Martin ThomassonEllen Kent has been touring operas for donkey’s years (32 years, to be precise), and I’ve been watching them throughout that time. There are certain things you can bank on with this company. If you start out fearing opera is pretentious, an Ellen...
Carmel ThomasonFe Fi Fo Fum, I smell a winning pantomime run. The Opera House team knows we could all do with more fun and laughter this Christmas, and Crossroads Pantomimes has delivered the perfect gift. Jason Manford opens the show as hero Jack with the type of...
The Drifters formed in 1953 and the band is still going strong, with another UK tour this year. How do they do it? Well, the Drifters’ Girl, whose story is told in this new musical, holds the key. The Drifters’ Girl refers to the late, Faye...
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly continues to pull the crowds; partly, of course, because of the maestro’s music, but also because it is a simple, truthful story, based (albeit at some creative distance) upon real life events. The entire opera is set at...
Steve TimmsOne of the sleeper hits of recent years, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out grossed $312.9 million – off a modest budget of $40 million – and has been popular enough to spawn a sequel, the newly released Glass Onion. Proof, if it were needed...
Shows about bad acting are nothing new. Tom Stoppard’s Real Inspector Hound probably got there first, closely followed by Michael Green’s Art of Coarse Acting, and later Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s enduring farce within a farce. The irony is that it...
If I could turn back time, I would have been hot on the phone for a ticket to see Cher’s 2019 Here We Go Again tour at Manchester’s AO Arena. Given the level of audience excitement at hearing the opening bars of one of her hits at the start of this...
Singin’ in the Rain is the musical equivalent of comfort food. We know what we’re getting but it’s so good we never grow tired of it. In many ways it is an easy sell – audiences come because they love the 1952 movie. But once the theatre is...
Liz RatcliffeLiz Ratcliffe laughs and cries at The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which she finds to be a masterpiece of acting and choreography, wrapped in a high-tech set I enjoyed reading Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel, The Curious Incident...
In 1985 ‘Back to the Future’ was a box office sensation that spurned two sequels and has stood the test of time as a classic favourite. If you didn’t grow up watching this series of movies – one, go see them and two, those who did are still huge...