Much Ado is a popular play this year with productions by the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, the RSC (which also got televised) and elsewhere. This lively production was the eighth to be reviewed by BTG this year when it opened in Sheffield. One version was trimmed down to 90 minutes with only six actors, another… Continue reading Much Ado About Nothing
Author: Editor
Dacre bows out of Northampton with Unexpected Twist
Northampton Royal and Derngate’s first production of 2023 will be Roy Williams’s adaptation of Michael Rosen’s children’s story Unexpected Twist, a retelling of Dickens’s Oliver Twist. It will be the last production directed by the venue’s artistic director James Dacre before he leaves after ten years in the role to set up his own production company. Unexpected Twist will… Continue reading Dacre bows out of Northampton with Unexpected Twist
Largest ever World Ballet Day
The Royal Ballet and The Australian Ballet have announced that 61 companies will participate in the largest World Ballet Day yet, streaming from six continents. Audiences are invited to take part in the largest ever global dance challenge, and share a video of themselves performing a piece of choreography inspired by The Sleeping Beauty, as… Continue reading Largest ever World Ballet Day
Let The Right One In
Based on Lindqvist’s 2004 novel and the author’s own adaptation for screen for the 2008 Swedish horror film, this play by Jack Thorne has at its heart a growing relationship between an almost-teenager and an ageless creature who survives from drinking blood but is certainly no Twilight. it begins with such a constant stream of… Continue reading Let The Right One In
Gustavo III
The idea of a European monarch being assassinated in Italian-ruled Italy was clearly too much for censors when Verdi first presented the opera that was to become Un Ballo in Maschera. How I would have loved therefore to be present in their conclaves if they had been presented with the prospect of this modern production… Continue reading Gustavo III
Orfeo ed Euridice
The doomed romance of Orpheus and Eurydice is one of the most enduringly popular Greek myths, exerting a powerful influence on the cultural imagination. However, this is hardly surprising given the story’s focus on the transformative power of art, not to mention its moving depiction of love, loss and grief. For the Baroque scholar Frederick… Continue reading Orfeo ed Euridice
Destiny
Destiny is getting ready for her “best night evahhh” at Karma nightclub in Chippenham—to the sound of Destiny’s Child, obvs! Except she’s no youngster. She’s all of 15, with a head full of glamorous dreams, about to be flushed away by the nightmare reality ahead of her. Writer and performer Florence Espeut-Nickless starts this monologue… Continue reading Destiny
Forward to Manchester
The Forward Prizes for Poetry will be coming to Contact Manchester this November—the first time the ceremony has ventured outside London in its 30-year history. The prizes are the most influential awards for new poetry published in the UK and Ireland, and over the last three decades have lauded Simon Armitage, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney,… Continue reading Forward to Manchester
Dead Cats on the prowl
Dead Cats, the latest instalment in Proto-type’s Truth to Power project will be performed at ARC Stockton, Sheffield Drama Studio and Harrogate Grammar School’s Theatre in November. In this new show, two characters are in the kind of room where they use phrases like collateral damage, extraordinary rendition and perception management. And they redact the names.… Continue reading Dead Cats on the prowl
World première for North East
A Durham theatre company is set to stage its first ever world première in the North East with an original production set in the region during the 14th century. Elysium Theatre Company brings Reiver—Tales from the Borders to 11 venues during November and December. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, Elysium began producing a series of one-person Covid-19 Monolgues streamed online.… Continue reading World première for North East