Author: The Reviews Hub - Central

Writer: James Dearden Director: Loveday Ingram You’d think Dan Gallagher has it all. He’s a high-flying lawyer with a beautiful wife, Beth. Yet at the beginning of our story, he is centre stage, bedraggled and alone. He starts to recount his downfall over the previous 12 weeks continuing to break the fourth wall at intervals to give us a glimpse of his pain as the story develops One weekend, he has to work while Beth is away. Fatefully, he accepts the offer of a drink with his friend Jimmy at the new bar in town. In that bar is Alex…

Writer: Michael Southan Director: Nickie Miles-Wildin After a mutual swiping right on a dating app, Lucy and David meet for some drinks, promising each other some fun. After her wheelchair hits a kerb, Lucy finds herself in hospital and faces the wrath of her mother, who immediately disapproves of her antics. Not to be deterred, Lucy and David meet again but things get even more bumpy… can the pair navigate their way through a successful romance? Kerbs bills itself as getting real about romance, sex and disability, and it mostly hits the right spot. The set design and its use…

Writer: Sandy Rustin Director: Mark Bell They’re names we all grew up with. Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett, Reverend Green, Professor Plum, Miss Peacock, Mrs White… and even if we didn’t really know that much about them, we did know they were wholly capable of fatally bashing someone on the head in the library with a length of lead piping or shooting someone at close range in the ballroom. And when they all arrive at a country house one dark and stormy evening, they are surprised to find they have all received the same intriguing invitation from Lord Boddy. It soon…

Writers: Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields Director: Kirsty Patrick Ward The minds behind Mischief Theatre don’t appear to be running out of situations for their comedy just yet. After taking us from the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society (The Play That Goes Wrong and its follow-up Peter Pan Goes Wrong) to the Minneapolis City Bank (The Comedy About A Bank Robbery), along with their BBC series of assorted scenarios, they’ve successfully built up quite the CV. For Groan Ups, their fourth theatrical production, the team has turned its attentions to Bloomfield School and a group of five young children…

Conductor: Michael Seal Our affable host for the evening, Tommy Pearson, announces that we comprise the largest audience that the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) has played for in over two years and there’s a palpable sigh from the crowded auditorium as the audience prepares to leave its worries outside and enjoy an escapist evening of music. And it certainly looks as if the entirety of the CBSO is present on a packed stage before us under the baton of conductor Michael Seal. Many dismissed films with synchronised sound as a fad when Al Jolson memorably announced, ‘You ain’t…

Book: Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice Music: Bob Gaudio Lyrics: Bob Crewe Director: Des McAnuff Jersey Boys is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, following their story through the highs and lows of fame: its glitzy presentation and killer soundtrack has made them a sensation all over again. We get the opportunity to go behind the music and into their personal story in this musical phenomenon. Until they started singing together, they were just four guys from Jersey, but they had a sound that nobody had heard and that the radio has never got bored of. But,…

Conductor: Joshua Weilerstein There are surely few better venues for a concert demonstrating the soul of American music than Birmingham’s Symphony Hall with its glorious acoustics. The highlight of the evening is the presentation of the UK premiere of Robert Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses – but that’s not all there is on offer in an evening replete with music that digs deep into the historical heart of the United States. We start with Variations on ‘America’ by Charles Ives, a short piece comprising five variations on the theme of America (My Country ‘tis of Thee). It’s a piece…

Writer: David Walliams Adaptor and Director: Neal Foster Ben hates Fridays. That’s the day his parents enjoy some special time at dance class so Ben is sent to stay with Granny. It’s the most boring night of the week: nothing ever happens and everything Granny cooks is based on cabbage. But Ben is a good boy: he doesn’t want to let anyone down, going along half-heartedly with his mother’s plans for him to be a great dancer when he’d much rather be a plumber and appearing to Granny to enjoy his time there. Then one day, Granny overhears him pleading…