Few venue openings have been as much-anticipated as that of Aviva Studios. With around £100m of public funding and £35m just from the naming rights, its opening production from Factory International was announced over a year ago: Free Your Mind would be “a large-scale immersive performance based on The Matrix films” with a world-class creative team including director Danny Boyle and set designer Es Devlin.
Manchester’s landmark new cultural venue, Aviva Studios, the permanent home of Factory International, officially opens today (18 October 2023) with the world premiere of Free Your Mind, a large-scale immersive performance based on The Matrix.
Mears’s production demonstrates a keen feel for drama and a genuinely brilliant reading of Verdi’s opera; when juxtaposed with a musical interpretation as potent as this, it’s a production not likely to be forgotten.
A still very debonair Nigel Havers as dashing Elyot, and Patricia Hodge, very much at the top of her game as sensational Amanda – aged 72 and 75 respectively – command the stage of the newly refurbished Ambassadors Theatre.
All good things come to an end, and to signify the culmination of their week-long residency at the Royal Opera House, The Australian Ballet offered a suitably wonderful Celebration Gala acknowledging their 60th anniversary.
How do mere mortals celebrate their 50th birthday? By having a midlife crisis? Not dance royalty Carlos Acosta, who seems to literally turn back time by making a return to the stage as a dancer - having retired from performing in 2016 - in Carlos at 50 at the Royal Opera House (with five, basically sold out performances), his old stomping ground.
Sometimes show titles are spot-on perfect, albeit unintentionally. Porca Miseria is, in the Italian vernacular, an expression of frustration, something I would use when losing a cufflink or after sitting through a three hour-plus triptych of dance works that is, in the English vernacular, patently bobbins.
Sir Lenny Henry's hugely affecting debut play opens at the Bush Theatre
Opening nights tend to be special. So what’s ‘A Gala Celebration’ opening night at the Royal Opera House going to feel like? Spontaneous combustion?! Perhaps from the ticket prices…
With the weather beginning to warm up and the sun staying up for longer, Richmond Theatre is delighted to ‘spring’ into a new season. Filled with hilarious comedies, fun family shows and big names, audiences are encouraged to picnic on the Green prior to taking their seat in the beautiful Frank Matcham-designed theatre for an evening of entertainment.
I took a trip down to the costume shop today to begin working on my costume for “Get Down”. I love the director’s vision for the number, which is to create costumes inspired by each character, but in the style of the performer. We don’t have to create our own, but as an amateur costume designer and cosplayer, I jumped at the chance.
Following up Value Engineering, Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicolas Kent once more let the evidence speak for itself in a piece of verbatim theatre that still manages to shock us
“A sad tale’s best for winter.” There may be moments of poignancy and outright tragedy in this late Shakespeare play, but Sean Holmes’ vibrant production ensures that the audience is given more than their fair share of comedy and levity throughout.
If 2020 was the year theatre ground to a halt and 2021 was when it nervously found its legs again (only to fall over occasionally), then 2022 was when it blasted back to some kind of normal with many pandemic-delayed shows finally seeing the inside of a venue.
Oliver Reese, artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble, translates the tale for the stage transforming it into a one-man-show led by Jonathan Slinger. But do we need another white man’s poor-me point of view in 2022? The book has its merits, as does the play, but what is this show trying to say? It’s difficult to pinpoint.
The Snowman and Christmas go together like bad weather and TfL apologies so it's unsurprising that this adaption by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre of Raymond Brigg's seminal 1978 graphic novel is returning to Sadler's Wells' Peacock Theatre.
Time for the annual treat that is an ENB mixed bill at Sadler’s Wells, on this occasion featuring a couple of lockdown greatest hits, and a bold new production of The Rite of Spring.
David Farr made his name in 2016 bringing John le Carré's book The Night Manager to vivid life in a hit TV adaptation. In his latest play A Dead Body In Taos, re-animation is again the name of the game.
It's a double first at Theatre Royal Bath with Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Regarded as England's first opera when initially performed around 1688, it's also the first opera to be performed in the intimate Ustinov Studio.
A provocative and ultimately successful reimagining of opera's most operatic of works
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