Performer Le Gateau Chocolat working with musical director/pianist Allyson Devenish and singer/songwriter/art historian Dr David McAlmont has brought his latest show Spirituals to the Lowry. With an Order of Service reading like a Sunday Service, Spirituals is an ode to the two sopranos Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle. Back in 1990 the two did a show at New York’s Carnegie Hall called Sing Spirituals. Le Gateau Chocolat here performs a selection of the songs performed at that concert. Dominating the stage in a glittered black suit, Le Gateau Chocolat has a wonderous deep baritone voice which he uses to full…
Author: The Reviews Hub - North West
The Reviews Hub - North West
The North West team is under the editorship of John McRoberts. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.
Writer: Eugene O’Neill Director: Jake Murray Long Day’s Journey into Night, regarded as one of the greatest plays of the 20thcentury, presents a number of challenges for acting companies with a lengthy running time and long heavyweight speeches. Elysium Theatre Company also copes with making a change in cast at short notice. In 1912 the Tyrone family holiday in their seaside cottage in Connecticut. All is not well. Patriarch James Tyrone (Edmund Dehn) is unable to forget his poverty-stricken childhood so watches every penny and, hating himself, for wasting his acting talent in a crowd-pleasing but artistically unfulfilling role, drinks…
Writers and directors: Polly Hoban and Jake Butterworth Plays like Macbeth and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? demonstrate that dinner parties in theatrical productions are more often sources of conflict and confrontation than relaxation and enjoyment. Dinner With The Wolves, co-written and directed by Polly Hoban and Jake Butterworth, continues this tradition opening as a social satire/domestic drama before veering off into unexpected territory. Dinner With The Wolves is set amongst the globe-trotting wealthy elite. Emily Wolfe (Eloise Webb) organises a dinner party to welcome her husband Arthur (Zak Richards) back from his business trip to Japan. Guests include Emily’s…
Gricers, a brand-new spontaneous play at the Unity Theatre, provided a masterful conclusion to the opening night of the Liverpool Improvisation Festival. It is a exceptional example of “theatre of nothing.” On the surface, the premise is as stagnant as a rusted rail: two men waiting for trains. Yet, beneath that stillness, the performance excavates the full gamut of life, love, and the human condition within a brisk, 50-minute runtime. Much like the DNA of Waiting for Godot, the two characters, Mark and Mike, exist in a state of perpetual anticipation. They never see a train, but they fill the…
Writer: Natalie Beech Director: Connor Goodwin Man or Bear? As a woman, which would you rather be stuck alone in the woods with. Such was the question posed in a viral TikTok video back in 2024 and the answer was resoundingly – in what was perhaps surprising to some – “bear”. It is this very question over which blood-soaked feminist Jen (Jenna Sian O’Hara) compulsively obsesses after committing an undisclosed violent act with her partner Jake (Jordan Akkaya). Thus begins a surreal, high-octane two hours which is safely unlike anything you’ll have seen in the theatre of late. A wonderfully…
Writer: Hilary Mantel Adapter: Alexandra Wood Director: John Young Hilary Mantel’s controversial short story was inspired by a real-life moment in 1983, when she glimpsed Margaret Thatcher leaving hospital after eye surgery from an upstairs window in Windsor. The result is a tense stand-off between an IRA gunman and the woman whose flat serves as a perfect sniper’s vantage point. Difficulties in pairing the two characters meant it remained unpublished until 2014, after the former prime minister’s death. Alexandra Wood’s first-ever adaptation for the Everyman explores the condensed lyricism of the original, developing the uncertain relationship into a gripping psychological duel. The…
Book and lyrics: Rob Madge Music and lyrics: Pippa Cleary Director: Nikolai Foster Back at the start of the twenty tens, a local businessman in Burnley began lending money to other locals who needed the help when the big banks wouldn’t. With a vision to create a small community minded bank, Dave Fishwick attempted to open his own bank and the rest, as they say, is history. Some fifteen years after Burnley Savings and Loans started trading, after two Netflix films and after Dave Fishwick becoming known on television for fighting the big boys, the stylised retelling of his story…
Book, Music, and Lyrics: David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, Zoë Roberts Director: Robert Hastie Operation Mincemeat is an instant success for the history books. With uplifting music, innovative staging, and a tight-knit, talented cast- you don’t want to miss this. Leading the way for modern musical theatre, Operation Mincemeat is the closest experience you can get to London’s West End on a regional stage. Operation Mincemeat invites you into the MI5 at the creation of a plan which could win England the war. All style and no substance Ewan Montagu meets socially inept science fanatic Charles Cholmondeley and their…