Aliya Al-Hassan - Page 16

Never to shy away from embracing new genres, BBC Proms introduced its first ever Disco Prom at a glitter ball-bedecked Royal Albert Hall. Everybody Dance! The Sound of Disco was a heady mix of infectious grooves, slick vocals and dynamic floor-fillers that shook the venue to its very foundations.

What did the critics think of Dominic Cooke's long-delayed production?

Well, we got there in the end and thankfully, it was worth the wait. Initially due to open back in 2020, Dominic Cooke’s adaptation of Hello, Dolly! has finally arrived in the West End.

After a record-breaking sell-out concert launch at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Your Lie in April is now open at the Harold Pinter Theatre for 12 weeks only.

Back in the summer of 1994, Disney's latest animation film The Lion King raked in almost $1 billion at the global box office. After several sequels and long-running shows on Broadway and in the West End, the film is now celebrating its 30th Anniversary and the Royal Albert Hall is giving it the epic Films in Concert treatment.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express has now opened in the specially designed Starlight Auditorium at Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express is possibly one of the world's most bizarre musicals-yes, even more so than Cats. A child's dream-like world where trains compete for races and for each other, all set on roller skates. And yet, this 1984 musical's latest revival will make a new generation fall in love with this loud, bright and captivating production.

Bucket List is the first play from Show Don’t Tell Productions, a company dedicated to new writing, recently founded by postgraduate creative writing students at Oxford University.

Matthew Warchus' production focuses on a single back-bench MP trying to balance help and professional distance with her increasingly unstable constituent.

A new production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, starring Adrian Dunbar and Broadway Royalty and Tony Award Winner Stephanie J. Block, making her West End debut, has now opened.

Starring original cast members Susannah Doyle, Robert Duncan, Ingrid Lacey, Neil Pearson, Jeff Rawle, Stephen Tompkinson and Victoria Wicks, this new stage version sees the team are thrust back together in the world of 24-hour rolling news, social media and algorithms at a new TV station with the distinctly tongue-in-cheek name, Truth News. 

After a gruelling few years of cancellations and Covid, Bill Buckhurst's production of Sister Act The Musical was first enjoyed at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2022. Having opened in March 2024 at the Dominion Theatre, a new cast continues the success of this pacy, slick and hugely enjoyable production.

In 1973 George Lucas wrote a story titled “The Adventures of Indiana Smith”, inspired by the adventure films of the 1930s and 1940s. While on holiday with Steven Spielberg, Lucas pitched his story, and convinced him to direct a trilogy of films. Spielberg suggested that the surname was changed to Jones and the rest is history. Simply known as Raiders of the Lost Ark when it was originally released, the film features an incredible score by the great John Williams.

After a successful run at the Fringe, Martha Watson Allpress’ lyrically poignant show Lady Dealer now comes to the Bush theatre. Dealing with loneliness, loss and mental health, it's a captivating and immersive watch.

For a sitcom that only lasted for 12 episodes, Fawlty Towers left an indelible mark on British comedy. Discourteous hotel owner Basil Fawlty and his shrewish wife Sybil became legends, along with long-suffering chambermaid Polly and hapless waiter Manuel. Previously staged in Australia, this nostalgic and tightly choreographed play is adapted by the series’ original co-writer John Cleese.

It’s nearly a decade since Denise Gough set the stage alight in Duncan MacMillan’s starkly raw study of addiction. She now reprises her Olivier and Critics' Circle Theatre Award-winning role as Emma for this harrowing and completely absorbing new production of People, Places & Things. 

Studio Ghibli’s Oscar-winning Spirited Away, created by legendary animator and director Hayao Miyazaki is re-imagined for the stage by Olivier and Tony award-winning director of Les Misérables, John Caird. The original Japanese cast perform this extraordinary production with wildly imaginative puppets, dazzling set and costume designs and a live orchestra playing the magnificent original film score by Joe Hisaishi.

Pub garden theatre specialist Open Bar Theatre has returned for a spring season with a deft and slightly chaotic version of William Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Dealing with the fortunes of two young women, the story explores early 19th-century English society, specifically how money and ambition can define a person's fate. 

Mark sits in a white box on a red chair. He is dressed in a grey t-shirt and jeans. With the exception of sporting a red cape, he is nondescript, ordinary, normal. In the next 65 minutes, we are taken on an emotional ride through Mark's experiences of love, parenthood and devastating loss, all while he flits between being a superhero and a very average man.

As delicate and fragile as one of the glass creatures that are collected, Tennesse Williams' beguiling story of memory, The Glass Menagerie combines themes of hope, rejection, disappointment and profound sadness.