Video

WOS TV: Top Theatre Video Picks – 24 Mar 2010

Editorial Staff
London's West End

The Whatsonstage.com Television channel is a rapidly expanding archive of theatre-related video content. As well as our exclusive first night reports, we regularly add show trailers, event promos, interviews, video diaries and behind-the-scenes footage.

You can view these – & many more – clips on tvision.whatsonstage.com.
If you’ve seen something you think is worth a watch for theatregoers,
then please email us the clip or a link to it.

Thanks for watching!


  • Fela! Fela! – Harking back to the more musical days at the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner has announced that the Broadway hit musical Fela! will be making it’s European debut at the NT Olivier on 16 November, almost a year after it premiered at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre stateside. The show celebrates Nigerian afrobeat musician and political activist Fela Kut and has some big names backing the production in the form of Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter and movie star Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith. No doubt Hytner will be hoping the show will gain a similar following to it’s Broadway counterpart, perhaps paving the way for the regular return of the musical to the National’s programme.

  • A Cheek-y Macbeth?
     – Internationally renowned immersive theatre group Cheek By Jowl bring their latest offering Macbeth to the Barbican Centre this spring as part of a World tour. Using a highly energetic ensemble, the show conjures Shakespeare’s world of witchcraft, ghosts and apparitions in an hallucinatory experience of sound and shadow. If their previous work is anything to go by (and I can assure you it is!), tickets will fly out of the box office so book yours quickly and catch one of the country’s most pioneering theatre companies.




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  • Consider yourself video picked!
     – Through no deliberate act, the current revival of Oliver! has perhaps been overlooked in our video picks in recent months and so the time has come to give the lavish, warm-hearted hit a bit of a WOS pat on the back. As public favourite and loveable star Jodie Prenger prepares to hand over the cockney frock to West End leading lady Kerry Ellis, the show is continuing to shift tickets at a record pace and wow crowds at Drury Lane. Although missing out at last week’s Olivier Awards, the show is an absolute must see and it’s colour and boundless energy will thrill children and adults alike.

  • Not The Messiah!
     – Celebrating 40 years of cult comedy favourite Monty Python, Eric Idle’s latest re-incarntion has been billed as “a 90 minute comic oratorio, inspired by Monty Python’s Life Of Brian”. Filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in October 2009 featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, a host of superb soloists in the lead roles including Rosalind Plowright and Eric Idle, with Michael Palin as Mrs Betty Parkinson and special guest appearances from Pythons Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, the show promises to be ‘like Handel, only funnier’. Apologies to any Handel fans, but I have a sneaking suspicion they might be right.

    Selections by David Grewcock. You can view
    these – & many more – clips on tvision.whatsonstage.com.
    If you’ve seen something you think is worth a watch for theatregoers,
    then please email us the clip or a link to it.