The Mousetrap theatre breaks http://theatrebreaks.theatre.travel/details.php?d=0&a=532
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The Mousetrap theatre breaks http theatrebreaks theatre travel…
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December 17 2011, 9:55am | Comments »
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Whatsonstage Theatre Awards http theatrebreaks co wiki Whatsonstage…
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Whatsonstage Theatre Awards http://theatrebreaks.co/wiki/Whatsonstage_Awards
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December 9 2011, 1:36am | Comments »
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Theatre breaks by Coach http://theatrebreaks.theatre.travel/filter.php?f=HC_COACH
November 27 2011, 3:21am | Comments »
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Theatre Breaks in London
http://theatrebreaks.co/2941/theatre-breaks-in-london/
Theatre breaks are one of the best ways of seeing the top London shows, even if you live near London. It might seem a bit mad to spend a night in a London hotel when your own bed is only 50 miles away but please hear me out
Theatre Breaks to Warhorse I was chatting to some folks in deepest Essex the other day and it soon became clear that for them, an evening trip to a West End show was not really a viable idea. They had been to see Warhorse and couldn’t speak highly enough of the show. But they said they’d think twice before going to the West End again. They live just over 50 miles from the centre of London but getting in and out of the city at night is no easy matter. Usually they drive to a train station, park the car there and hop on a train. Driving in the city means congestion charges and parking nightmares so they try to avoid it if at all possible. However, travelling into the city centre by rail at the right time means going against the flood of commuter traffic and paying the peak time fare (4pm to 7pm). You don’t really want to battle with the peak time tubes either so a black cab also adds to the cost. Most shows start around 7:30 but you want to be there a little early to pick up your tickets, maybe have a pre-theatre drink and order something for the interval. This means you need to eat early (a special pre-theatre menu in one of the West End restaurants perhaps). If you try to wait till after the show to eat then you’ll have much less choice and you may well be rushing to catch the last train home. The trains do run quite late but it can be 1am or even later before you get home. I’m exhausted just thinking about it! Here’s a glimpse of what Warhorse does best – some amazing life sized puppetry:I gently suggested they might be better booking a theatre break next time and that was when I discovered people have some funny ideas about theatre breaks! Three Myths about Theatre Breaks 1. Expensive! My friends went to see Warhorse. A theatre break with top price tickets to see Warhorse a central hotel with breakfast the next morning starts from around £120 each. Most sites will let you book your rail fare with a good discount. With a hotel near the theatre you can walk and avoid paying for a cab and most sites offer a special price on a pre-theatre supper. By the time my friends had paid for all their little extras there really wasn’t much in it. 2. Bad seats My friends could only get single seats that were not next to each other. They were top priced seats and very nice, but not together. Most theatre breaks websites have better access to seats than the general public. You can often choose from a range of seat prices. You always get to sit together. The lesser known fact is that these sites often have tickets for top shows (like Warhorse!) that are reserved for theatre breaks customers. 3. These internet sites are dead dodgy! Buying stuff online is part of all our lives these days. My friends are sensible. They bought their tickets from a well known site that they have used before and trusted. That same site also sells theatre breaks! If you are worried about how secure a site is check out this advice. (Book Theatre Breaks On Line with Confidence) So next time you are thinking about booking theatre tickets for the West End do check round first before you assume that theatre breaks aren’t a better idea.
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November 26 2011, 6:51am | Comments »
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Backbeat the Beatles Musical
http://theatrebreaks.co/2788/backbeat-the-beatles-musical/
Backbeat is the new Beatles musical which covers the early period of teh Beatles success story, mostly in Hamburg where John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe entertained the nightclub goers in the Reeperbahn district. The main focus of the show is Stuart Sutcliffe, the “lost” Beatle, who played incompetent bass guitar but was an art school friend of John’s and an ambitious young painter. The show follows Sutcliffe’s relationship with the German photographer Astrid Kirchherr – who was responsible for the Beatles’ mop-top haircuts and some superb early images of the group. It also depicts Lennon’s angry feelings of rejection, and McCartney’s relief that he has got John back.
This article titled “Backbeat – review” was written by Lyn Gardner, for The Guardian on Tuesday 11th October 2011 18.08 UTC Does London need another jukebox bio musical? No, and it doesn’t get one either in this intelligent, multilayered and often touching account of the Beatles’ early days in Hamburg and Liverpool and the “lost” Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe. The epitome of cool, Sutcliffe was John Lennon‘s art-school buddy and a gifted young painter who abandoned the group for art and the love of Astrid Kirchherr, the photographer who took some famous moody shots of the band and originally styled their mop-headed, collarless look. Sutcliffe died aged 21 of a brain haemorrhage, just as the Beatles were on the brink of success. Based on Iain Softley’s 1994 movie, Backbeat is – despite all its raucous energy and high levels of amplification – often quite downbeat. It’s all the better for it. More a play with songs than a fully fledged musical, this is not a show threaded through with familiar Beatles’ hits: a brief glimpse of John improving on Paul’s faltering attempts to write Love Me Do is about the closest we get. Instead we see the boys in their Hamburg days when they were essentially a covers band playing in a seedy nightclub, perfecting their sound and skills on hits such as Twist and Shout and Please Mr Postman. The music is delivered with some panache that does eventually lead to the inevitable dancing in the aisles, but it’s a mistake to think that Backbeat is about the music or is indeed the verifiably true story of the early days of the Fab Four. In David Leveaux‘s moody, often painterly production it is much more about art and ways of seeing. There is a small, quiet scene where Sutcliffe contemplates the changes wrought by a lighthouse beam. Oh and it’s about love, in particular the love between Andrew Knott’s arsey antagonistic Lennon, who claims that all art is “dick”, and Nick Blood’s charismatic Stuart, who sees the band as a diversion and is forced to make the hard choices about who he should be with and what he should do with his life. “You’ve got to let me go,” he tells John, and it’s as if he is trying to disengage tenderly from a lover. It’s a small show wrapped up big for a West End theatre, and there are moments of clunkiness in the handling of the ensemble in the Hamburg scenes. But it’s always visually arresting and, finally, a little bit heartbreaking too.
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November 14 2011, 7:36am | Comments »
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Ghost and Caissie Levy
http://theatrebreaks.co/1203/ghost-and-caissie-levy/
Ghost The Musical started previews in London this week at the Piccadilly Theatre with Caissie Levy as the leading lady. Caissie Levy stars in Ghost the Musical Ghost has been a great hit with the Manchester audience during its pre-West end run and one of the firm favourites of everyone who has seen it is Caissie Levy. Caissie plays Molly Gordon, the female lead of the show. Caissie is a Canadian with a gorgeous voice and good acting skills. She needs them both during Ghost. This is a very demanding role as Molly’s character goes through an amazing range of emotions as the show progresses. We saw Caissie on the West End stage last year in the visiting Broadway production of Hair. Although Hair is a very much an ensemble piece I felt when I watched it that Cassie’s performance really stood out. She played the idealistic Shelia with real conviction and her voice rang out in songs like Good Morning Starshine. I think this bodes very well for her performance as Molly. Caissie’s other most famous role is probably as Elphaba in Wicked in the Broadway production. In recent interviews she has drawn parallels between Ghost and Wicked. She felt that the range both of vocal skills and acting required of Molly and Elphaba were rather similar. When asked she agreed it was possible that, like Wicked, critics would not like Ghost and it might be a show that would appeal more to audiences. This wasn’t true of the Manchester critics who gave the show great reviews but London can be harder to convince. Caissie has a gorgeous voice and I thought you might enjoy a sample:
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June 27 2011, 4:35am | Comments »
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Irish Blood, English Heart – review
http://theatrebreaks.co/621/irish-blood-english-heart-%E2%80%93-review/
Theatre review of Irish Blood, English Heart – Trafalgar Studios, London
This article titled “Irish Blood, English Heart – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 4th May 2011 22.04 UTC Darren Murphy is clearly a generous man. We go to the theatre expecting one play and he gives us at least three: a psychological study of sibling rivalry, a social portrait of the London Irish and a meditation on the nature of narrative. But, although some would argue that nothing succeeds like excess, I would gladly have settled for half. At first, we seem to be in familiar theatrical territory. Two brothers converge on the Southwark lock-up where their father, an emigre Irish cab driver, apparently killed himself. Con is the struggling one who followed his dad into the cab trade and whose wife, Peggy, dreams of opening a restaurant. The other brother, Ray, is the success story who has written a bestselling novel and TV film that cannibalises the family history. While Con is anxious to honour the dead dad, Peggy’s main aim is to extract compensation from Ray for appropriating their lives in a piece of fiction. Behind the play lurks the formidable shadow of Arthur Miller: the fraternal rivalry is straight out of The Price, and lines such as “A man is more than the worst thing he’s ever done” strive to achieve a Milleresque resonance. But I feel Murphy’s real preoccupation is with stories and their ownership. Does one, he implicitly asks, possess the copyright on one’s own life? A comedian once expressed his bewilderment to me that it was the author, rather than the subject, of a biography who got paid; and it is such a provocative issue that I wish Murphy had explored it in more detail. Instead, he gets carried away with the brothers’ re-enactment of past familial wrongs, and even introduces a totally implausible fourth character to remind us that the dead father was himself a monstrous fantasist. I will say this for Murphy, however: he gives his actors plenty to chew on and, in Caitriona McLaughlin’s nicely cooked production (which transfers from Southwark’s Union theatre), they clearly relish the emotional feast. Ian Groombridge exudes a nervy anxiety as Con, seeking closure on the disordered narrative of his dad’s life. Howard Teale has the right sheen of success as the brother who has adopted the name of Ray Suede and whose whole career is a form of self-invention. Although Con’s wife is marginalised in the later stages, Carolyn Tomkinson invests her with a fractious energy. In the end, the play seems to suggest that the Irish capacity for fabrication and storytelling needs an element of formal restraint. Though it is a perfectly valid message, I wish Murphy had followed his own good advice.
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May 5 2011, 4:21pm | Comments »
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Anyone for Nicked: the Nick Clegg musical?
http://theatrebreaks.co/513/anyone-for-nicked-the-nick-clegg-musical/
Nick Clegg is the unlikely hero of Nicked, a new musical that’s unfashionably sympathetic to the Lib Dem leader
This article titled “Anyone for Nicked: the Clegg musical?” was written by Euan Ferguson, for The Observer on Saturday 23rd April 2011 23.05 UTC Least likely contender for Spring Hit in Theatre-World, I think it’s safe to say, is going to be Nicked. It’s basically a musical about Nick Clegg, written by a performance poet: that’s when it’s not being a play about the alternative vote. Not, on paper, I think you’ll agree, the most urgently prepossessing of dramatic ideas. And although political theatre does have a proud tradition, and the TV/film adaptations of aspects of the Blair years were enthralling, there’s also a particular recent history of turkeys, especially when “satire” is advertised within. Also… well, Cleggy. Isn’t he a bit obvious? Isn’t this what we call a laughably soft target? Fears totally unfounded. Preconceptions proved damnably and delightfully wrong. Watching early rehearsals for Nicked, one of the productions showcased in this year’s HighTide festival in Suffolk, it’s clear this could be a thing of brilliance. And, actually, something Mr Clegg might want to travel to Halesworth to see – festival director Steven Atkinson estimates about 70% of visitors come from London – because it manages the seemingly impossible at the moment: it humanises the Lib-Dem leader, and makes you think again. Among the scenes I saw, in a small, busy rehearsal room, piano in one corner, cast leaning casually against the walls as they waited to become Samantha Cameron, or Miriam Clegg, or Vince Cable, or David Laws (remember him?) or the Queen, was the crucial one that had Jason Langley and Sam Hodges, as Clegg and Cameron, meeting in an underground car park to warily woo. It’s done as a tango, perhaps the perfect form, the tango having originated in Buenos Aires as a dark celebration of the ever-changing dance of power/need/compromise, both physical and figurative, between sailors and whores. So Dave and Nick tango, head leaning against head as the music builds, and I won’t spoil it but they’re given some pretty good lines, and sing them grandly, and twirl and stamp. It’s great dramatic fun and makes you think, and I realise fairly quickly that this is not a Clegg-knocking exercise. “Absolutely not,” says the writer, Richard Marsh, as far from my idea of “performance poet” as you could imagine – self-effacing and engaging, if a little unslept. He’s been teasing and tweaking the script nightly, to give it greatest relevance when the show opens, because so much has happened to Clegg since “Cleggmania” after those election debates; and continues to happen. Marsh, and director Pia Furtado, will be changing it right up until the week of the AV vote. The script focuses, yes, on those early negotiations, our extraordinary coalition and aspects of the fallout, but it is not yet finished. “Whatever happens, this is just a human story,” continues Marsh, who has in a previous short play, among other things successfully fused Guantánamo Bay with Harry Potter. As you do. “What I wanted was to tell a story about someone whose job is politics. And humanise them, try to get people to relate to him from the view of his own set of circumstances. Everyone is the hero of his own story. But the more I’ve looked into Nick Clegg” – Marsh even read David Laws’s book. All of it – “and those extraordinary days while the coalition was being founded, a handful of very, very tired white men deciding the future of our country, the more I realised the drama of those days.” Steven Atkinson, the festival director, pulled a string or two to arrange a visit to Downing Street, to allow Marsh a glimpse into the physicality of how it all worked – men in rooms, bartering and phoning and sweating and swearing and worrying and wooing, as was happening half a mile away that sunny May in other dark corridors in and around Smith Square – but the outcome wasn’t just a power-play or a point won. It was, as we know, the car ride to Buckingham Palace, here done as another song, this time of joyous comradeship at a deal successfully done. “Just give me PR and then/ we’ll share the keys to Number 10!” Queen Liz looks on, even sings, in wonderfully sardonic fashion; Sam Cam dances with sly exuberant delight. “It’s been quite hard to hold on to my original thoughts of Nick as a person while he’s been getting stuck whack in the middle of decisions I don’t personally agree with,” says Marsh, who, when he first conceived this production, could not have foreseen the storm of opprobrium to land on Clegg of late. The team’s job, and I think rightly so, is essentially to question the knee-jerk reaction of much of this, remind us there is a person at the centre of it, fraught with his own dilemmas, and to do so in verse, with dance; it’s a little miracle it seems to be working so well thus far. As Atkinson says: “Does anyone who’s jumping on him now ever ask themselves: what would you do in the same position? What was the alternative?” The fast-changing nature of the coalition and the way it’s perceived has led to problems or, as politicians would doubtless have it, challenges and opportunities. Marsh is keen to apologise to his director. “Pia’s very patient. We’ve had to cut whole songs. Cut things that didn’t happen, insert things that did or had more impact than we’d first imagined.” Furtado smiles, patiently, itching to get back to rehearsals. She’s spent a while with them earlier just working on character, real character: “The last thing any of us wanted was some Rory Bremner-style caricature.” In one strangely touching scene, Jason Langley’s Clegg pleads with David Laws, a strong friend and fine financial mind caught in that early expenses/gay row, not to resign. Laws, a pitch-perfect Peter Caulfield, but with, I suspect, a better singing voice, breaks from song to solemn dialogue, after Clegg insists: “Most normal people won’t care.” “No, Nick,” he replies. “Most normal people will get political this year.” And they did. Which is better, surely, than apathy. But along the way, some may have forgotten the humans involved at the middle. Quite bizarrely, a sharp little musical – 70% splendid fun, 30% insights wiser than our own leader columns – could just start redressing the balance. Steven Atkinson is even talking about a West End transfer.
Nicked premieres on 30 April, as part of the HighTide Festival, at the Main House, The Cut, Halesworth. hightide.org.uk
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April 25 2011, 6:30am | Comments »
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What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips
http://theatrebreaks.co/514/what-to-see-lyn-gardners-theatre-tips/
Despite it being a double bank holiday week, there are plenty of theatre events activity all around the UK. Here’s the cream of the crop
This article titled “What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 22nd April 2011 16.11 UTC With Easter and the royal wedding (arguably a massive piece of street theatre, but give me an elephant any day) bookending the coming week, theatrical activity is low-key and openings are few. But by the time you read this, The Passion will already be underway in Port Talbot – the last event in National theatre Wales’s first season. It’s been a wonderfully varied year of work, and if not all of it has glistened, it has nonetheless probed how a national theatre might operate and what forms theatre can take. I’m really looking forward to the announcement of the new season, which I have high hopes will be as invigorating as the first. But it’s not the only theatrical activity in Wales this week, where a revival of Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money goes out on tour, starting at Chapter Arts Center in Cardiff next week. Moving across the Severn bridge, head down to the Hall for Cornwall in Truro for Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger’s Chouf Ouchouf, which checks in next Thursday after finishing its South Bank run on Sunday. The Brewhouse in Taunton is celebrating both St George’s Day and the royal wedding with the imaginative England, My England. Up in Bristol, things are gearing up for the fabulously juicy Mayfest , but there is still time to catch Tristan Sturrock’s Frankenspine at the Old Vic studio and the excellent Propeller Comedy of Errors at the Tobacco Factory. Salisbury Playhouse offers two contrasting shows that are both well worth a look: a fabulous revival of Guys and Dolls in the main house and Martin Crimp’s teasingly enigmatic The Country in the studio. Probe’s dance-theatre piece May, written by the mighty Tim Crouch, stops off at South Hill Park in Bracknell next week. Mike Bartlett’s satirical baby-boomer comedy, Love, Love, Love, http://www.painesplough.com/current-programme/by-date/love-love-love stops off at the Nuffield Southampton next week. Brighton’s Basement will play a major role in the upcoming Brighton Festival but also opens its doors on Saturday night for one of its regular Supper Club nights, a tasty mix of performance, interventions and installations. In London, meanwhile, the Digital Stages festival takes place for five days from today (22 April) bringing together performances, discussions, workshops and exhibitions. Among those who may take your fancy are Pecora Ura with Part 11 of the Hotel Medea Trilogy and Lightwork’s installation, The Good Actor, which aims to capture the moment prior to actors going on stage to perform. The Spill festival also continues in fine fettle, and includes the Spill National Platform over the weekend, featuring work by Jo Bannon as well as Martin O’Brien’s punishing The Mucus Factory. There’s also a chance to see new work by Sylvia Rimat and Kings of England. The Globe’s touring production of Hamlet, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, heads to home base for a few performances before setting out on a long tour. I saw the viciously funny and sad Chekhov in Hell at the Drum in Plymouth and now you can catch it at Soho, and Told by an Idiot’s examination of what motivates violence, And the Horse You Rode in On, clip clops into the Barbican Pit before galloping off to the Brighton Festival. It’s your last chance for David Eldridge’s Knot of the Heart at the Almeida. Birmingham Rep’s Behna (Sisters) makes its London debut in somebody’s kitchen in a secret location in North London from Thursday. I’m looking forward to Philip Ridley’s first new play for three years, Tender Napalm, at Southwark Playhouse and The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut at the Roundhouse, a show created with teenagers by the brilliant Mark Storor, and am still dying to see the Ipswich musical London Road at the National which everyone seems to have an opinion on. If you live in the east of the country, take a look at a very well-received A View From the Bridge at the Mercury in Colchester, and book for the High Tide festival which opens on Thursday with the European premiere of Stephen Belber’s Dusk Rings a Bell about a teenage romance reignited 20 years later. Put the weekend of 30 April in your diary for the Junction Sampled at the Junction in Cambridge, which includes a chance to see work from some really talented artists including Deborah Pearson, Greg McLaren, The Other Way Works, Dancing Brick, Non Zero One and others. And don’t forget that the Norfolk and Norwich festival opens on May 6. There are some great shows, including a number of Without Walls outdoor theatre commissions. Pulse won’t be far behind at the New Wolsey in Ipswich. The RSC open their new season with a version of Shakespeare’s lost play, Cardenio, and Jonathan Slinger as Macbeth on the main stage. Plenty of Macbeths at the moment, in fact, with Belt Up getting lost in the mind of the anti-hero in an old underground prison in Clerkenwell, and David Morrissey losing his Lady M – Jemma Redgrave – in Liverpool. (She’s been replaced by Julia Ford.) It’s your last chance for a blistering Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Northern Stage and you don’t have long for Arthur Miller’s The Price which is at the Stephen Joseph in Scarborough. Book for Fissure, a walking performance over the weekend of 20-22 May in the Yorkshire Dales. Heading into Scotland, you should catch Catherine Wheels’ Caged, a beauty and the beast variation, which is at the Macrobert in Stirling, Eastwood Park and the Tron this week. Des Dillon’s revenge comedy Six Black Candles goes into Dundee Rep, Liz Lochhead’s spin on Moliere, Educating Agnes, continues at the Lyceum in Edinburgh and Rona Munro’s rom-com, Pandas, is at the Traverse. Phew. That’s that. Enjoy your Easter break.
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April 25 2011, 6:26am | Comments »