It begins in silence, with brief candles… and a party of twelve, looking for all the world like the Last Supper, shortly after Judas the Betrayer has legged it. And in Jesus of Nazareth’s position, we have Robert Powell, a weary yet still steely Prince Charles, soon to be crucified by the ones he seeks … >
Noel Coward’s Private Lives, aged just over 85 and showing no signs of maturing, fizzes onto stage for a tour (playing in Brighton through until Saturday 6 February) prior to the West End. It’s the one where two recent divorcees Amanda and Elyot run into each other while celebrating their brand new and ill-advised honeymoons, … >
For over thirty years, Canadian company Cirque du Soleil have been wowing audiences around the globe with their stunning acrobatics and modern take on the travelling circus. Celebrating twenty years of performances at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall, Cirque du Soleil bring 2012’s Amaluna to the UK for the first time. Based loosely on Shakespeare’s … >
Annie is one of those musicals that you’re reasonably assured of what you’re going to get going in. It’s headed by an adorable kid with ginger ringlets, is peppered with a brace of reliably catchy show tunes, and is based on Harold Gray’s deceptively astute newspaper cartoon strip. In Nikolai Foster’s new production, however, the … >
Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has long been ripe material for modernisation and adaptation, from horror action video games and graphic novels to more faithful television and film renditions. The most recent of these is this new musical from Blur frontman Damon Albarn, writer Moira Buffini and incumbent National Theatre creative director Rufus … >
Bringing the Swinging ‘60s to Brighton, hit musical Hairspray opened last night at Theatre Royal. The Broadway musical has had a long-running stint at the West End, and now embarks on a huge UK tour of smaller theatres across the country. The adaptation from much larger stages to that of the smaller venues such as … >
One of the neat things about the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and its award-winning stage adaptation is its ability to subvert expectations, a trick neatly pulled off in BBC One’s latest Imagine… documentary, My Curious Documentary. Although it does what it says on the tin, charting the production’s rise from the … >
42 years after its first appearance, Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show begins a new year-long national tour later this year. The tour starts at Theatre Royal in Brighton on Friday 18 December, with X Factor singer Diana Vickers playing Janet Weiss, Emmerdale actor Ben Freeman as Brad Majors and S Club 7 star Paul Cattermole … >
A brand new production of the smash hit musical comedy Hairspray arrives in Brighton next month. The production will run at Brighton Theatre Royal from Monday 30 November to Saturday 12 December. The cast includes Tony Maudsley (Benidorm) as Edna Turnblad, Claire Sweeney (Educating Rita, Chicago) as Velma Von Tussle, Peter Duncan (Tumble) as Wilbur … >
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, death is no longer the bar to filling the London Palladium that it once was. Equipped with a technical presentation barely dreamt of when he died in the late 1990s, Sinatra can still own the stage backed by a twenty-five piece orchestra and fourteen dancers. The show is … >