RENT is a really incredibly highly thought of musical. It has won a TONY award for best musical and it’s songs and story really means something to everyone. It has so many great songs in it, such as ‘Seasons of Love’, which almost everybody knows. It tells the story of peoples lives, set in the East Village of New York. It has themes of love, loss and living in the moment. I have been to many of LIPA’s shows, and they seem to never fail to disappoint. RENT being one of my favourite musicals, I was wondering if I would be as impressed with it as some of the other shows I have seen. It went above and beyond all expectations I had. I knew it was going to be good but I didn’t know it was going to be outstanding. I felt so connected to the story, believed every word everyone said and was so impressed with the vocals and the harmonies.
I have heard so much about Graeae Theatre Company, and have always wanted to see one of their productions, and so when this opportunity arose, I snapped it up.
Graeae was founded in 1980 by Nabil Shaban and Richard Tomlinson. Having met at college in Coventry creating productions for disabled people, their shared vision was to dispel peoples' preconceptions and prejudices of disability by integrating and educating through theatre, workshops and training. Since then Graeae have gone from strength to strength and their work with both deaf and physically disabled actors is now widely known and respected.
Filled with anticipation at what is billed as ‘The Worlds Greatest Illusionists Live on Stage’’ we took our seats ten minutes before the start and were treated to a backdrop of facts about magic and illusions from artists of days gone by. Until now I didn’t know that the total of a pack of cards face value including the joker added up to 365, the same number days of the year! Not sure if that is magic or coincidence. Got my mind wondering about leap years but I guess you could include the second joker then!
The lyrics may be in French but there's no mistaking the beat that would have stirred even the tiredest of audience members at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre last night at the start of the hit musical Jersey Boys. Ces soirées-là - better known as Oh, what a night! - was number one in Paris, 2000, 40 years after Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons first recorded it. How'd that happen? Jersey Boys gives us four different versions, one for each member of the band (Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio, Nick Massi and Valli) who each lead a quarter of the biographical musical, which is cleverly split into four seasons.
This show is a fusion of ideas, genre and companies. A synergy of real life responses from young people in Liverpool and London, live music, dance, beats, puppetry, music and theatre. I didn’t know what to expect but I was blown away by what I experienced.
It was birthed last year from workshops with young people in Liverpool and London, led by the performers Jack Hobbs aka Hobbit a beat-boxer, Ryan Harston aka LoGisTics a dancer, Elisha Howe aka Electric a singer/poet and Mohsin Nouri a puppeteer. Under the direction of Keith Saha from 20 Stories High, a youth theatre company that engage disaffected and excluded young people in the arts; and Sue Buckmaster from Theatre-Rites one of the Uk’s leading theatre companies making work specifically for children.
Well, back in Blackpool. This time returning to the Opera House at Winter Gardens and returning also to see Mr Joe McElderry!
As widely advertised and amusingly promoted, “Joe Is Joseph!” and what a brilliant job he does as ‘Joseph the Dreamer’ (or Dreamy!), alongside a great cast of Samantha Noel (in the absence of Lucy Kay) as Narrator - with a powerful and impressive voice - with Emilianos Stamatakis making his incredible UK debut as the authentically Elvis-styled Pharaoh and Judah (who, I have to admit did come close to competing with Joe McElderry in the looks department)! Pharaoh’s solo is the showstopper (as oppose to the relatively new odd addition ‘King Of My Heart’ which he sings straight after, containing lots of Elvis song references) but Joe’s presentation of the iconic and poignant ‘Close Every Door To Me’ was a sure highlight - one of many from the man himself, whose familiar cheeky smile and signature tones made him shine from the offset, even then in shadow from the spotlight that was obscured by drapes hanging from above!
Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece of the absurd has divided audiences since it was first performed in his native French in 1953, but there is something quite pertinent that this is the case, when you consider this is very much a play about contrasts.
On entering The Crucible it is always its thrust stage that captures you with first impressions and here we are presented with a crisp white stage with imposing rocks and stones that are jagged, harsh and cold, standing out against a subtle cloudy-blue backdrop. A seemingly lifeless tree stands with its roots curled underneath which give it a sense of strength that is juxtaposed with the delicate and empty branches at the top. When the characters enter this wilderness they bring with them the life and humanity so desperately lacking, despite their inability to recognise this within themselves.
The year is 1962, Baltimore, USA, where overweight teenager Tracey Turnblad dreams of becoming a dancer on popular TV programme - The Corny Colin's Show, a local TV dance program based on the real-life Buddy Deane Show. When Tracy wins a role on the show, she becomes a celebrity overnight, and meets a colourful array of characters. She then launches a campaign to integrate the show. Hairspray is a social commentary on the injustices of parts of American society in the 1960s.
The musical originated from the cult movie by John Walters of the same name in 1988, and the film was turned into a musical in 2002 when it first premiered on Broadway. It later became musical film in 2007, which they adapted and removed a couple of songs ("Big Doll House" and "Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now").
Women on a girl’s night out, couples of various ages, large groups of friends, fabulous gay men and even Christopher Maloney from Celebrity Big Brother, filled the sold out Epstein Theatre tonight. Many of them were already ‘merry’ but everyone was ready for a good night. Raucous laughter and the buzz of the full house surrounded me. We were all waiting for the show to begin. Many of the audience were coming for the second or third time, some had even seen the performers in the Canary Islands or the Costa del Sol. The house lights faded, the announcer, announced and the glittery spectacle began.
The Rugby Tour is a raucous romp following a group of blokes, a rugby team that warms up, practices and carries out meetings in the pub, that joins a five-a-side rugby tour in Magaluf. The club’s leader, Johno, insists that they at least have to play one game, but the question is whether five players will be in a fit state to play and survive the drinking, the pranks, and the ten-pound-a-night hole of a hotel!
Written by William Wycherley in 1675, it is possibly the Restoration era's most notorious play in that the whole play can be taken as an allegory for the time's sexual morals and attitudes amongst city high society. It is a bawdy comedy, full of lewd sexual innuendo. Little wonder then that for a long time this play was considered too saucy for the stage, and indeed was replaced by a much blander version entitled The Country Girl, which now has, thankfully, been consigned to Room 101, and we are able to enjoy the wit, the fast-moving plot and satirical dialogue, and the outrageous characters with immoral sexual appetites once more.
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