February - 2018

Archive

Paint Your Wagon rolls in to Liverpool Everyman

Of all the productions staged as part of the Everyman Rep’s inaugural season, Fiddler on the Roof remains a favourite with many audience members. And the team that brought that musical epic to the intimate in-the-round atmosphere of the Everyman are hoping Paint Your Wagon – which has opened the new Rep season – will strike a similar chord. In fact, the little-performed musical has similarities with Fiddler, concentrating once again on a community of outsiders – then, a small

Review: The Kite Runner at Liverpool Playhouse ***1/2

When the Everyman and Playhouse first co-produced The Kite Runner five years ago, it became both the play’s European premiere and also one of the most successful shows the theatres have had a hand in. Five years, two tours and success in the West End later, Matthew Spangler’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s sprawling best-seller is back in Williamson Square as part of a third trip around the UK. And The Kite Runner as a story has lost none of its power to excite deep emotions

Boisterous new theatre company for Liverpool

Liverpool’s Royal Court is supporting the creation of a new theatre company aimed at nurturing talent within the city’s Black and ethnic minority arts community. Boisterous will produce and develop work by and in collaboration with existing and new actors, writers and directors, starting with a production of John Godber’s Bouncers in the theatre’s new Downstairs venue. The company is being run by Miriam Mussa and Maurice Bessman, and Bessman has worked to create a new version

Something Wicked this way comes at Liverpool Empire

Amy Ross was a musical theatre student at Arts Educational in London when Wicked was first premiered on Broadway. Like her fellow classmates, she went out and bought the soundtrack, falling “instantly in love”. “When it came to London a couple of years later I got my ticket straight away,” she recalls, “and I remember sitting in my seat and thinking, wow, this is even better than I thought, and it’s definitely something I wanted to tick off at some point in my career.” She’s

Kylie Liverpool Echo Arena show ticket details

Kylie Minogue is returning to Liverpool – and tickets for her hotly-anticipated live show go on sale this week. The Australian queen of pop will bring her Golden tour to the Echo Arena on October 3. Tickets are available now and cost from £55 to £105. The 49-year-old last played the arena in 2014 as part of her Kiss Me Once world tour, and fans know she always turns her concerts in to incredible visual and vocal extravaganzas. Her latest tour coincides with the release of her

Review: The Wedding at Liverpool Playhouse ***1/2

The Wedding, Gecko’s dystopian exploration of an individual’s contract with - and role within - society, opens with a succession of happy candidates hurtling towards adulthood and marriage, casting aside their childish trappings to enter a joyful union. Wedding dresses, wild dancing, Lohengrin, toasts and confetti are the exciting quick hit. But what if the stifling conformity demanded of the married state (and being married TO the state) isn’t the blissful happy-ever-after e

A Kaleidoscope of colour and form at the Walker

The radical – and colourful – transformation of British art during the 1960s is being explored in a new exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. Kaleidoscope features the work of around 20 artists including Bridget Riley, Joe Tilson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Anthony Caro, Kim Lim and Phillip King. Sculptures and paintings have been drawn from from the Arts Council Collection and other significant collections for the free display. It includes some large-scale works, and the range of art

Review: Sunset Boulevard at Liverpool Empire ****

Ria Jones’s Sunset Boulevard ‘journey’ is almost worth a play itself. The actress was the first to perform the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, in its earliest – and least successful - incarnation, when she appeared as Norma Desmond to Michael Ball’s Joe Gillis at the composer’s Sydmonton festival in 1991. Fast forward quarter of a century, and she found herself understudying Glenn Close’s Norma at the ENO, until Close was taken ill and Jones was thrust in to the limelight. Disgr

OMD joined by RLPO for their 40th anniversary

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are celebrating their 40th anniversary in 2018 – and they’re set to team up with the RLPO for two new concerts. The Wirral-formed band previously played with the orchestra at the Philharmonic Hall in 2009. The two concerts, on October 6-7, will see them perform their greatest hits, including Enola Gay, Souvenir and Maid of Orleans, along with tracks they have recorded since their reformation in 2006. And there will also be specially-adapted n

Les Dennis in a new comedy at Liverpool Royal Court

Les Dennis is set to return to the stage at the Royal Court next month in a new comedy. The Miracle of Great Homer Street, previously titled A Prayer to St Cajetan, was the runner-up in the Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize in 2017. Now writer Gerry Linford’s play is being premiered at the theatre in a co-production between the Royal Court and the Liverpool-born stage and screen star, who was one of the playwriting prize judges. Dennis, who starred in Down the Dock Road in 201

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