Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of 66 detective novels and 14 collections of short stories. Her play The Mousetrap is the world’s longest running play, and yet, despite her multitudinous success, she humbly presented herself as a housewife and downplayed some of the most challenging elements of her life. Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, historian, author and presenter, brings with her nearly as many accolades as the great lady herself. We are at York Theatre Royal, enjoying an evening of stories and secrets about the late Agatha Christie as detailed in Worsley’s book, Agatha Christie: A…
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 and Director: Conor McPherson Music and Lyrics: Bob Dylan Wow – what a wonderful show. From the first minute to the last, it embraces the stage, the theatre and the audience. Set in a Minnesota Duluth guesthouse in 1934 in the heartland of America, during the depression, on the banks of Lake Superior, we see the past, present and future plague the characters with fear. The near bankrupt Nick Laine (Colin Connor), whose wife Elizabeth (Frances McNamee) has dementia, owns the rundown guesthouse. Their 20 year old son Gene (Gregor Milne) is a drunk and failed writer; their pregnant…
Director and Choreographer: David Nixon CBE Composer: Sally Beamish OBE Earlier this year David Nixon stepped down as the artistic director of Northern Ballet after more than twenty, extraordinary years at the helm. Nixon has established the company to be one of the leading ballet companies in the country and their touring productions are some of the most coveted tickets in dance. A fitting departure sees a revival of the 2017 production of The Little Mermaid which comes to Sheffield this week. A pioneering endeavour which won the BroadwayWorld UK award. Composer Sally Beamish has drawn from her Celtic influences…
Writer: Martin Herman Adapter: Paul Allen Director: Conrad Nelson The play takes its lead from the real story of Grimethorpe. A story about community spirit and triumph in the face of adversity, mainly set in the early nineties, 10 years on from the infamous miner’s strike. Gloria Mullins (Maddie Hansen) returns to her home town Grimley to assess the profitability of the pit, initially unknown by the town. Her childhood romance with Andy Barrow (Daniel Watson) is reignited and, as she just happens to play the flugelhorn, she ends up playing in the colliery band. Paul Allen tells the story…
Writer: Malorie Blackman Adapter: Sabrina Mahfouz Director: Esther Richardson Noughts and Crosses, directed by Esther Richardson and produced by Pilot Theatre is on day 6 of a two-year tour around the UK. Effie Ansah plays Sephy; a member of the ruling elite, the dark-skinned Crosses. Sephy is falling in love with her childhood friend, Callum, played by James Arden. Callum belongs to the Noughts – the white-skinned lower classes. We quickly learn that in a world segregated by race and class divides, the friendship and blossoming love they feel for each other will not be easily accepted. Winner of six…
Writer: Agatha Christie Adapter: Rachel Wagstaff Director: Philip Franks While her counterpart Hercules Poirot has appeared in at least half a dozen big budget, star-studded Hollywood adaptations of his adventures, to date Miss Marple has only appeared in one. The Mirror Crack’d from 1980 and based on Agatha Christie’s 1962 whodunnit starred Angela Lansbury as the mystery solving busybody alongside big names such as Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Kim Novak and Edward Fox. With this in mind, this particular Marple mystery must surely be the most seen and hence the most known, and yet the Original Theatre Company…
Book and Lyrics: Robyn Grant and Daniel Foxx Music: Tim Gilvin Director: Robyn Grant The concept of telling a well-known story from the perspective of the villain is not a new one, and the recent surge in this trend can almost certainly be traced back to when the musical Wicked took the world by storm in 2003. This, of course, looked at L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the side of the Wicked Witch of the West and posited that even if people seem to act heinously, it may be for good reason. Unfortunate is resolutely based…
Writers: Fleur Nixon, Lydia Brickland, Jack Young, Miles Kinsley, Nic O’Keeffe, Susannah Ronnie, Lizzie Lovejoy and Jenni Winter Co-Directors: Bex Bowsher and Graeme Thompson Your Future Cabaret Show begins the evening. “Welcome, come and join the fun” sings Jenni Winter joyfully, who performs her own compositions in between some pieces, acting somewhat as compere with shades of Victoria Woods. Eight North East writers were picked from numerous applications to Your Voice Your Future: North East, to have their work presented in their Live Theatre debut. First up is Labels by Fleur Nixon. An unnamed character (Hannah Wood) recounts her experience…