise a single tune. This is no bad thing when accessing a new piece, but I did have an unsettling feeling of missing out. All the pieces fitted together - great performances, great music, great production, but beyond the clear professionalism of all concerned it didn’t quite touch me. I was, however, in a minority. Based on Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 movie of the same name it has now evolved, seemin...

10May

By Codie WrightNo Comments

North West

Waitress – Liverpool Empire

I’ll be honest, they had me at “all-female creative team”. I’d heard such a buzz about Waitress, but aside from some passionate warblings of “She Used to Be Mine” on many an am-dram stage, it wasn’t one I had quite gotten around to learning about, and so I was going in blind. Adapted from the film by Adrienne Shelly, the show features a heart-manipulating score by Sara Bareilles that takes the audience through a full spectrum of emotions across both acts. I will say that at times some lyrics got a little lost in the mix, which is a shame as there were some amazing laugh-out-loud moments, and real gut punches in the words that I could make out. The live band were set at the back of the stage, with members occasionally popping up elsewhere to build the story - such as a sultry cello narra...

21Apr

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Waitress – Edinburgh Playhouse

A story of baking, infidelity and finding love, waitress is a problematic musical surrounding a waitress who bakes pies to avoid talking about her feelings. Jenna (played tonight by Aimee Fisher) is a waitress for a small diner who specializes in making the best pies in town whilst avoiding dealing with her unhappy marriage and overall feeling of failure for the life she believes her mother would have wanted her to live. When a pregnancy test proves positive, she is forced to reconsider her life choices as she begins an affair with her gynaecologist (played by Liam McHugh) and starts to save up money to enter a baking contest that could guarantee her enough money to leave her abusive husband Earl (Donal Brennan) for good. At the same time, we follow her co-workers Dawn (Evelyn Hoskins) ...