A new musical comedy co-written by John Godber is being staged at the Royal Court Studio this week. Ruby and The Vinyl, which opens tonight and runs until Saturday, has been created in collaboration with the award-winning playwright’s daughter Elizabeth. The quirky, heart-warming story centres on two lost souls who meet in a vintage vinyl store, and whose passion for all things retro takes them to places they could have never dreamed of. John Godber said: “I’ve really enjoyed

Cabaret diva Bev returns to the stage at the Royal Court Studio this spring – and demand for tickets means extra dates have already been added to the run. Making It, starring Catherine Rice and Andrew Schofield, will be performed from April 20-30 with extra matinee shows on April 22, 27 and 29 – 'making it' 17 performances over 10 days. In it we find aspiring actress Bev (Rice) backstage at a faded Liverpool social club, preparing for her final ever gig. While she awaits a li

The hit stage musical version of Sister Act comes to the Liverpool Empire next spring – and casting has been announced. Sandra Marvin (Emmerdale, Waitress, Hairspray, Chicago) will play Deloris Del Cartier, the role made famous by Whoopi Goldberg, while Birds of a Feather’s Lesley Joseph will appear as the Mother Superior. And Lizzie Bea, who is currently starring in Heathers the Musical, will take on the part of the naïve but sweet-voiced Sister Mary Robert. Based on the 199

Sean Lennon has officially opened a new multi-million pound performance venue at the University of Liverpool which has been named after his mother. The musician flew over from the United States to take part in the naming of the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre which also includes a new concert hall, the Tung Auditorium. And the 46-year-old attended a special gala concert in her honour which included the world premiere of One World, a new arrangement of his father John Lennon’s Imagine

Bells, bass clarinets, banjos…all that was missing was a star-spangled banner from this blazing ‘all American’ night at the Phil led by Hawaii-raised Sarah Hicks. Part of the Phil season’s spotlight on women in classical music, the concert was supported by the Association of British Orchestra’s Sirens programme which aims to advance and promote the understanding of music by women. And its first half was dominated by a pair of female musical voices – leading contemporary figur

A new immersive exhibition at FACT explores how music and song underpin both our family and collective histories. Let the Song Hold Us, which has opened at the Wood Street gallery, is part of its Radical Ancestry season which looks at how our sense of belonging is shaped by the histories, geographies, biology and culture we inherit. Eight artists are showing work in the venue’s two gallery spaces and in a new installation – artist and dancer Zinzi Minott’s Fi Dem V – A Redemp

Shakespeare North Playhouse will open its doors in July with a weekend of celebrations. The new £30m venue, at Prescot, will be heralded on Friday, July 15 with an outdoor ‘summoning of the muses’ co-created by celebrated Yorkshire-based theatre company Slung Low and involving a procession made up of people who built the Playhouse and members of the wider community. The event, titled All The Joy you Could Wish, will be followed on July 16 and 17 with Open Up performances cura

Liverpool artists are set to be ‘embedded’ at the Everyman as part of a new initiative in collaboration with the city’s dot-art. The six-month residencies will see a quartet of artists spending at least half a day a week at the Hope Street theatre where they will have access to rehearsals and production areas and will create a body of work to exhibit as well as ‘animating’ the venue’s public spaces. The first two artists, Alex Corina and Laleh Kamalian, start this week and wi

It’s 10 years now since the National Theatre premiered its ingenious sensory staging of Mark Haddon’s remarkable The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. But Simon Stephens’ adaptation, realised through designer Bunny Christie’s singular cube-structured set, remains as magical as ever. The graph-lined cube, a manifestation of one teenager’s view of his world, sits in the middle of the Empire’s wide sweep of stage (meaning audiences on the periphery of the stalls mig

Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre at Chester has unveiled its 2022 programme of shows. Romeo and Juliet, Little Women and family favourite Stig of the Dump will play in repertory at the open-air venue, run by Storyhouse, over July and August. Tickets are on sale to Storyhouse members from this Thursday and on general sale from April 8. Romeo and Juliet is directed by John Young who was at the helm of last summer’s Merry Wives of Windsor. This new production is set in 1950s Ital