Midlands productions

Published: 1 November 2014
Reporter: Steve Orme

Michael Praed and Colin Buchanan in Dangerous Corner at Birmingham REP Credit: Robert Day
Gatecrash at Create Theatre, Mansfield Credit: Roy Ealden
Eileen Atkins as Elizabeth Sawyer and the company of The Witch of Edmonton at the Swan Theatre, Stratford Credit: Helen Maybanks

Simon Callow takes his one-man show The Man Jesus to Northampton Royal on Monday.

Stephen Jones and Conor Delaney appear in Marie Jones’s Stones in his Pockets at the New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham on Monday.

Charles Dickens’s Sikes and Nancy, adapted by the author from the grislier material in Oliver Twist, takes to the Derby Guildhall Theatre stage in James Swanton’s one-man play on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Michael Praed and Colin Buchanan feature in J B Priestley's Dangerous Corner which visits Birmingham REP from Tuesday until Saturday.

The world première of Nicholas Wright’s stage adaptation of Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration, set during World War I, with poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen being treated in Craiglockhart war hospital, regenerates at Wolverhampton Grand from Tuesday until Saturday.

Paul Hunter and Edward Petherbridge perform their two-man “comic tale of a man not doing King Lear” in Told By An Idiot’s My Perfect Mind in The Door at Birmingham REP from Tuesday until Saturday.

Bringing the glamour of Hollywood's golden age and the glorious, tap-dancing magic of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to the stage, Irving Berlin’s Top Hat visits the Theatre Royal, Nottingham from Tuesday until Saturday 15 November.

Nunkie Theatre Company presents two ghost stories by M R James and performed by Robert Lloyd Parry, Casting the Runes and The Residence at Whitminster, at Lichfield Garrick on Wednesday and Thursday.

Zest Theatre’s Gatecrash, in which “audiences choose which conversations to tune in to through silent disco headphones as a party gone wrong unravels simultaneously around them”, blasts into Create Theatre, Mansfield on Thursday.

Moscow Ballet la Classique performs Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry from Thursday until Saturday.

Pentabus Theatre Company stages Rory Mullarkey’s Each Slow Dusk, “focusing on people from rural communities, their experiences of the Great War and its legacy”, at Tutbury Village Hall, Staffordshire on Thursday; The Hive, Worcestershire on Friday; and Heightington Village Hall, Worcestershire on Saturday.

A dramatisation of De Profundis by Oscar Wilde—a dramatisation of the letter Oscar Wilde wrote in 1897 to his lover from his cell in Reading gaol—performed by Gerard Logan and directed and dramatised by Gareth Armstrong, Wilde Without the Boy visits Lichfield Garrick on Friday.

The newly-formed Fourth Monkey Ensemble which is on its debut UK tour trundles into the studio at Derby Theatre with Elephant Man, written by the company’s artistic director Steven Green, on Friday and Saturday.

English Touring Opera jets into Buxton Opera House with Handel’s rarely performed tragedy Ottone on Friday and Haydn’s Life on the Moon on Saturday.

Ian Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens take their “affectionate, moving and fantastically funny homage to Britain's greatest comedy double act”, Eric and Little Ern, to Northampton Royal on Saturday.

Playbox Theatre’s Shakespeare Young Company will perform Shakespeare’s Wronged Women at its headquarters The Dream Factory, Warwick on Saturday.

Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, the first play to be produced in-the-round at Leicester’s Curve, continues in the Studio until Saturday.

Birmingham’s Blue Orange Theatre continues to present the classic horror tale Frankenstein until Saturday.

Charles Dickens's darkly comic masterpiece Bleak House is retold in The Pantaloons’ inimitable style—“hilarious, tragic and romantic by turns”—in the Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton on Sunday.

Three-in-One Productions presents The Boy From the 'Boro, the story of a farm worker, shopkeeper and soldier who is thrust into the mud and blood of trench warfare, at the Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham on Sunday.

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia continues at Nottingham Playhouse until Saturday 15 November.

Olivier Award-winning comedy The Rise and Fall of Little Voice by Jim Cartwright continues at Derby Theatre until Saturday 22 November.

At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Love’s Labour’s Lost and Love’s Labour’s Won (Much Ado About Nothing) both continue until 14 March while in the Swan Theatre John Webster’s revenge tragedy The White Devil and Jacobean domestic tragedy The Witch of Edmonton, with Eileen Atkins playing Elizabeth Sawyer, both continue until Saturday 29 November.

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