Lez Brotherston News

As part of the Royal Albert Hall's 150th Anniversary celebrations New Adventures and the Royal Albert Hall are delighted to announce that Matthew Bourne's multi-award winning dance thriller THE CAR MAN will play 14 performances only at the iconic venue from Thursday 17 – Sunday 27 June 2021.

Center Theatre Group Digital Stage has announced their schedule for November 9 - November 15, 2020. 'Disgraced' premieres November 11 at 12 p.m. Pacific. Audio production streamed free to the public and available on demand until January 10, 2021

With theatres remaining closed due to COVID-19, Scottish Ballet is committed to connecting with audiences and tour venues throughout the coming months. With the screen as its stage, the company continues to produce artistic work and community programmes, including the world premiere of the company’s first full-length, feature film, The Secret Theatre.

Scottish Ballet's mission is to inspire on stage and beyond, and so the company will build on its creative and innovative digital work to keep audiences inspired, fit and connected this winter.

Emma Ricea??s acclaimed Romantics Anonymous was supposed to be embarking on a US tour in March, which was cancelled due to the pandemic. Instead, Wise Children have created a a??digital toura??, in which the musical is performed live at the Bristol Old Vic from 22-26 September and streamed both internationally and across the UK, with each night presented in partnership with a different group of theatres. Finally, on 27 September the show will be performed to a socially distanced audience at the Bristol Old Vic.

Matthew Bournea??s double Olivier Award-winning dance adaptation of the legendary film The Red Shoes will be released in cinemas nationwide from 30 September. To celebrate, we've got an exclusive clip - watch the video below!

The postponed cinema release of Matthew Bournea??s The Red Shoes has been rescheduled. The double Olivier award-winning dance adaptation of the legendary film will be screened in cinemas across the UK and Ireland from 30 September 2020.

Wise Children today announced The School for Wise Children's Summer Spread a?" offering a delicious array of theatrical courses delivered online by Emma Rice and her trusted team of collaborators. Guest tutors include Simon Baker, Nandi Bhebhe, Lez Brotherston, Tanika Gupta, Joel Horwood, Laura Keefe, Poppy Keeling, Nadine Lee and more.

In the third and final installment of Reel Adventures-A Festival of Classics, the wonderful Matthew Bourne's The Car Man celebrated its 20th anniversary last night with a screening on Sky Arts. Set in an Italian-American community in sixties America, the story owes more to film noir influences and the story of The Postman Always Rings Twice than Bizet's opera.

You may have thought you had seen every possible version of Shakespeare's tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and yet the masterful Matthew Bourne manages to surprise you anew. Set in the sterile white of Verona Institute, where the young are forced into submission, this is the story as you will have never seen it before.

It's no understatement to say Sir Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake changed the dance landscape back in 1995 when it first premiered. Any Swan Lake is a juggernaut of a production but Bourne's added layers of storytelling, engaging new characters and unique reimagining for a 21st Century audience cemented a?oeiconica?? status, a word I use sparingly but it's fully justified here. The first in a sequence of Bourne's work to be seen on screen during this time of lockdown which will see releases of Romeo and Juliet and The Car Man, as well as this 2018 production of arguably Bourne's best-known work. 

Premiering at Chichester Festival Theatre in September 2018 (although first produced in Sheffield in 2016), Daniel Evans' production of Flowers for Mrs Harris takes us on a heart-warming journey of self-discovery. Based on Paul Gallico's 1958 novel of the same name, Rachel Wagstaff's book is overflowing with an authentic sense of humanity, and what it means to truly find oneself.

For the first time, Chichester Festival Theatre is to stream a selection of its archive productions online, beginning with the musical Flowers for Mrs Harris from Thursday 9 April for the Easter weekend.

A violent storm sweeps the coast. Diana Stuckley and her daughter are struggling to keep the roof on their run-down manor house, when neighbours and strangers begin to appear on their doorstep, seeking shelter from the floods.

Paper Mill Playhouse (Mark S. Hoebee-Producing Artistic Director, Michael Stotts- Managing Director) has announced the cast and creative team for Sister Act with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Glenn Slater, book by Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner, and additional book material by Douglas Carter Beane, based on the Touchstone Pictures Motion Picture Sister Act written by Joseph Howard.

This week, Birmingham Hippodrome presented Sir Matthew Bourne with a commemorative seat plaque celebrating his productions playing to a total of over 200,000 people in Birmingham since his legendary production of Swan Lake first visited the theatre back in 1996.

Matthew Bourne's double Olivier award-winning dance adaptation of the legendary film 'The Red Shoes' will be screened in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on 19 and 24 May. Cinema tickets will go on sale on Friday 21 February.

​​​​​​​The first performance of Matthew Bourne's contemporary Swan Lake was performed at the Sadler's Wells Theater, London, in 1995. It has endured twenty-five years with the staying power of a new classic -- for very good reason. Bourne has reinvented the swans from maidens who have been turned into beautiful swans by an evil sorcerer, to male swans, summoned by the dreams and desires of a pampered, regimented prince, no sorcerer in sight. Much has been made of this and the homoerotic overtones that appear at times; however, there is much more to it than that as a piece of theater. It is a psychological drama which explores, among other things, celebrity and Royalty in today's world.

A new musical adaptation of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers is heading to Storyhouse during Summer 2020.

David Pugh will present Emma Rice's critically acclaimed musical adaptation of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers, originally created with Wise Children. This new production will be co-produced with Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, where the production will open on 27 March 2020, before going on a national tour, concluding at Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall, where it will play from 27 July to 31 August, with national press performances on 31 July, 1 and 2 August.