Tristram Kenton News

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella has officially arrived at the Gillian Lynne Theatre! The new musical began preview just last week and BroadwayWorld has your first look at the cast on stage.

The production is now playing at the London Coliseum, running 21 June through 29 September 2021.

One of London’s most venerated theatres, Shakespeare's Globe has re-opened its doors with Sean Holmes’s gaudy 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With staggered entrance slots and social distance protocols in place, the Globe itself feels it too. The groundlings are masked now (as is the audience as a whole) and are seated on scattered chairs while the actors wear face coverings when they walk among them.

Earlier this month, we marked the 91st birthday of the living legend that is Stephen Sondheim with a look back at five London productions of his work that are embedded in my memory. This week, we honour a quintet of performances that has achieved the same result, even if this has meant choosing from an astonishing array of riches that could populate a column like this ten times over. In any case, here are just a few of the Sondheim star turns that linger in the mind.

The Royal Ballet returned to the stage for the first time in seven months on Friday night. Yes, I could contextualise about how this was bitter sweet and dampened by social distancing but, the dance was too stupendous to give any time to that so let's not and just marvel about how wonderful it was to see them again. 

On a rainy evening in North West London, a rather unique experience took place. Drive-in cinema remains a novelty in the UK; a drive-in cinema screening opera is surely a first. However, in response to the current situation, the Luna Drive-in Cinema has adapted its hugely popular cinema nights to both socially distanced seated screenings and drive-ins. In partnership with The Royal Opera House, it is now screening a variety of opera and ballets throughout the summer at venues across the country.

Last night was the online premiere of the Royal Opera House's Faust, broadcast for free as part of the #OurHouseToYourHouse series. This is David McVicar's production, recorded in 2019.

It's a strange old time right now, with our beloved theatre community mourning the loss of jobs, of creative outlets, and of the human connections that theatre is so brilliant at creating. This collective grief is felt over at BroadwayWorld UK too, and we want to do what we can to continue celebrating the industry we love so much, so we've launched a series of features that celebrate musicals and plays from days gone by.

The theatre landscape has changed dramatically since the 1977 premier of Abigail's Party but Leigh remains as real, raw and relevant as ever before. At 77 the writer / director shows no signs of slowing down. After venturing into period pieces with Topsy-Turvey and Mr Turner, Leigh's most recent picture Peterloo is his most ambitious yet. We've put together a list of Leigh's top ten works.

When you think of theatre, what shows come to mind? An obvious answer may well be Wicked. The writer of songs such as 'Defying Gravity' and 'Popular', Stephen Schwartz is for many the epitome of musical theatre. But cast your mind back to before Wicked and remember The Prince of Egypt, a 1998 animated film for which Schwartz penned 'When You Believe'. Now at the Dominion Theatre and bolstered with 10 songs penned by Schwartz, a new adaptation of the 1990s DreamWorks film defies little other than entertainment.

The new musical The Prince of Egypt is now in previews at London's Dominion Theatre. The production, which features a cast and orchestra of almost 60 artists, officially opens on Tuesday (25 February 2020) for a limited engagement until Saturday 12 September 2020.

There must have been a two-for-one offer on the day director Barbora Horakova visited the Regietheater prop-store to kit out her Luisa Miller for English National Opera. White walls and plenty of black marker pens to daub on them; geometric structures; sinister clowns; a chorus all costumed somewhere between circus-freak and sexy-Bedlam; a quartet of contemporary dancers scraping and draping themselves across the set: we got them all in this hectic, wilful, defiantly joyless staging of Verdi's tragedy of love across the class divide.

We're just starting our second week of shows at the Fortune Theatre in the West End, after three weeks of rehearsal, and every bit of it has been an absolute joy so far. Last week the audiences were great - laughing and screaming in all the places we hoped they might.

Frantic Assembly have released production images for I Think We Are Alone a major new play by Sally Abbott (The Coroner, Vera), which will run at King's Theatre Edinburgh from Tuesday 18 February – Saturday 22 February

On paper, the story of Puccini's La bohème veers towards sentimentality, but witnessing a live production rarely fails to stir deep emotion. Continuing their series of live screenings, Covent Garden's Royal Opera House presents a version of the opera that is both captivating and utterly heart breaking. Screening to over 1000 cinemas, across 26 countries, these are truly international events.

John Cranko's Onegin was last performed by the Royal Ballet in 2015. Now five years later, there is a new wave of rising stars who are keen to showcase their take on the great dramatic classical roles on offer, and how palpably Onegin is a ballet that needs those stars. With only four key characters, the corps are on hand to fill the lighter moments but all eyes are on the romantic entanglement at the centre of the story.  

Frantic Assembly have today released rehearsal images for I Think We Are Alone a major new play by Sally Abbott (The Coroner, Vera), co-directed by Kathy Burke (Lady Windermere's Fan, The Retreat) and Scott Graham (Fatherland, Things I Know to be True).

Shakespeare's Globe has opened its doors during the winter season for the first time to host Sandi Toksvig's Christmas at the (Snow) Globe which she created with her sister Jenifer.

It wouldn't be Christmas without Birmingham Repertory Theatre's family favourite The Snowman, now in its 22nd consecutive year. This beloved dance adaptation of Raymond Briggs' tale returns to Sadler's Wells' Peacock Theatre this week as part of its UK tour. Martin Fenton talks to BroadwayWorld about taking on the all-important title role.

The theatrical phenomenon that is The Woman In Black began in 1987, when Stephen Mallatratt adapted Susan Hill's spine-chilling work of gothic fiction for the stage. Over thirty years and countless terrified audiences later the production is still going strong.