Aliya Al-Hassan - Page 7

Stereophonic mines the agony and the ecstasy of creation as it zooms in on a music studio in 1976. Here, an up-and-coming rock band recording a new album finds itself suddenly on the cusp of superstardom. The ensuing pressures could spark their breakup — or their breakthrough.

Even ardent opera fans may struggle to recall the story or the score for Mazeppa. Based on a poem by Pushkin, Tchaikovsky's opera has been unjustly overshadowed by his Eugene Onegin. Last staged at the London Coliseum in 1984, Grange Park Opera have landed a coup by engaging the English National Opera orchestra to play for David Pountney’s excellent new production.

A play within a play is not a new concept, but Say It Again, Sorry’s ...Earnest? brings something quite new to the stage. Having come a long way since its premiere at Islington's Pleasance in 2019, the show follows a rather tortuous production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest which loses cast members one by one, only to replace them with unsuspecting members of the audience.

Just how much fun can you have at an oratorio about a Old Testament tale of jealousy, madness and death? Well, quite a lot as it happens at the return of Barry Kosky's remarkable production of Handel's Saul. This staging is opera at its most theatrical, with severed heads, a breast-feeding witch, a gay subplot and more twerking than a Beyoncé concert.

Grange Park Opera has opened its new season with a crowd-pleaser. Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly remains problematic, with its story of a Japanese teenage geisha, impregnated and cruelly abandoned by an American lieutenant. However, it is still wildly popular, mainly due to its ravishing score.

Return to the forest this summer – a dream world of flying fairies, contagious fogs and moonlight revels. The seating is wrapped around the action while the immersive tickets allow the story to be followed on foot. Following its critically-acclaimed run in 2019, the Bridge Theatre’s five-star production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream returns for a limited run.

Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey, an international collaboration between Glasgow-based Vanishing Point and Kanagawa Arts Theatre of Yokohama, Japan (in association with Tramway) picked up four awards at the 2025 CATS, which were presented at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre today, Sunday June 8, 2025. The special guest presenter was leading writer, director and panto dame extraordinaire Johnny McKnight.

Terence Rattigan's work remains a stalwart of the British stage. Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre has a particular fondness for his lesser revived work; lighter, frothier plays such as French Without Tears and While the Sun Shines. In Praise of Love, Rattigan’s poignant penultimate play, is a different proposition. 

After two highly successful runs at the Bush theatre, Anoushka Lucas's beautifully pitched and intensely captivating solo piece now arrives at the Menier Chocolate Factory in a slightly extended form.

Vivie Warren is a woman ahead of her time. Estranged from her wealthy mother, she delights in a glass of whisky, a good detective story, and is determined to carve herself a sparkling legal career in an age ruled by men. Her mother, however, is a product of that old patriarchal order. Exploiting it has earned Mrs. Warren a fortune and paid for her daughter’s expensive education – but at what cost?

Marking the start of Drew McOnie’s inaugural season, the award-winning corny musical Shucked has now opened at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. In a small town where the cherished corn crop is fading, Shucked follows farmgirl Maizy as she seeks help by going to the big city, shaking up the town's routine and igniting a spark of change. 

After many years in the 12-step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, James agrees to become the sponsor of newcomer Luka. On the cusp of Step 5, their conversations must turn to confessionals, with progress hinging on Luka revealing secrets that could lead back to alcohol. But it’s clear that James also has dangerous truths in his past, truths that threaten the trust on which both their recoveries depend.

Opera buffa is an ever-popular genre of the art, and more than two centuries after its composition, Rossini's Il barbière di Siviglia remains one this genre's most often staged operas. The music and lyrics are pure genius, but the success of this particular opera comes from an inherent understanding of the comedy within. Annabel Arden's production makes a triumphant return to Glyndebourne because it does just that.

Mischief’s new action-packed thriller The Comedy About Spies is gripping audiences with laughter at the Noël Coward Theatre. The multi award-winning team behind The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About a Bank Robbery step into 1960s London in this hilarious spy caper full of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and mistaken identity.

Beverley Knight starsBefore Elvis, Johnny Cash and Jimi Hendrix came Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the so-called 'godmother of rock ‘n’ roll’ who you have probably never heard of. Controversially Tharpe took her conservative gospel roots into the nightclubs, playing with Duke Ellington and selling millions of records in the USA and the UK during the 1930s and 40s, yet she ended her life in an unmarked grave. 

Stephen Sondheim’s final work, Here We Are, is directed by two-time Tony Award-winner Joe Mantello with book by Tony Award-nominee David Ives. It is now open at the National Theatre with an all-star cast including Jane Krakowski and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. So what did the critics think?

Following a sell-out run at the Royal Court, the play everyone is talking about is transferring to the West End. John Lithgow reprises his role as Roald Dahl in the West End transfer of Mark Rosenblatt's critically acclaimed play. Directed by Nicholas Hytner, The Royal Court's production of Giant is now open at the West End's Harold Pinter Theatre.

On the eve of July 4th in the Hamptons, Elena Solness, a publishing magnate, is preparing to throw a party to celebrate her architect husband, Henry Solness, as he unveils his latest masterpiece. Their already vulnerable union is shattered by the unexpected arrival of Mathilde, a former student of Henry’s, with whom he previously shared an intimate connection. As the evening unfolds, each find themselves face to face with a reckoning that indelibly tilts the axis of their lives.

Michael Grandage's My Master Builder is billed as a reinvention of Ibsen's play of almost the same name through a modern, female lens. A rich story with themes of control, power, and the search for validation, featuring a host of stars of stage and screen. What could go wrong? Quite a lot as it happens.