South West

Writers: Gary Barlow and Tim Firth Director: Matt Ryan Designer: Robert Jones Reviewer: Julia Beasley Getting naked for charity was a cheeky move by 11 female friends in North Yorkshire over 20 years ago. Modestly poised with sunflowers, teapots and currant buns,  their Women’s Institute nude calendar started life as a local controversy. It was all quietly subversive and heaps ...

Music and Lyrics: Cindi Lauper Book: Harvey Fierstein Director and choreographer: Jerry Mitchell Reviewer: Kelyn Luther The original film, Kinky Boots, was written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth, the latter of which wrote Calendar Girls (the musical adaptation is running at Theatre Royal Plymouth from 22nd July 2019). Charlie Price (Joel Harper-Jackson) inherits a shoe factory from his father, but ...

Reviewer: John Kennedy From Cape Town to Cape Cornwall - courtesy of a personal invitation and introduction by Glastonbury beard-confused guru, Michael Eavis, together with Reverend Mbuso Kubone and St Just Methodist Miners’ Chapel’s David James, Cornwall hosts the most deliriously stealth-Christian evangelism ever set in song - possibly. Or at least since the hypnotic 1958 recording of Missa Luba ...

Writer & Director: Tristan Fynn-Aidu-enu  Reviewer: James McColl London, the early Nineties. Black British culture is a dominant part of mainstream culture, with garage, jungle and soul music bubbling under the surface of the capital. Sweet Like Chocolate Boy, the latest play from writer & director Tristan Fynn-Aidu-enu, is a coming-of-age story spanning multiple decades and generations. Two young black ...

Writers: Alain Boublil & Jean-Marc Natel (based on the novel by Victor Hugo) Music: Claude-Michel Schönberg Lyrics: Herbert Kretzmer Directors: Laurence Connor & James Powell Reviewer: Joan Phillips While the original 1985 production of Les Misérables continues to break box office records in London’s West End, the New touring version continues its hugely successful run and returns to the UK ...

Writer, music & lyrics: Gian Carlo Menotti Director: Max Hoehn Reviewer: Beth Steer Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul, a tale of hopelessness, bureaucracy, and frustration, originally produced in 1950, is restaged by the Welsh National Opera in this recent performance at the Wales Millennium Centre. Running for one night only – and in one single act – as part of ...

Writer: Rachel Trezise Director: Julia Thomas Reviewer: Luke Seidel-Haas All around the world, the pro-life/pro-choice pendulum is swinging wildly from side to side. In a referendum in May 2018 The Republic of Ireland voted in a landslide result to “repeal the 8th”, allowing the Government to legislate for Abortion. Across the Atlantic, several southern states of the USA have recently ...

Writer: Dennis Kelly Music & Lyrics: Tim Minchin Director: Matthew Warchus Choreographer: Peter Darling Reviewer: Leah Tozer Just because I find myself in this story, it doesn't mean that everything is written for me. Ah, the wisdom of children – the whimsical wonder and childlike delight that children can’t wait to outgrow and adults wish for once again is often ...