Marianka Swain - Page 15

Love is in the air, and revolution too. Baz Luhrmann's beloved 1992 film (originally a student play, now back on stage as a musical) is even more adamantly anti-establishment in this latest incarnation, opening out a delicious satire of 1980s Australian competitive ballroom into a more universal story of the fight for fearless self-expression. In short: 'Love, freedom and sequins'.

Chicago's hit West End revival ­- which featured a constant revolving door of big names - closed in 2012 after almost 15 years. Now, it returns with the requisite stunt casting (Cuba Gooding Jr), but also with a cast of triple-threat stalwarts who illustrate the enduring strengths of this whip-smart, black-hearted musical.

Akram Khan's acclaimed version of Giselle for English National Ballet will be screened to cinemas worldwide from 25 April. The show features Tamara Rojo as Giselle, Stina Quagebeur as Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, and Jeffrey Cirio as Hilarion - watch them perform in an exclusive clip below!

Emma Williams's past work includes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Half a Sixpence, Mrs Henderson Presents and Love Story. She's currently starring in a new musical version of the iconic Richard Gere film An Officer and a Gentleman, which opens at Leicester Curve on 6 April.

London is never short of temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From a buzzy new musical to returning favourites, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld reviews, interviews and features!

BroadwayWorld UK were fortunate enough to attend a special Bat Out Of Hell gig on 14 March at the American International Church ahead of their opening at the Dominion Theatre on 2 April.

Miss Nightingale will make its West End debut at the prestigious Theatre at the Hippodrome Casino in London's Leicester Square, for a strictly limited seven-week run in their 180-seat theatre, from 21 March to 6 May. Watch a behind-the-scenes video below!

On 22 March, the Bridge Theatre's production of Julius Caesar - directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Ben Whishaw, David Morrissey, David Calder and Michelle Fairley - will be broadcast via NT Live. Bunny Christie and Tony Grech-Smith discuss, respectively, designing the show and translating it to screen.

Jonny Labey's past work ranges from EastEnders and winning TV show Dance Dance Dance to White Christmas and In the Heights on stage. He's now starring as rebellious Scott in Strictly Ballroom The Musical, which begins previews at Piccadilly Theatre on 29 March.

Adrian Lester stars opposite John Simm in new psychological thriller Trauma, as - respectively - a top surgeon and the father of a boy who dies after an unsuccessful operation, and who holds the surgeon responsible. Following a hit run on ITV, Trauma premieres in the US on BritBox tomorrow.

The UK tour of Gershwin musical Crazy for You has reached its London leg, and is still in fine, energetic form. Originally a Depression-era work, it joins retro pleasures like 42nd Street in providing much-needed Brexit escapism: a world in which all our problems can be solved with tap and jazz hands.

We begin and end with a grisly decapitation. And that's rather the problem with this intermittently engaging Macbeth, which starts in the throes of some unspecified dystopian hellscape, and thus has nowhere to go. 

London is never short of temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams to a new epic and a lush romance, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld reviews, interviews and features!

No, it's not that Frozen - although the immortal words 'Let it go' do appear in the second half. Otherwise this is a far cry from the Disney juggernaut. Bryony Lavery's 1998 play deals with the abduction of a child, and asks whether evil can be easily defined - or forgiven.

'It just seems to be a thing that we do, this incomprehensible violence thing.' So says the narrator of Dennis Kelly's new one-woman play, performed in a staggering tour-de-force by Carey Mulligan. She's been reflecting on an American mass shooting (and the fact that yet another has taken place just this week is sickening) and wondering whether violence is innate, and if so, whether it's a particularly male impulse.

London is never short of temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From O'Neill and flamenco to punk and Pippin, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld reviews, interviews and features!

Though a long journey indeed, Richard Eyre's is a vital revival, giving vigour to Eugene O'Neill's mighty, semi-autobiographical work and making all the more poignant this tormented but fast-talking family's gradual dwindling into a despairing silence.

Inequality is a hot topic for dramatists, but Sarah Burgess's deliciously dark comedy comes at it from a surprising perspective: allowing those high-finance gorgons to have their say. Of course, part of the strategy is giving them enough rope to hang themselves with, but this cynical satire argues that no one is clean here; we all have our price.

'Heads.' One word, and one coin toss, decides which roles Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams will play on the night: the titular Mary, or her rival Elizabeth I. Last night Williams took the latter - the company immediately bowing to her. It was a comic moment that underlined a key theme: fortune is fickle, and power is a mirage.

Pulitzer-winning American playwright Annie Baker returns to the National where The Flick was a quiet triumph in 2016 with another work that is epic in form (three hours and change), but similarly spellbinding in its ability to draw an audience close. Though Baker flirts with horror tropes here, it's not in service of big spooks or jump scares; instead, the smallest of interactions and realisations are writ large.