Aliya Al-Hassan - Page 77

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.

In 1941 two leading physicists secretly met in Nazi-occupied Denmark to discuss the race between Hitler and the allies to create the nuclear bomb. These men were Werner Heisenberg, a German working on Hitler's bomb programme, and his old mentor Niels Bohr, a half-Jewish Dane with links to the United States’ nuclear programme. First seen in 1998, Michael Frayn’s fascinating but ultimately frustrating play, Copenhagen, explores several possibilities of what may have happened between the men.

Shakespeare is such a constant in the theatrical cannon that there is often a desire to do something innovative with his work. Reinventing the Bard can provoke an eye-roll or two and Director Ola Ince’s new version of Romeo & Juliet at the Globe will certainly divide audiences. Ince choses to show the play from the aspect of mental health issues; the couple choose to die because they are mentally afflicted, rather than because they are in love.

Inspired by a trip to Lourdes and the illness and death of a member of her cabaret group, Bryony Lavery’s play Last Easter is a funny and engaging exploration of life, death and friendship. After June, a theatrical lighting designer, is diagnosed with cancer, her three friends decide that an Easter road trip to France, which just happens to include a pilgrimage to Lourdes, is in order.

A play featuring string theory, beekeeping and the same scenes repeated numerous times might not be the easiest sell. However, this revival of Nick Payne’s contemplative and ingenious Constellations is smart, funny and exceptionally moving. The 70-minute drama explores love, life and death through the ever-changing story of a relationship and, in a flash of creative genius, has exploded back on to the West End with four different casts.

2021 marks the 60th anniversary of Samuel Beckett’s challenging play Happy Days. Written in 1961, a fantastic new revival now comes to Riverside Studios. Deftly directed by Trevor Nunn, the play resonates more than ever and features a truly stunning performance from Lisa Dwan.

Intimately confessional stand-up shows are not new for Jessie Cave. Her 2015 show, I Loved Her, detailed her relationship with fellow comic Alfie Brown after she became pregnant after their one-night stand. In 2018 she returned with Sunrise, about the aftermath of their breakup. Filmed in an empty Soho Theatre during the pandemic, this emotionally intelligent and bittersweet show is now available to stream.