Sitting In The Cheap Seats

Cider with Rosie is one of those plays… you know, the ones you’ve definitely heard of and you think you know a bit about but that you’ve somehow never seen. Determined to rectify that I was in buoyant mood as I arrived at the Spring Arts & Heritage Centre for Humdrum’s take on Laurie Lee ’s life story.

REBECCA is timeless; the book beloved by generations and the iconic Alfred Hitchcock Oscar winning film a classic. Now REBECCA arrives on the stage! Emma Rice, the award winning director, has created a spellbinding new production of Daphne du Maurier’s masterpiece which conjures Cornish romance and theatrical magic. REBECCA is at Mayflower Theatre from 30 November – 5 December 2015.

It has been said that ‘You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews’. Broadway wouldn’t be what it is today without the Jewish composers and writers whose melodies we so greatly adore.

We’ve always been fascinated by those shows that never make it… the ones that arrive in a furore of excitement and almost immediately disappear again. So as you can imagine, this new release from Stage Door Records  is a bit of a treat!

GUYS AND DOLLS, , Music and lyrics – FRANK LOESSER., Book – JO SWERLING and ABE BURROWS, Director Gordan Greenberg, Choreographer – Carlos Acosta, Designer – Peter MaKintosh, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2014, Credit: Johan Persson/ It’s consistently hailed as one of the greatest musicals, topped Mark Shenton’s list of favourites and was one of the best things we saw last year… and now Chichester Festival Theatre ’s superb take on Guys and Dolls  is heading to the Savoy Theatre ! The highly acclaimed and sell-out production of Guys and Dolls will transfer to London’s Savoy Theatre in December for a strictly limited 13 week run. Chichester Festival Theatre continue their triumphant musical successes with this exuberant revival which follows transfers of Singin’ in the Rain, The Pajama Game and, most recently, Gypsy. Sophie Thompson and Jamie Parker will reprise their roles, with further casting to be announced. Guys and Dolls will open at the Savoy Theatre on 6 Ja...

In recent years Chichester Festival Theatre has had a knack of creating hit after hit from fresh takes on classic musicals. I suppose it was inevitable then that they would eventually come to launching a brand new show and with A Damsel In Distress they have. Well, kind of. This is a new show made from well-loved old parts that have been lovingly tidied and stitched together. Theatrical upcycling if you will…

Final casting is announced today for the European premiere of Orson’s Shadow , a critically acclaimed comedy by Austin Pendleton, about the time when Hollywood giants Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier worked together for the first time – the inspired idea of legendary theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan.

I’m constantly amazed that these days if I miss a major production of a play in the West End I can generally pop along to the local cinema and watch it there or even in some cases but a copy to watch at my leisure. As might be expected the UK’s two premier producers of Shakespeare have been at the forefront of filming staged productions and when two box sets of shows from  Shakespeare’s Globe arrived a few weeks ago for review I was delighted to visit a number of productions that pre-date my time reviewing theatre!

Pixie Lott will star as Holly Golightly in a limited 12-week season of Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London’s West End in 2016.  This will follow the first UK and Ireland tour of Truman Capote’s classic tale brought to life so memorably by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film.  It will be presented in a co-production with the Curve Theatre, Leicester.  The novella has been adapted for the stage by Pulitzer Prize-winning Finalist and Tony and Olivier Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain), and contains memorable songs from the era as well as original music by Grant Odling (One Man, Two Guvnors). 

Tom Bateman, Jessie Buckley, Jack Colgrave Hirst, Hadley Fraser, Michael Pennington, Zoe Rainey, Miranda Raison, John Shrapnel, Kathryn Wilder and Jimmy Yuill join the cast of the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company productions of The Winter’s Tale and Harlequinade at Garrick Theatre. The two productions will play in repertory from 17 October 2015 until 16 January 2016.

Onstage seating for the West End transfer of Claire van Kampen ’s critically-acclaimed new play Farinelli and the King , starring Mark Rylance , will be released to the general public on Friday 5th June at 10am.  Additionally, further seats will be released for all performances, including accessibly priced £10 tickets located in all parts of the house.  

If you’ve ever taken time to listen to Andrew Keates talking about being diagnosed as HIV positive, if you’ve read his tweets or impassioned blog posts or in any way been influenced by his fantastic and inspiring positivity then you’ll know that his story started with this play. Now he’s bringing it to the Trafalgar Studios  in an all-new production to highlight a subject that is still seen to be taboo by too many people!

Antic Disposition are renowned for their fascinating site-specific productions of classic stories, whether it’s a visually striking Shakespeare or some of the best loved tales in British Literature their ability to add a fresh and current spin to timeless stories has won them a heap of awards including the 2014 Peter Brook/Empty Space Awards’ coveted Peter Brook/Equity Ensemble prize. Now they’re about to embark on two of Britain’s best known stories performed at stunning Central London locations.

Okay, I’ll admit it, I went to the theatre to see an award-winning actor perform in a way you’d never expect of him… Not Bradley Cooper in the Elephant Man (though I did see that and I enjoyed his performance very much) but David Suchet stepping about as far away from the dapper Belgian detective with the distinctive moustache as we could reasonably expect!