26 Leake Street Gallery – Thursday 8 February It hardly seems possible that it is 25 years since Nelson Mandela’s autobiography “A Long Walk To Freedom” was first published. The abomination that was apartheid may be no more than a vague concept to younger generations. But while major events and atrocities may have hit the headlines in this country, the
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The Band is a new musical which tells the story of 5 teenage girls with a love for a boy band. The band are never named but they just happen to sing all of Take That’s back catalogue. These 5 girls however grow up and apart but when Rachel wins a competition to see The Band in Prague the friends
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Notre Dame De Paris is the musical based on the book by Victor Hugo. This production is the original French version that premiered 20 years ago and tells the story of a bohemian Esmeralda who falls in love with Phoebus, the captain of the Kings cavalry. Phoebus is however engages to Fleur-de-Lys but despite this he becomes torn between the two
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On the 10th anniversary of Thriller Live, the feeling in the audience was electric. The theatre was packed with old cast members, and they really brought a great atmosphere to the Lyric Theatre. You could feel the love in the greetings far across the room as friends recognised old cast family from years gone by. Some of the old cast
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It comes as a sobering discovery to those of us of a certain age to realise that the first television broadcast of Dad’s Army was over fifty years ago. Frequent repeats of the nine series produced have exposed successive generations to this classic sitcom. It still has the power to amuse to a not insignificant extent owing to character recognition,
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When you think about what’s made musical theatre so wonderful over time, one of the real keys is how many different kinds of source material can be (and have been) turned into musicals. Films, works of literature, historical events, and completely original concepts can all work on a musical theatre stage, and while we don’t talk about it as much,
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Violet has finally hit London. The show premiered off Broadway in 1997 and Sutton Foster starred in a one night concert on Broadway in 2014 which lead to a short run on Broadway. Violet has now hit the London stage. It tells of Violet, a disfigured girl who travels from Spruce Pine, North Carolina to Tulsa Oklahoma in order to
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On the face of it, a play about the wartime flight of the majority of Denmark’s Jewish population across to Sweden suggests a balance tipped in favour of worthy theatre as opposed to escapist entertainment. Less than comfortable seats (a complaint shared by neighbouring audience members) did nothing to ease a sense of foreboding. Any misgivings were however completely confounded
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Quay Players have chosen Alice in Wonderland as their pantomime for this year with a slightly alternative take on the classic story. We meet a nasty Duchess and our dame is The Queen of Hearts but overall we meet all the colourful characters we are used to in this traditional tale. The tale of Alice in Wonderland is an interesting
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Richard Shelton plays Frank Sinatra in 1971 as he faces retirement, we are in Palm Springs, California and we are treated to a mixture of Sinatra’s musings, which become more alcohol fuelled as the evening progresses, and a small portion of his back catalogue. Sinatra Raw is billed as a play but it is really a show that doesn’t fit categorisation. Whilst a
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