Book: Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner Music: Alan Menken Lyrics: Glenn Slater Director: Bill Buckhurst Sister Act, the hugely popular film starring Whoopi Goldberg, was first put on a UK stage at the London Palladium in 2009. Since then it has enjoyed West End runs, UK tours and many amateur productions up and down the country. With some slight updates since previous productions, this Olivier Award nominated revival tells the story of club singer Deloris Van Cartier as she gets up in a sticky situation with her partner. She has to go into hiding in a place she would never…
Author: The Reviews Hub - Yorkshire & North East
The Reviews Hub - Yorkshire & North East
The Yorkshire & North East team is under the editorship of Jacob Bush. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.
Writer: Daniel Swift Writer and Director: Belle Streeton Music and Lyrics: Tess Fletcher and Guy Hughes Concrete Youth is a charitable organisation that exists to increase the social and moral needs of disabled people and their carers. So far the company have reached over 4,500 young people and adults with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). This isn’t just a tick box exercise, this is work of real merit. As an experienced and knowledgeable theatre company with a really big heart, the key ethos to their work is testimony to the multi-faceted and audience-centred shows they produce. As pioneers of…
Writer: William Golding Adapter: Nigel Williams Director: Amy Leach Amy Leach, Deputy Artistic Director at Leeds Playhouse and Director of Lord of the Flies, invites the audience of Lord of the Flies to draw parallels between the themes of this famous story and the world we live in today. A nameless island represented by a set comprising of a single brutalist structure and tall palm trees becomes home for a group of young plane crash survivors, fleeing war in Britain. No sooner are we introduced to the school children do we see hierarchies and tribes form onstage. Allegiances are pledged…
This recital, by this season’s Ariadne and her outstanding accompanist, was the first in what it is hoped will be a regular series of commemorations of the late Dr Keith Howard OBE whose philanthropic donations to Opera North have done so much to enable the company to expand, including, among other things, endowing the venue where this was taking place. It was an interesting and intelligently planned evening, with Llewellyn majestic across the full range of her voice and Lepper subtle and attentive to her every phrase, but in truth weighted a little towards angst and gloom. No matter -…
Music: Gioachino Rossini Director: Valentina Ceschi Conductor: Jonathan Peter Kenny It says much for the development of English Touring Opera as a company and their growing ambition that they are prepared to tackle Il Viaggio a Reims. This opera, full of Rossini’s music at its most sparkling, is almost never performed by opera houses because of the demands on the singers: it’s claimed with a touch of exaggeration that you need the 14 finest singers in the world! English Touring Opera can’t manage that, but – the occasional straining for a high note or swallowing of patter apart – the cast…
Writer: Jules Verne Adapter and Director: Juliet Forster With enough imagination and creativity, anything is possible on a stage. That being said, it is to Tilted Wig Productions’ credit that they have tackled such a challenging multi-location tale as Around the World in 80 Days and successfully captured the essence of Jules Verne’s story of the globetrotting Phileas Fogg. Verne’s 1973 novel follows the intrepid Fogg as he attempts what (at the time) seemed an impossible feat: circumnavigating the globe in eleven and a half weeks. Accompanied by this manservant Passepartout and pursued by a dogged detective who wrongly believes…
Writer and Director: Nicola Pollard Nicola Pollard has set herself the formidable challenge of reducing a mass of real stories of miners and their families to a two-hander to tour the various mining regions of England for Up the Road Theatre. Despite the good intentions and the noble efforts of Ellinor Larsson and Philip Gill, the enterprise is only partially successful. Much about the staging is very effective. Aileen Kelly’s set design is simple, but works well in the non-theatrical venues the tour takes in: a couple of chairs and a table and a pile of furniture initially covered by…
Writer: F. Scott Fitzgerald Music: Richard Rodney Bennett Choreographer: David Nixon It is after the Great War, in roaring ’20s America, where F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional character Jay Gatsby has amassed a great fortune and throws extravagant parties for the wealthy set. In his mansion in West Egg, Long Island, Gatsby looks across the bay and pines for his long lost love, Daisy. She lives in East Egg and is unhappily married to the deceitful and cheating Tom Buchanan. Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s new neighbour, is Daisy’s cousin and he arranges for Gatsby and Daisy to meet. The couple’s love is…