Carmel ThomasonFor many in the audience at Manchester Opera House this week, the trip to Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat won’t be their first. But don’t pass up a chance to see this tour because you think you know what to expect, because Director Laurence...
Cast your mind back to the days before streaming platform playlists. If that’s before your time, the staging will give you a hint. Tom Rogers and Toots Butcher’ set places the action within a big box of blank tapes that frame the stage. Yes, we’re...
It is 10 years since theatre audiences last got the chance to see Calamity Jane on stage.Then Watermill Theatre brought us Coronation Street’s Jodie Prenger as the iconic, gun-toting, sarsaparilla swigging tomboy – a performance that would hard to...
Cathy CrabbWe can say it now – anything set in the 80’s has become a period piece and The Curve’s production of An Officer and a Gentleman, the Musical, is as 80’s as legwarmers in shoulder pads. Douglas Day Stewart’s original story was an 80’s hit film...
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...
Fe 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...