Preview: Opera North 2009-10
May 3, 2009
Ron Simpson takes you through Opera North’s forthcoming year
Much as I delighted in Paradise Moscow and the Gershwin double-header (I think immersion in Marx Brothers films and 1930s musicals made for a more favourable reaction than most people’s), there is no doubt that the 2008-2009 Opera North season has been lopsided. Each of the four operettas has been justified in its own right (especially the premiere of Skin Deep, even if it didn’t quite come off), but four light operas in eight productions is risky in all sorts of ways.
Preview: Northern Exposure
April 16, 2009
Simon Walker guides you through this year’s season of new plays by northern writers at the WYP with the help of authors Boff Whalley and Tom Wells
The West Yorkshire Playhouse’s seventh annual Northern Exposure season is now imminent. A programme of new writing from “the North” (meaning, you’ll be pleased to hear, chiefly God’s Own County), it supplies a platform to promising local writers, and therefore complements rather than overlaps with the WYP’s commissions to more established local playwrights like Mike Kenny. This year’s collection, the largest yet, consists of three productions by northern theatre companies, one of which premieres at the WYP, and a double bill of short plays by three writers that each took its So You Want to be a Writer? course (SYWTBAW) in 2007.
Profile: Daniel Evans
April 9, 2009
Simon Walker tells you a little about the man who will shortly take the helm in Sheffield
New Sheffield Theatres artistic director Daniel Evans’ distinguished acting career provided his fairly recent route into directing. Since graduating from Guildhall School of Music and Drama with a BA in Acting in 1994, he has received three awards and six further nominations; worked with companies including the RSC, Donmar, the National Theatre and the Old Vic; and performed under eminent directors such as Michael Grandage, Trevor Nunn and Matthew Warchus.
Tom Georgeson on When We Are Married and profile of JB Priestley
March 18, 2009
While Tom Georgeson describes acting as a “lovely job” in general, he seems to regard the role of Henry Ormonroyd as a bit of a treat. “Mine is a real bouncy, fun part,” he explains. “He’s the balance in the play – the other voice. It’s been said that he’s JB Priestley’s voice and, to a certain extent, I think that he is, except that he’s pissed throughout the play. I don’t think Priestley would have been pissed, but the fact that Ormonroyd’s drunk enables him to say things that wouldn’t normally be said.”
Opening doors at The Howard
January 26, 2009
Ron Simpson on the Howard Assembly Room’s opening programme
At just after 5.30 on Saturday evening, January 24, the staircase from the dress circle at Leeds Grand was crowded with people as Opera North juggled four finishing or upcoming events. A performance of Skin Deep was scheduled for 7.15, with its accompanying pre-opera talk, but the real cause of the crush was the coincidence of a late-running afternoon presentation on cosmetic surgery and society, the subject of the new operetta, and a 5.45 Twilight Event, both in the Howard Assembly Room.