Manuel Harlan News

A new musical based on the life of legendary artist Tina Turner, TINA – THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL opens on Broadway tomorrow night!

Though her time on Broadway has been relatively brief up until now, Adrienne Warren is no stranger to dazzling theatre audiences with portrayals of legendary entertainers. She did it twice in her last outing, SHUFFLE ALONG, OR, THE MAKING OF THE MUSICAL SENSATION OF 1921 AND ALL THAT FOLLOWED, playing both the exuberant Gertrude Saunders, whose cutesy singing would be appropriated by the white mainstream as the model for the iconic Betty Boop, and Florence Mills, one of the great singing artists of the early 20th Century.

Stefan Adegbola is currently starring in Hampstead Theatre's production of Botticelli in the Fire as Poggio di Chiusi, the title character's close friend. We caught up with him to have a chat about the show and the peculiar relevance of Renaissance matters.

Is this a great time to tell stories, shedding light in dark times? Or is it an impossible task? That's the loose premise of Annie Baker's wilfully elusive new piece, featuring the brainstorming session from hell a?' or possibly about hell, or in hell. Immaculately directed by Baker herself and designer Chloe Lamford, it's monstrously clever: a philosophical Fright Night.

Their phones switched off, a group of people sit around a table telling, categorising and theorising stories. This is a world that is both familiar and fantastical. Their real purpose is never quite clear, but they continue on, searching for the monstrous. Part satire, part sacred rite, The Antipodesasks what value stories have for a world in crisis.

The Renaissance is in full swing with Lorenzo de' Medici's (Adetomiwa Edun) modern policies and Sandro Botticelli (Dickie Beau) is at the peak of his success. Parties are held in his honour and Florence is thriving as the home of some of the most sought-after painters of their age.

It's the beginning of the 20th Century in the Pacific Northwest and Linda Hazzard's sanitarium is under fire for her unusual practices. She founded Wilderness Heights with the aim of a?oecuringa?? her patients through fasting, which, in her opinion, would rid the body of toxins.

Based on the novel by C. S. Lewis and directed by Sally Cookson, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will have its first performance at the Bridge Theatre on 9 November 2019. Today (16 October 2019) rehearsal images are released on the 69th anniversary of the publication of the novel. Opening night is on 18 November and the production runs until 2 February 2020. Full details of the performance schedule, including Sunday matinees, are available on the Bridge website.

Unless you are a seasoned movie buff, it is unlikely you will have heard of Jack Cardiff. However, this great British cinematographer had a seismic effect on the way in which we view films, having been the first person to shoot a Technicolor film in Europe. He worked on films such as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, filling the screen with previously unseen levels of colour and saturation. In Terry Johnson's play, Prism, we visit Cardiff in his declining years, as dementia robs him of his present, but also returns him to his colourful past.

Following acclaimed runs of The Flick and John, Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie  Baker returns to the National Theatre with her latest extraordinary play, The Antipodes. 

Laura Wade isn't the first to tackle Jane Austen's unfinished novel, abandoned in 1805, but she is the only one so far to write herself, the struggling adaptor, into the text. This witty, ingenious and surprisingly philosophical play, which premiered at Chichester last year, merges Austen with Pirandello, and satire with big existential questions.

Just last week, Broadway celebrated the opening of yet another Florian Zeller play- The Height of the Storm. The new play, starring acting greats Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins, continues a streak of English-translated works by the French novelist and playwright, whose work was last seen on Broadway in 2016 with The Father, starring Frank Langella.

In 1981 at Kibeho College in Rwanda, a young girl claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary who warned her of the unimaginable: Rwanda becoming hell on earth. She was ignored by her friends and scolded by her school but then another student saw the vision, and another, and the impossible appeared to be true.

The time is now for The Scottish Play; over the past couple of years there has been a glut of Macbeths, no doubt inspired by the extraordinary ongoing political events. This time it's Chichester's turn, with director Paul Miller reuniting with John Simm for a second Shakespeare (the pair teamed up for Hamlet in 2010), and Dervla Kirwan taking on the role of Lady Macbeth in this, the final production of the summer season.

After winning a Stage Debut Award in 2017 for The Country Girls and starring alongside Jennifer Saunders in Lady Windermere's Fan, Grace Molony can now be seen in the London transfer of Laura Wade's The Watsons, which opens tonight at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Directed by Samuel West, The Watsons tackls Jane Austen's unfinished final novel. BroadwayWorld spoke with Grace about Austen's legacy, returning to the show, and the play's unexpected relevance today.

It's Pittsburg, 1969, and the city's Hill District is far from the vibrant, bustling, jazz-soaked African-American neighbourhood it was in its prime. August Wilson's Two Trains Running brings a shabby diner in this threatened community to life, offering a window onto the lives of seven irregular regular customers and, ultimately, the state of America in the sixties.

Guy Henry talks about his life as an actor on stage and television and about his role in Peter Gynt, at the National Theatre until 8 October.

A slice-of-African-American-life in 1960s Pittsburgh comes to life at Royal and Derngate

Being cast in an August Wilson play feels like an honour; I studied his work at drama school. He is described as the black Shakespeare. His words and characters are so full of life - half my job feels done already. How he expresses the black experience feels so relatable even to this day.

Royal & Derngate and English Touring Theatre presents August Wilson's Two Trains Running. Medina directs Geoff Aymer (West), Ray Emmet Brown (Wolf), Derek Ezenagu (Hambone), Andrew French (Memphis), Leon Herbert (Holloway), Michael Salami (Sterling) and Anita-Joy Uwajeh (Risa).