Key North-East Openings this September

Amongst the major openings in the North-East (Yorkshire region) this month are:

>OPENING 4 September 2010, Billy Liar is at West Yorkshire Playhouse with a cast including Garry Cooper and Paul-Ryan Carberry. The fiftieth anniversary of the stage production brings Billy home to Yorkshire. Leeds-born writers Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s play, set in 1959, watches Billy’s overactive imagination bring him into the ire, irritation and confusion of his family and his unwitting trio of lovers, Barbara, Rita and Liz. Nick Bagnall directs. The season continues until 2 October.

>OPENING 10 September 2010, A Passionate Woman is at Hull Truck with a cast including Hollyoaks’ Stuart Manning and Andrew Dunn. On the eve of her son’s wedding, married mother Betty relives her simmering past affair with a Polish neighbor, Craze, in a hayloft. Writer Kay Mellor takes the role of Betty, who is based on her own mother. Gareth Tudor Price directs. The season continues until 2 October.

>OPENING 15 September 2010, My Romantic History is at Sheffield Studio with a cast including Iain Robertson and Rosalind Sydney. This new ‘non-rom-com’ from DC Jackson, which won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival, takes a sideways look at office romances and their fatal inevitability. Lyndsey Turner directs. The season continues until 2 October.

>OPENING 16 September 2010, Life of Riley is at Stephen Joseph Theatre with a cast including Jamie Kenna and Laura Howard. Alan Ayckbourn directs the world premiere of his seventy-fourth play. With only a few months left to live, an unseen George Riley masterminds a last farewell for his closest friends that will leave them talking for the rest of their lives. The season continues until 16 October.

>OPENING 16 September 2010, Hamlet is at Sheffield Crucible with a cast including John Simm, John Nettles and Michelle Dockery. Shakespeare’s classic tragedy brims with court intrigue, ghostly apparitions, sexual tension, murder, and suicide. Paul Miller directs. The season continues until 23 October.

>OPENING 17 September 2010, As You Like It is at West Yorkshire Playhouse with a cast including Nathan Wright and Vanessa Kirby. Exiled to the Forest of Arden with her father the Duke, young Rosalind dons breeches to find freedom and test the love of Orlando, in Shakespeare’s popular, song-filled comedy. Ian Brown directs. The season continues until 16 October.

>OPENING 30 September 2010, When We Lived In Uncle’s Hat is at York Theatre Royal with a cast including Michael Lambourne and Julia Gwynne. Adapted from the much-loved children’s book by Peter Stamm and Jutta Bauer, this co-production with award-winning children’s theatre company, tutti frutti, is filled with live music as the actor-musicians search high and low for their family home. Wendy Harris directs. The season continues until 16 October.

– Vicky Ellis