Midlands productions

Published: 19 March 2017
Reporter: Steve Orme

Charlie Condou as Rev Hale, Eoin Slattery as John Proctor and Victoria Yeates as Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham Credit: Alessia Chinazzo
Emily Bowker (Emily), Elizabeth Boag (Dawn) and Graeme Brookes (Alan) in Invincible at Lichfield Garrick Credit: Jack Ladenburg
Pink Mist in The Studio at Birmingham REP

Charlie Condou takes the role of witch-hunter Reverend Hale and Victoria Yeates is Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at Cheltenham Everyman Theatre from Monday until Saturday.

Carolyn Maitland plays Molly and Andy Moss is Sam in Bill Kenwright’s production of Ghost – The Musical at the Regent Theatre, Stoke from Monday until Saturday.

Mischief Theatre’s The Play That Goes Wrong tours to Curve, Leicester from Monday until Saturday while in the Studio the Headlong, Nuffield Southampton Theatres and West Yorkshire Playhouse production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion runs from Tuesday until Saturday.

In a “better-late-than-never nod to the Bard’s 400th anniversary”, the Reduced Shakespeare Company performs William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) at Buxton Opera House on Tuesday.

London Classic Theatre takes Terry Johnson’s Hysteria to the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme from Tuesday until Saturday.

Burntwood actor Graeme Brookes is in the cast of Torben Betts’s Invincible, an Original Theatre Company production, which stops off at Lichfield Garrick from Tuesday until Saturday.

Joe McElderry will wear his coat of many colours in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Malvern Theatres from Tuesday until Saturday.

Frozen Light theatre company takes Home, its latest production devised specifically for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities, to Wolverhampton Arena Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday.

Opera North is at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham with Engelbert Humperdincks’s Hansel and Gretel on Wednesday and Saturday, Rossini’s take on Cinderella (La Cenerentola) on Thursday and Saturday and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden on Friday.

The Birmingham Stage Company tour of David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny holds up audiences at Wolverhampton Grand from Wednesday until Sunday.

Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre serves up a new play by Coventry-born playwright Paven Virk, Save Our School Dinners… Jamie! in the B2 auditorium on Thursday.

A new play by Gaye Poole, Connie’s Colander, a Human Story Theatre presentation which looks at the relationship between a retired domestic science teacher who has Alzheimer’s and her daughter who is hosting a TV cookery show, is dished up in the Studio at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham on Thursday and Friday.

Inspired by 30 interviews with servicemen, Owen Sheers’s Pink Mist, which uses “haunting verse, dynamic staging and starkly honest performances” to tell the story of three young men deployed to Afghanistan and their return home, can be seen in The Studio at Birmingham REP from Thursday until Saturday.

Nottingham-based 2Magpies Theatre pedals into the Courtyard Theatre, Hereford with Ventoux, the story of a drug-fuelled race between Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani, on Friday.

Two alien ambassadors need to find out quickly what love is before they return home to save their dying planet in All In Theatre’s “hilarious” two-hander Love Sick in the Neville Studio at Nottingham Playhouse on Friday.

Nyla Levy takes the lead in Ambreen Razia’s debut play about young women who challenge stereotypes of young British Muslim women in The Diary of a Hounslow Girl in the B2 auditorium at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry on Friday and Saturday.

An “eclectic collection of extracts and new ideas from some of the most exciting theatre makers working across the region” is on the menu at the First Bite Festival at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester on Saturday.

David Walliams’s The First Hippo on the Moon flies into Stafford Gatehouse Theatre on Saturday and Sunday.

Opera and Ballet International presents an Ellen Kent production of Puccini’s La Bohème at Buxton Opera House on Sunday.

Harold Pinter’s Betrayal continues at Derby Theatre until Saturday 1 April (press night Tuesday 21 March).

The world première of One Love: The Bob Marley Musical continues at Birmingham REP until Saturday 15 April.

Lewis Smallman from West Bromwich shares the role of Billy in Billy Elliot the Musical which continues at Birmingham Hippodrome until Saturday 6 May.

At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, the Rome season is underway in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre with Julius Caesar which continues until Saturday 9 September and Antony and Cleopatra which continues until Thursday 7 September (both press performances on Thursday 23 March); in the Swan, the first production in the RSC’s Chinese translations project, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s Snow in Midsummer, about a young girl who is framed for a crime she did not commit, continues until Saturday 25 March.

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