Nimax, which owns six of London’s West End theatres, has announced that it will start opening up all of them, beginning with the Apollo on 22 October.
The announcement came on the six-month anniversary of the last performance in the West End.
I am a three-bun wig, brown-booted, very large, maternal bosom sort of a gal. David Ashley is talking about his pantomime alter ego which has inhabited him over the Christmas period for 12 seasons. David’s successful West End career and occasional teaching saw a change of emphasis as he hit his forties with teaching taking…
First, this is what you need to know: Louise Plowright, a fantastically talented singer and actress who has appeared in many West End musicals, has pancreatic cancer which isn’t treatable in the United Kingdom. She needs help if she is going to survive. Her equally fantastically talented sister, opera singer Rosalind Plowright, has set up a…
After having seen the musical Priscilla, I’ve decided to come out: I’m a Sondheim fan. Yes, Into the Woods, Sweeney, the lot… even Merrily We Roll Along and The Frogs. Every cd, the live recordings, the scores. Now I’ve got that off my chest, I can say how thoroughly enjoyable I find Priscilla, Queen of…
65 years ago, Audrey Hepburn was a struggling actress and dancer in London, working occasionally in the renowned West End night club Ciro’s. That space is now home to the National Portrait Gallery‘s Heinz Archive and Library, and now to celebrate the iconic figure the gallery is to stage an exhibition which will bring together a remarkable selection…
At the risk of sounding petty, this was the first time that I have been given restricted view tickets to review a performance, so I’ll review the three-quarters of Milan’s Dirty Dancing that I saw. The first musical number, for example, was either performed by someone offstage, by a pre-recorded voice, or by someone standing down-right…
Ballet master David Howard, affectionately known in the media as “Teacher of Stars”, has died at 76. Howard trained at what is now the Arts Educational) School and the Royal Academy of Dance, eventually becoming a soloist with the Royal Ballet, then leaving after seven years to join the National Ballet of Canada. He also…
There are comebacks and comebacks: the rather sad, end-of-the-pier affair, because money’s run out and there’s alimony to pay; the small cameo ‘because I miss the applause’; and Alessandra Ferri. Ferri’s various comeback projects are classy with a piece being created for her by Martha Clarke based on Colette’s novel Cherì with ABT’s Herman Cornejo, a new ballet about Eleonora…
Q&A When did you start dancing? My first steps were taken in the summer of 1981, at the tender age of 11. My starting point was Disco Dancing lessons at Tom & Pat Lait’s Ballroom classes, and then in 1982 I started ballet/modern lessons with my local ballet teacher at the Linda Shipton School of Dancing….
Everyone who knows and loves the original cast recording of Jerry Herman’s musical Dear World will be delighted to have the opportunity to see it when it comes to the London stage next year. It will receive its British première at the Charing Cross Theatre with Betty Buckley in the title role – which Angela Lansbury created in 1969 –…
Italy has long been plagued with a lazy approach to putting on musicals. Looked on as easy money makers, the artistic and financial input is often skipped over for quicker gains. Mistake! Audiences were not happy getting ripped off by incompetent production teams providing cheap imitations of Broadway shows or Hollywood musicals. Not everything was bad, but a lot was….
This promises to be the most fun critics round-up yet. Rarely have reviews been so unanimously foul. Being that there was so little to save, the critics left their stars in the drawer, and polished their metaphors with seeming glee. No amount of special pleading, of aesthetic jiggery-pokery, can excuse Schaufuss’s weird libretto as it…
In today’s Sunday Times, Adam Cooper – ex-Royal Ballet dancer, and currently tip-tapping in the West End – talked about the places where he and his elder brother, Simon, grew up. Until their teens they lived in a ‘poky’ flat in Tooting. The flat was much too small for two energetic boys with a musician father who had…
Shelagh Delaney, best known for A Taste of Honey, has died at the age of 71. Delaney was 19 when A Taste of Honey, about the friendship between a young pregnant woman and a gay artist, premièred in 1958. A success in both London and New York, it was made into a Bafta-winning film in 1961, starring…
Tyne Daly will reprise her Broadway role in Terrence McNally‘s Master Class when it arrives in London’s West End. The Cagney & Lacey star will play opera singer Maria Callas in the play at the Vaudeville Theatre from 21 January. Stephen Wadsworth’s production was a sell-out when it opened on Broadway earlier this year. The original…
A newlywed is suing an opera company she hired to sing at her wedding reception after claiming their “painful” performance ruined the day and even made one guest feel sick. Virginia Routh, a lifelong opera fan, paid company Soprano Bella £2,500 for three opera singers to perform at her wedding to Alan Lynch at Chandos…
On the eve of the release of a new Johnny English film, Johnny English Reborn, Rowan Atkinson talked to The Times’ Ginny Dougary. On driving fast cars “I always think the lap of a track is very similar to a ‘take’ in a film – and the good thing about a film is you can do take after…
In Melbourne, Australia, Universal Pictures is halfway through filming Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Phantom of the Opera sequel, Love Never Dies. Lloyd Webber, who wrote the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, now playing at the Regent Theatre, is in town to see his latest work immortalised. He is watching during 30 hours of filming before…
A telegram sent by Noel Coward to Agatha Christie has been discovered inside an old bureau while it was being restored in Gloucestershire. The message, dating back to 1957, congratulates her on The Mousetrap breaking the record for the longest running show in London’s West End. A record Coward had previously held.
Spamalot was described on its posters as “lovingly ripped off from Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Now the producer of that 1975 film is claiming he has been ripped off by the musical. It is no laughing matter: Mark Forstater has issued a High Court writ saying that he is owed hundreds of thousands…
Shrek the Musical is already up and running but get ready for another all-singing West End show about an oversize creature the public love. Subo The Musical, based on the life of Susan Boyle, has been cast for next year. The show – which sadly will actually opt for the straightforward title I Dreamed A…
Shrek The Musical has opened in London’s West End and seems to have generally won over the nation’s critics. It’s New York run wasn’t a runaway success and producers must have been a little nervous on the press night. Lots of the New York production has been recycled, even Shrek’s green rubber suit… yuk! Nigel Lindsay plays…
West End box office returns were down 6% in the first quarter of this year, according to figures released by the Society of London Theatre, while attendances were down 10%. Figures for this year’s first quarter were affected by the fact that several West End musical houses – including the 2,200-seat Theatre Royal Drury Lane…
Stephen Sondheim‘s ‘new’ musical, ‘Road Show’ is the third collaboration between Sondheim and book writer John Weidman (Pacific Overtures and Assassins). But ‘Road Show’ is yet another version of ‘Wise Guys’ (directed by Sam Mendes in 1999) and ‘Bounce’ (2003). It recounts the story of brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner and their adventures across America from the…
Broadway‘s hottest musical, which was garlanded last week with a pack-leading 14 Tony nominations, is to visit the West End. The Book of Mormon, written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, and acclaimed by critics and rapturous audiences alike, will open “sometime next year”, in London, according to Sonia Friedman, its…
At the 2011 Olivier Award ceremony this year Stephen Sondheim was presented with a lifetime achievement award. Part of the tribute to the 80 year-old composer was from his 85 year-old star Angela Lansbury. Lansbury’s first ever Broadway musical was in 1964 with Stephen Sondheim’s short-lived Anyone Can Whistle. In May 1973, the first revival of Gypsy opened in London’s…
Lots of the risqué lines, bawdy jokes and swearing has been edited out of the Broadway script. These changes are among many that “Priscilla” has undergone in its journey to Broadway, from the 1994 Australian movie to the musical’s first workshop in Sydney in 2005 — and then full productions there and in the West End. The…
“The sad but true story of Anna Nicole Smith, a two-bit, surgically enhanced American stripper, nude model and C-list celebrity who married an 89-year-old billionaire and ended up, at the age of 39, dead from an overdose of prescription drugs in a lonely hotel room.” Thus Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph sums up the new…
London theatre stars including Daniel Boys, Louise Dearman, Alex Gaumond, Ray Meagher, Ben Richards and the cast of Jersey Boys were among the theatre fans who celebrated the launch of Get Into London Theatre yesterday. Former Any Dream Will Do contestant and Avenue Q star Boys hosted the event, which was held at the Royal…
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