Gabrielle Brooks News

Voting continues for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favourites. See the current standings below, and cast your vote...

Voting continues for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favourites. See the current standings below, and cast your vote...

Today, the shortlist is announced for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards, celebrating the best of theatre - from the West End to shows around the country and online. CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

WhatsOnStage today announced that Jodie Prenger and Tom Read Wilson will host the 22nd Annual WhatsOnStage Awards. They are joined by presenters Chris Bush, Graziano Di Prima, Omari Douglas, James Graham, David Harewood, Frances Mayli McCann, Stephanie McKeon, Drew McOnie, Daniel Monks, Tracy Ann Oberman, Johannes Radebe, and more.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, renowned photographer Rankin and stars from the West End gathered in Piccadilly Circus today (Tuesday 7 December), as the famous Piccadilly Lights were lit up with striking portraits of people behind London’s world-leading theatreland.

Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical has broken the box office record at the Lyric Theatre for the highest grossing week last week.

The West End production of Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical, which opened last week at the Lyric Theatre, has extended its booking period until 18th September 2022. Hailed as a major cultural event the landmark production about Bob Marley's life began performances at the Lyric at the start of the month.

With unlimited access to Marley's magical, revolutionary songs and a book by award-winning Lee Hall, acclaimed director Clint Dyer channels the creative quest and spiritual power of a universally embraced icon. The production brings a dynamic company of performers, led by Arinzé Kene as Bob Marley, that fuse with the finest reggae musicians to bring this exhilarating story of struggle, freedom and transformation from Trenchtown to the West End.

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” To some, Bob Marley is the dreadlocked king of reggae, writer of feel-good hits such as “One Love” and “Three Little Birds” – but there was far more to his life than that. Abandoned by his father and shoved from pillar to post in his youth, he formed a bond with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, the trio hoping to escape the ghetto with the help of music – although Bob probably wouldn’t have minded giving a football career a shot if that hadn’t worked out.

Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical officially opens on the West End  at the Lyric Theatre tomorrow, 20 October. Check out all new photos of the cast in action here!

An exclusive live theatre event to celebrate the publication of 50 Women In Theatre at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe will be presented on Sunday 3 October 2021 at 6pm.

Check out the all new photos and footage from rehearsals for this world premiere musical, and learn more about how to attend!

This new production celebrates the immense life and timely message of Jamaican soul rebel Bob Marley - from a life of poverty to visionary international superstar. Crucial fellow soul rebels in the cast include the sensational Rita Marley and the I Three and his inspiring brothers in arms, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Lee 'Scratch Perry'.

We have been to space; now it’s party time. Following Amy Berryman’s Walden, Sonia Friedman Productions’ RE:EMERGE season continues at the Harold Pinter Theatre with Yasmin Joseph’s J’Ouvert. Set in the annual Notting Hill Carnival in 2017, Joseph’s spirited debut play was first produced in 2019 at Theatre503, in a staging that also marked the directorial debut of actor Rebekah Murrell. In the play’s West End outing, Murrell is once again at the helm, and the result is a joyous, plucky work that thrusts us into a communal tradition as experienced by three young women.

Four actresses with vast collective experience spanning theatre, TV, film and acting training have joined forces to launch Mawa Theatre Company, the UK's first all-Black, all female Shakespeare Company.

Opening with Amy Berryman's Walden and continuing with J'Ouvert and Anna X, the season of plays curated by Sonia Friedman Productions with Ian Rickson tackles urgent issues integral to rebuilding our society, including structural inequality, climate change and the economics of truth in an internet age.

And they're off! London theatres have been open for several weeks now, and the reviews once again are coming hard and fast as a glance at this very site will confirm. Quick off the mark have been the smaller-sized shows: solo plays like Cruise or Harm or a three-person West End entry like Amy Berryman's Walden (though that title was beset by pre-opening dramas of its own, more of which below). But as the big musicals prepare their own re-emergence on to a scene marked out already by the producer Sonia Friedman's RE:EMERGE season (of which Walden is the first of three to open), excitement is in the air. The question now remains as to who, precisely, the audience is likely to be for these shows, given the difficulty for many in travelling to the UK.

Written by Lesley Ross & James Williams, and based on the show of the same name, this quirky retelling of the famous fairytale touches on friendship, acceptance and how dangerous it is to fall under the spell of a Spider's dark web. 

The fabled date is getting nearer!  For months, May 17 has loomed large in the calendar of London theatreland as the signal for playhouses to reopen their doors after a five-month lockdown - a period of closure that has, of course, been much longer in New York for the simple reason that London theaters did at least flicker partially to life last autumn.

Yasmin Joseph’s J’Ouvert broadcasts on BBC Four this evening as part of the BBC’s Lights Up season, ahead of opening at the Harold Pinter Theatre as part of Sonia Friedman Productions RE:EMERGE season, which also includes Amy Berryman’s Walden and Joseph Charlton’s Anna X.