the latest reviews on uk shows and experiences
The next interview in our stagey chat series is with the cast and creatives of JULIE: the Musical; Abey Bradbury and Sam Kearney-Edwardes. JULIE: the Musical is set to open at The Other Palace on 12th June.
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The next interview in our stagey chat series is with Hector Harkness, co-director of Viola's Room by Punchdrunk. Viola's Room is an audio-driven immersive experience and is narrated by Helena Bonham Carter.
Get yourself comfy and join us for the next segment of Stagey Chat!
The next interview in our stagey chat series is with Inez Budd, who's currently playing Katherine Howard in West End's SIX the Musical.
Welcome to Westerberg High, where popularity is a matter of life and death, and Veronica Sawyer is just another of the nobodies dreaming of a better day. But when she’s unexpectedly taken under the wings of the three beautiful and impossibly cruel Heathers, her dreams of popularity finally start to come true. That is until JD, the mysterious teen rebel, teaches her that it might kill to be a nobody, but it’s murder being a somebody.
Join inept hoteliers Basil, Sybil and Manuel at the longest running immersive experience on the West End – Faulty Towers The Dining Experience!
With over 12 years of faultless service right in the heart of Bloomsbury, you’re in for a quintessentially British experience like no other as the iconic Basil, Sybil and Manuel serve up theatre and chaos alongside a 70s-style 3-course meal.
So they’ve both swiped right. Now they’re meeting for the first time. Facing each other. As if that’s a normal thing to do.
But she’s being uncomfortable, and he’s a total bore. The vibe is horrific and the banter is even worse. But something is keeping them in their seats. Something is making them stay.
With acid wit, Miriam Battye’s new play takes a scalpel to modern romance.
Tom escapes a suffocating home life through cigarettes and long visits to the movies while his sister, Laura, withdraws into her records and collection of glass animals. But their mother, Amanda, harbours dreams for them far beyond their shabby apartment. When Tom brings home a potential suitor for Laura, Amanda seizes the opportunity to try and change their fortunes forever.
This new musical version of Roald Dahl’s picture book has tasty tunes by Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab and has a rib-tickling book and lyrics by Suhayla El-Bushra, and additional music and lyrics by Tom Brady.
Tom Holland is Romeo and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is Juliet in Jamie Lloyd’s pulsating new vision of Shakespeare’s immortal tale of wordsmiths, rhymers, lovers and fighters.
ROMEO & JULIET storms London’s West End for a strictly limited run from May 2024.
A Brand-New JEWEL-HEIST – GHOST STORY – FARCE!
HOT on the heels of last-year’s HIT DEBUT PLAY at the Drayton Arms, An Absolute Farce of a Murder Mystery (5* reviews & FINALIST Best Comedy London Pub Theatre Awards), Canonbie Productions presents This Season’s HOTTEST* Play.*(Yes, a pun).
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The multi-award-winning Revel Puck Circus is back in east London with their first new major production in three years - The Nose Dive Assembly.
You'll be left thrilled and electrified by this immersive, brand-new show from an east London founded circus company! The Nose Dive Assembly is jampacked with large-scale contemporary acts including daring high wire walkers and teeterboarders! Plus look out for the only all-female Wheel of Death duo in the UK - a huge rotating apparatus on which performers carry out incredible balancing acrobatic skills.
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The next interview in our stagey chat series is writer and filmmaker, Gary Thomas. Thomas' latest film installation, Lost Memories, is touring the UK.
Get yourself comfy and join us for the next segment of Stagey Chat!
When a shipwreck catapults Viola into their world of abandoned festivities, a web of disguise and deception begins. This new injection of life rocks this melancholic community to the core, but can she finally shake them from their languor and get the party started again? Set against the heat of the Mediterranean sun, Shakespeare’s comedy of mistaken identities is a glorious celebration of love.
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We’re not even halfway into 2024, but the calibre of musicals announced already is mind-blowing. While there’s incredible productions touring around the UK, I wanted to highlight some of the talent currently in the West End, and shows I’m excited for in the second half of 2024. Let’s take a look at some of the best new shows in London.
A masterpiece of storytelling and stunning visuals SPIRITED AWAY, tells the enchanting tale of Chihiro who while traveling to a new home with her family, stumbles into a world of fantastic spirits ruled over by the sorceress Yubaba. When her parents are turned into pigs and she is put to work in a magical bathhouse, Chihiro must use her wits to survive in this strange new place, find a way to free her parents, and return to the normal world.
Following a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in summer 2023, award-winning Spanish theatre company Yllana brings The Opera Locos to the West End. The Opera Locos is a comic opera show where five lyrical singers combine well-known opera classics including La Traviata and Madama Butterfly with rock and pop hits from Whitney Houston to Mika. The show integrates these musical genres with Yllana’s physical comedy style to create a show for audiences of all ages.
On its sixth birthday, the company that brought you West End Does: The Magic of Animation, Christmas, Love and many more sold-out concerts is back with a brand new heel-toe-tastic show that is all things COUNTRY! All singing songs from Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash to Taylor Swift and Shania Twain.
Despite being one of the world’s most accomplished and thrilling dance companies, The State Ballet of Georgia has never appeared in London during its distinguished 175-year history. That absence is soon to end as this revered company is to perform Swan Lake –the world’s most treasured ballet - at the London Coliseum from 28th August to 8th September 2024; and then at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin from 20th to 24th November.
For a small nation, with a population under 4 million, Georgia has exported many ballet legends: three of the most important figures in world ballet during the twentieth century were George Balanchine (born Balanchivadze) (1904–1983), regarded as the “father” of American ballet and still - 40 years’ after his death - one of the most influential choreographers; Vakhtang Chabukiani (1910-1992), a great virtuoso dancer following in the footsteps of Nijinsky; and Tamara Toumanova (birth name, Tumanishvili) (1919–1996), one of the century’s most sought-after dancers who became a Hollywood film star. In more recent times, many outstanding Georgian dancers have performed in the UK, such as former Royal Ballet principal, David Makhateli (his sister, Maia – a principal at Dutch National Ballet - is one of today’s leading ballerinas) and Elena Glurjidze, a leading principal at English National Ballet.
The greatest Georgian dancer of modern times is Nina Ananiashvili. Born in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, Nina became the leading ballerina at the world-famous Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow in the early 1980s and following the Gorbachev reforms of Perestroika and Glasnost, she was a principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre and an international guest star in countries all over the world, including at The Royal Ballet in London.
42 BALLOONS is an uplifting musical inspired by the highly improbable true story of how Larry, and his partner Carol Van Deusen, convinced their friends and family to help Larry achieve his dream of flying.
Featuring an irresistible, 80s-style pop score, 42 BALLOONS questions how far you would go to make your dreams come true. Is the sky actually the limit, and what happens if it doesn’t all go to plan?
Straight from off-Broadway, to a UK premiere 3-month sell-out run in London, we’re now thrilled to announce the UK nationwide Theatre Tour of Stranger Sings! This award-winning sci-fi spoof is a wild, irreverent twist on the hit Netflix series - in all its hair-raising, blockbuster glory.
Take a trip with your favourite gang on a night of indulgent pop culture references, heavy synth, poor parenting, dancing demogorgons and maybe - just maybe - you might find justice for Barb along the way.
