Charlie Salem

Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnson gets its UK premiere at Sadler's Wells - but why here and why now? Our correspondent finds out

Our correspondent speaks to the producer and playwright behind the new soul musical...

The actress and comedienne talks to BWW about her show - and records a special track just for us!

'Rookery Nook' is currently packing in audiences at the Chocolate Menier Factory. This ex chocolate factory has been converted into a theatre with a number of hit productions including its Tony Nominated production of 'Sunday in the Park with George' and it's multiple Oliver nominated / winning version of 'Little Shop of Horrors'.

With summer here all types of exotic locations become available with producers scrambling to turn every usual and never tried out place into a theatrical 'event'. None more so than Charlie Burnell & Mat Churchill's staging of the J.M.Barrie classic 'Peter Pan'.

Vanishing Point is a Scottish company who have stormed into London with a truly mesmerising new production called Interiors?. Imagine being witness to a dinner party where the participants are walled inside a clear plastic 'case' on all sides. You hear none of the spoken words as such, just their exchanges and the narrative told through innovative and visually inventive ways. Suddenly you are allowed as the audience to hear and see what's inside their heads as drama unfolds.

Taking a break from rehearsals, Jeff Young stepped aside to let BroadwayWorld know a little more about how QUADROPHENIA is being stages and its origins and transfer from disc, to page to stage.

YOU CAN SEE THE HILLS is a coming of age one person show by Matthew Dunster that has had the critics of all three major UK broadsheets, The Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph heaping praise. That's along with audiences at London's YOUNG VIC and before it at Manchester's ROYAL EXCHANGE in the North West, where it's set - raving!

Quadrophenia Special with director Tom Critchley.

What goes around certainly comes around as far as revivals go. London and the theatre scene as a whole is getting a taste of 1970?s style economics (recession, unemployment) and with it a a stream of productions re-visiting that whole decade. As part of that interest and to coincide with its 50th anniversary, the Hampstead Theatre is reviving UK based Tony award winner Michael Frayn?s first play ?Alphabetical Order?.

As Andrew Hall stepped out in the role of Bill, leading the cast for the 10th anniversary celebration of MAMMA MIA! at the Prince of Wales Theatre, he, by his own admission, had other things on his mind.

With DAI; a 1 woman play by Iris Bahr, eleven different characters that span the ideological & physical spectrum of Israeli society are brought to life around the moment a suicide bomber unleashes his deadly package at the caf? where the characters sit.

As the economy changes a new theatre is coming through with the public not just ready but seemingly keener than ever to see serious work and less spectacle. This is really evident in the Young Vic's latest staging of Kafka Monkey. Staring a real powerhouse performer from the Royal Shakespeare Company - Kathryn Hunter; this short story has been expanded and dramatized by Colin Teevan. Colin is one of the UK?s preeminent adaptors of classical works so critics and public alike are buzzing with anticipation over this latest work of his. I caught up with him with only days to go before the show's opening to get an insight into the staging of this major work.

Simon Paisley Day has wowed critics in the latest hit production of the Joe Orton Classic ?Entertaining Mr Sloane?. Forty-five years it was first premiered in London and it seems alive today as it was back then. Once critic has classed it funnier than Oscar Wilde?s ?The Importance of Being Earnest?. Headed by Imelda Staunton, Simon Paisley Day backs her up as her rather limp and repressed brother Ed play by Simon. As we chatted between rehearsals he began to retrace the journey for him between the ?page to stage???

Nicholas de Jongh the national theatre critic has penned to great success Plague over England?. It's a look at a life, the law, celebrity at a time when homosexuality, the role of a well known figure, public morals were being challenged from all sides.

That?s the conclusion of Zoe Lewis amazing one woman show presented and performed by Sadie Frost in her return to theatre in a new fringe production called ?Touched?. for the very first time.? The show tells the story of 36-year-old Lesley from Manchester from the moment, aged 14 that she hears Like A Virgin for the very first time. From that point on Lesley dreams of being a modern woman? and of being best friends with pop icon Madonna!

Doris Day is celebrated in spirit with 'A Sentimental Journey'.

Theatre and politics are and have always been inevitably intertwined. Whether, it's the funding relationships that bring us the 1st taste of work by Stoppard, Pinter etc. Or in the themes it covers from government corruption, the Iraq war to the US presidency. All of these themes were played out at in works at the National Theatre and the Royal Court just this year - to great success.

Well...it's here. The press are assembled, the dancers are ready. Director Michael Mayer on for the first time with a newly cast entourage from one of London's most eagerly awaited shows. Spring Awakening is being shown off to the traditionally cynical and reserved UK media. They take their places and immediately launch in to 'The Bitch of Living'...