What's on in the Midlands

Published: 7 July 2019
Reporter: Steve Orme

Club Tropicana at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham
Death and the Maiden at the Pomegranate Theatre, Chesterfield
The Color Purple at Curve, Leicester Credit: Manuel Harlan

Joe McElderry, Neil McDermott, Kate Robbins, Emily Tierney and Amelle Berrabah are part of the cast of the world première of ‘80s musical Club Tropicana, which visits the Theatre Royal, Nottingham from Monday until Saturday, while Igglepiggle has a busy day in In the Night Garden Live in the Royal Concert Hall on Saturday and Sunday.

The 30th anniversary tour of Fame the Musical featuring Mica Paris, Jorgie Porter and Keith Jack tours to Malvern Theatres from Monday until Saturday.

Heartbreak Productions is on the road with two outdoor productions, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights at Caldecott Park, Evreux Way, Rugby on Wednesday, Hanbury Hall, School Road, Hanbury, Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire on Friday and Coombe Abbey, Brinklow Road, Binley, Warwickshire on Saturday, and David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny at Barnwell Country Park, Oundle, Northamptonshire on Thursday.

Baroque Theatre Company stages Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden which “challenges audiences to judge guilt or innocence as they are confronted with a tragedy that has no clear solution” at the Pomegranate Theatre, Chesterfield on Thursday.

Starbuck Theatre Company presents the UK première of Andy Smith’s acoustic musical Snowfall in July at the Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham from Thursday until Saturday.

Created in response to a “provocative and unashamedly honest dialogue about death”, Antonia Beck and Lucy Nicholls’s The Death Show which “looks to better understand society’s relationship with death and dying” can be seen at St Mary’s Church, Lichfield on Friday.

BoldText Playwrights resurrects the ghosts of a Birmingham gaol in Behind Bars: Ghosts of the Lock-up in The Lock-up, Steelhouse Lane, Birmingham on Friday and Saturday.

Northampton Royal and Derngate’s community group The Actors Company presents Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Royal from Friday until Sunday while in the Underground Studio, the venue’s youth theatre and young company stages the musical Legally Blonde Jr on Friday and Saturday.

Jaymi Hensley of the group Union J leads the cast of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which continues at Birmingham Hippodrome until Saturday.

The Leicester Curve and Birmingham Hippodrome co-production of The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1985 Oscar-nominated film of the same name, continues at Curve until Saturday.

Linal Haft plays Shylock in Stafford Festival Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice which continues at Stafford Castle until Saturday.

David Greig’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart continues to have its regional première at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday.

Shakespeare specialists Oddsocks marks its 30th anniversary with its “madcap, fast-moving, slapstick 40-minute version” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Denby Pottery Village, Derbyshire on Sunday.

At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre artistic director Gregory Doran directs a new version of Measure for Measure until Thursday, 29 August while a gender-swapped version of The Taming of the Shrew, set in a 1590s matriarchal England in which women hold all the power, and Kimberley Sykes’s “fierce, exhilarating version” of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy As You Like It both continue until Saturday 31 August; in the Swan Theatre, John Vanbrugh’s comedy The Provoked Wife and Thomas Otway’s “savage political thriller” Venice Preserved run in repertory until Saturday 7 September; and in The Other Place, Crooked Dances, a “compelling” new play by Robin French which “examines music, time and attention in our modern digital age”, continues until Saturday 13 July.

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