Aliya Al-Hassan - Page 76

Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t love Dolly Parton? Even country music-haters know her tunes and appreciate her philanthropy. 9 To 5 The Musical debuted on stage in 2009 and is an entertaining adaptation of the revenge satire film, which saw Dolly, along with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda outwitting their awful and sexist male boss to gain female empowerment.

We know that there is an etiquette when watching a theatrical performance, but it's fair to say that in the past eighteen months many of us have grown used to watching all our entertainment solely on a screen where chatting about the performance, eating loudly and getting up mid-speech is the norm. It seems that some of this behaviour may have drifted into our theatres. Or was it ever thus?

Alan Strachan and Alistair Whatley’s well-received production of A Splinter Of Ice was streamed online before a national tour. This understated and intriguing look at friendship, loyalty and allegiance now comes to the Jermyn Street Theatre. In 1987, the Cold War is very recent history. Ben Brown’s play imagines the conversation that may have taken place between novelist Graham Greene and his old MI6 boss Kim Philby when Greene visited him in Moscow while attending a peace conference.

As part of their new Recovery Season, the Orange Tree Theatre, in a co-production with Actors Touring Company now brings us Rice, a powerful, thought-provoking and funny play about cultural identity, class, race and power told through two very different women, who form an unlikely friendship. Set in Australia, Nisha is a young Indian-Australian and an ambitious executive on the cusp of securing a life-changing deal to sell rice to India. Yvette is an older Chinese-Australian who cleans Nisha’s office while she juggles with trying to revive a failing business and a daughter in trouble for environmental activism.

Many people got through the first lockdown engrossed in the final part of Hilary Mantel’s literary trilogy following the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell. After the successful stage adaptations of the first two books, fans have waited seven years to see The Mirror And The Light; the concluding part of Mantel’s epic work. Whether it was worth the wait is not entirely clear.

Dirty Dancing debuted on stage back in 2006. After numerous tours it is now back at Richmond Theatre, which has opened its doors for the first time in 559 days. The show is a faithful interpretation of the much-loved film following the story of 'Baby’ Houseman as she spends a summer discovering love, sex and relationships at a 1960s holiday camp.

Opening its doors for the first time since March 2020, London’s iconic little Finborough Theatre is back. Jordan Hall’s How To Survive An Apocalypse, an award-winning, touching and witty romantic comedy, also looks at the need to prepare for potential Armageddon.

Based on Agatha Christie’s 1925 short story, Witness For The Prosecution was well-established at London’s County Hall before the pandemic. It now makes a welcome return and is as ingenious as ever. We are all used to seeing television adaptations of Christie’s work, but Lucy Bailey’s creative version takes all the theatrics of a courtroom and translates it neatly into a truly immersive production.

In 1955 Michael Tippett introduced his first opera The Midsummer Marriage to a grey, post-war society desperate for some joy and optimism. It has divided the critics, with detractors pointing to the awkward libretto and fans in raptures with the sumptuous score. It is certainly a huge piece for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's new Principal Conductor, Edward Gardner, to conduct as his debut. However, the result was enthralling.

Rock of Ages, the brash rock musical, is back for another tour. The cheesy story of small-town girl Sherrie arriving on 1980s Sunset Strip to follow her dreams is full of stone-washed denim and bad hair. Unfortunately, it also remains full of chauvinism and boorish gags.

Richard Eyre’s production of Noël Coward’s 1941 Blithe Spirit was just settling into its West End home last year when lockdown struck. Now revived with most of its original cast, it settles into the Harold Pinter theatre for an eight-week run, featuring a stage-stealing appearance by Jennifer Saunders.

Since its release in 1985 Back to the Future has been an iconic film. It made a star out of Michael J Fox and catapulted Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” into a worldwide hit. Despite repeated pressure and two sequels, creators Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale always refused to make a reboot of the original film, but the thought of a musical as a new medium to tell the story has proved irresistible.

Famous for his overtly political works against apartheid, Athol Fugard is probably South Africa's most highly regarded playwright. The Orange Tree Theatre put on his searing Blood Knot in 2019 about brothers across the race divide and now revisits his work with the powerful story of a forbidden relationship between a white woman and a black man in Statements After An Arrest Under The Immorality Act.

Cirque Beserk! is a circus with a very good pedigree. Founded by Martin Burton, the original Zippo The Clown, this entertaining and skillful production brings the traditional circus show into the modern age, using talent sourced from around the globe.

Theatre has endured a truly torrid time during the pandemic, with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella delayed for a year and last month’s opening night called off at the last minute. However, the much-hyped show is now here and this irreverent take on the traditional fairytale is a joyful spectacle.

It’s been over four years since jukebox musical Jersey Boys was in the West End. The uplifting story of the rise of one of the most successful bands of the 1950s and 60s, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, now explodes back into London at the newly refurbished Trafalgar Theatre.

Proud Embankment's Cabaret All Stars is back with a bang for another season of some the best burlesque, cabaret and circus acts in London at the moment. The company has an excellent reputation for the quality of its acts and has showcased a glitzy array of special guests in the past. On selected dates until the end of September, national treasure and all-round polymath Bill Bailey joins the show.

The Globe’s Artistic Director Michelle Terry has not had the easiest start to her tenure. Until a few weeks ago, she had not put on a live show since last March. Happily, with the summer season now in full swing and Groundling tickets returned, she now stars in the theatre’s joyful new production of Twelfth Night.

In October 1938, Orson Wells broadcast a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. He converted the story of alien invasion into a series of dramatic news bulletins, which inadvertently inspired mass panic across America. This incident is seen by some as the original source of ‘fake news’. First seen in 2019, physical theatre duo Rhum + Clay’s clever adaptation now lands in the Rose Theatre this week as part of a new tour.

Before Clueless or Mean Girls came Heathers, a cult 1988 film satirising the explosive consequences of painful social pressures in an American high school. Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s award-winning musical version now bounces back into the West End for a 12-week run with a brand new vigour.