Laura Lott

Cheese and pineapple on a stick, anyone? The latest musical from Birmingham Rep takes us back to 1970s Britain, where trousers were flared, birthday parties required Iced Gems, and boys definitely didn't play girls in school musicals without everyone having something to say about it. BWW's critic weighs in.

If you're looking for sparkles, then Aladdin has you covered. The Broadway and West End hit is currently touring the UK and comes complete with heavily sequinned costumes and set pieces so drenched in gold they could have been created by King Midas. It's a slightly uneven production, but there are enough wow moments to leave children wide-eyed with enchantment.

It's a testament to Lin-Manuel Miranda's almost perfect show that even with some performance issues, Hamilton is still a stunning and moving experience. Its impact isn’t diminished even after several viewings, and its themes of love, grief, ambition, freedom, forgiveness and family are always resonant. Don’t throw away your shot at seeing this show in a city near you.

“Old friends in the morning, then wanting us dead in the afternoon”, says one of the men in Silence, repeating the line over and over. Decades after the event, he still can’t understand the speed at which hate and violence ignited in the wake of the 1947 Partition of India.

It's hard to imagine what more an audience could possibly want from a dance show than what Diversity provide in their current tour Supernova. There are stunning, tightly choreographed dance routines, impressive production values, up-to-the-minute technology, music loud enough to reverberate through your spine, and heavy doses of both humour and earnestness. Oh, and it rains on stage. This is bold, flashy entertainment underpinned by incredible talent.

New play The Promise, which has its world premiere at Birmingham Rep this week, looks at the intersectionality of dementia and deafness through the experiences of one family, and highlights the urgent need for more understanding and care options.

Society places a huge amount of pressure on mothers to be perfect, so it's a joy to see this new musical that reassures mums that their best is good enough. With a book and lyrics by Emily Beecher, who developed the show after her own diagnosis of postnatal depression, this production is produced, directed, designed and performed by mothers.

With a charming libretto by Jodi Picoult and Timothy Allen McDonald, and folk-style music and lyrics by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson, The Book Thief is filled with the warmth of a young girl's friendships and discoveries. But the dangers of war and Nazi rhetoric are a constant threat beneath the surface.

The moment when you're presented with a whole new script can feel a little overwhelming for an actor, but Breaking Down Your Script: A Step-by-Step Guide for the Actor is here to help. It's written by Laura Wayth, who has worked as an acting teacher in Italy, Morocco, China and the UK.

The Lion King isn't an easy show to take on tour, but you needn't worry that this is a pared down version. The touring production brings with it more than 230 different puppets, around 50 cast members and 100 crew, and the same impressive sets that you'll see in London and on Broadway.

The theme song to Nickelodeon's super-popular animated series SpongeBob SquarePants encourages you to tune in 'if nautical nonsense be something you wish', and nautical nonsense is definitely what's on offer in this madcap but good-natured musical.

John Steinbeck's 1937 novel, set in California during the Great Depression, may be a period piece, but the parallels with current life in the UK are unmistakable. Dealing with themes of poverty, displacement, prejudice and the desperation for independence, Of Mice and Men makes a timely return to the Birmingham Rep stage in this new production directed by Iqbal Khan.

Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady is blessed with the sort of songs that never grow old. While the music is timeless, the plot and characters are firmly stuck in 1913, and this revival doesn't do quite enough to endear them to modern audiences.

Directed by Miranda Cromwell and adapted by Nesrin Alrefaai and Matthew Spangler, The Beekeeper of Aleppo tells the story of Syrian refugees Nuri (Alfred Clay) and Afra (Roxy Faridany) as they flee their homeland. Lefteri based the original story on her experiences of meeting people in a refuge centre in Athens, and while Beekeeper is not a true tale, 'all stories are true in their own way', as Nuri reminds us.

Since it was released in 2009, the warm-hearted movie comedy Nativity! has been on many families' essential Christmas viewing lists. This festive season, the stage version of the film returns to Birmingham Rep, where it received its world premiere in 2017. Written, directed and composed by Debbie Isitt, who also wrote and directed the movie, this production is a joy from start to finish. Postponed twice due the pandemic, it was definitely worth the wait.

The cast and creatives attached to this production of Strictly Ballroom the Musical are enough to make any Strictly Come Dancing fan salivate. Yet despite what should be a winning team, this production fails to find all the right moves.

The sinister chords of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 'Red Right Hand' ring out as Tommy Shelby stands, flanked by family members, with the light glinting from the razor blade sewn into his wool tweed cap. It's a scene familiar to any fan of the global hit TV show Peaky Blinders. But something's different - this Tommy Shelby can dance.

From Erich Kastner's classic 1949 novel, to the 1961 movie starring Hayley Mills and the 1998 remake featuring Lindsay Lohan, The Parent Trap has been delighting families for generations. Its newest incarnation comes in the form of this charming new musical, produced by Kenny Wax and directed by Trevor Nunn.

It's Prohibition-era New York, but not as you know it. The speakeasies and gang tensions are present and correct, but the mobsters and showgirls look like children, and the machine guns fire cream instead of bullets.

It's been over a century since John Millington Synge's Irish play The Playboy of the Western World was first performed, and almost 40 years since Mustapha Matura transported the story to Trinidad in the original version of Playboy of the West Indies. Sadly, Matura passed away in 2019 before he finished the musical adaptation of his work, but collaborators and co-directors Clement Ishmael, Nicolas Kent and Dominique Le Gendre continued the project and have now brought the spirit and humour of the Caribbean to a Birmingham stage.