January - 2020

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Calderstones Garden Theatre welcomes Shakespeare's Globe

The Bard is back at Calderstones this summer as Shakespeare’s Globe returns to the South Liverpool park. The London company’s touring ensemble will bring three plays to the park – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It and The Tempest, with four performances planned over three days from June 4-6. The visit has been organised by The Reader, and in a twist on the usual format, the audience will be asked to decide which play is staged by cheering, clapping or shouting for the

Shakespeare North Playhouse work lifts off

The new Shakespeare North Playhouse is a step closer to reality with the next phase of construction work heralded by the arrival of a 190ft crane. The 350-seat Jacobean-style cockpit theatre will complete a Shakespearean triple when it opens in 2022, joining the Globe in London and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford. It is due to be launched to coincide with Knowsley’s year as Borough of Culture. And along with providing a historic theatrical setting for the works of

Review: Curtains at Liverpool Empire ***1/2

Ask musical theatre fans to name a Kander and Ebb show and they’ll probably offer you Cabaret or Chicago. But there’s a third ‘C’ in the creative duo’s theatrical cannon – the lesser-known murder mystery musical Curtains, a send-up of theatrical whodunnits with a plum sleuthing role (which won David Hyde Pierce a Tony Award when it premiered on Broadway) and a supporting cast of wickedly knowing thespian caricatures. In fact, the storyline by Rupert Holmes, working on an orig

Review: The Woman in Black at Liverpool Playhouse ****

Two actors, a handful of props, some judiciously deployed lighting and sound effects, and one ghostly apparition. Stephen Mallatratt’s tense stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s modern take on the classic Victorian gothic horror is a gripping example of lo-fi, high impact storytelling. Arthur Kipps (Robert Goodale) is an emotionally scarred soul searching for some sort of redemption and peace through the relating of a chilling personal tragedy; Daniel Easton is The Actor he hires

Liverpool Empire date for Addams Family UK tour

The Addams Family are on their way to the Liverpool Empire this summer as part of a new national tour for the musical comedy. The hit stage show, written by Oscar-winning Marshall Brickman and Tony Award-winner Rick Elice and directed by Matthew White, comes to Lime Street for a week in August. And casting has just been announced, with Samantha Womack playing Morticia Addams and Cameron Blakely as Gomez. Wednesday Addams, the ultimate princess of darkness, has grown up and ha

How Living Dead is being brought to life at Liverpool Playhouse

Last year they brought Liverpool audiences an audacious multi-media infused version of Joseph Conrad’s tale Heart of Darkness. Now theatre company imitating the dog is back, and with an even more ambitious production, Night of the Living Dead™- Remix, coming to the Playhouse as part of a new UK tour. The show, a collaboration with Leeds Playhouse, will recreate the classic 1968 zombie movie shot-for-shot (all 1,076 of them) live on stage in just 95 minutes using only seven ac

Review: Petrenko's Mahler I at Philharmonic Hall *****

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic was the first British orchestra to perform the Mahler cycle when Sir Charles Groves wielded the baton back in the 1960s. Well that was then, and this is now – now being 10 years almost to the day since the RLPO last embarked on a mighty march through Mahler’s ground-breaking symphonic opus, led once again by chief conductor Vasily Petrenko. Chief conductor but not for much longer, the 43-year-old Russian in his penultimate season with the Phil

John Moores Painting Prize 2020 jury revealed

Musician, songwriter, artist and photographer Alison Goldfrapp is among the judges of this year’s John Moores Painting Prize. She will join painter Hurvin Anderson, performance and moving image artist Michelle Williams Gamaker, frieze magazine editor-at-large Jennifer Higgie and Shanghai artist Gu Wenda on the jury which will select the winning artworks in this year’s prestigious competition, as well as the paintings which will be included in the John Moores exhibition at the

Epic comedy at the Epstein Theatre this spring

It’s always been a great theatre for comedy – both in its previous incarnation as the Neptune, and since it reopened its doors seven years ago. And this season is no exception at the Epstein Theatre in Hanover Street, which is playing host to some Liverpool favourites along with a busy programme of other high-profile comedy names. There’s a return to the stage for son of the city Alexei Sayle, who is playing no fewer than five nights in the auditorium, as well as the chance t

Review: Once at Liverpool Empire ****

The Empire’s sweeping stage and cavernous auditorium is the natural habitat of all-singing, all-dancing, all-action musical extravaganzas. So it’s perhaps not unreasonable to wonder whether an intimately-told tale of love and longing might find itself lost in such capacious environs. But thanks to a simple but statuesquely-realised set, a large and crack ensemble of actor-musicians, and a story with huge heart, Once successfully swells to fill the space – and along the way de

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