What's on in the Midlands

Published: 4 August 2019
Reporter: Steve Orme

Jessica Johnson and Stephen Tompkinson in Educating Rita at Malvern Festival Theatre Credit: Robert Day
Amy Trigg (Biondella) in The Taming of the Shrew in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford Credit: Ikin Yum
Les Dennis (Priuli) in Venice Preserved in the Swan Theatre, Stratford Credit: Helen Maybanks

Stephen Tompkinson and Jessica Johnson appear in Willy Russell’s Educating Rita which tours to Malvern Festival Theatre from Monday until Saturday while the Malvern Theatres young company production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood is staged in Malvern Forum Theatre from Tuesday until Friday.

Babbling Vagabonds tangles with a five-headed Hottle-Spottle in a “wild walk and outdoor theatre adventure” Here be Dragons! in Markeaton Park Craft Village, Derby from Monday until Saturday.

Deceit, suspicion, blackmail and incrimination are woven into a web of crime in Francis Durbridge's Murder with Love, the second play in the Colin McIntyre Classic Thriller Season at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham from Tuesday until Saturday.

Coram Boy, a “gripping family saga that exposes an era blighted by slavery and the ill-treatment of children”, adapted by Helen Edmundson and based on the novel by Jamila Gavin, features six professional actors and up to 100 community performers at the Albert Hall, Nottingham from Wednesday until Saturday.

A “playful exploration of our five human senses through dance movement and live music”, FIVE continues at Derby Theatre until Saturday.

Jodie Prenger plays Miss Hannigan in the musical Annie which continues at Birmingham Hippodrome until Sunday.

More than 30 people from Leicestershire take part in Curve’s community production of Amanda Whittington’s Bollywood Jane which continues in the theatre’s Studio until 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 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.

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