Midlands productions

Published: 21 June 2015
Reporter: Steve Orme

Leigh Quinn (Katherine) in The Famous Victories of Henry V at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme Credit: Richard Lakos
Heartbreak Productions’ Love’s Labour’s Lost in the Parish Field at Market Bosworth
Haste Theatre’s Beyond Cragporth Rock at Nottingham Playhouse Credit: Rarar Su

There will be something completely different at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal when Monty Python’s Spamalot visits from Monday until Saturday.

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s First Encounters with Shakespeare production aimed at children aged 8 to 13, The Famous Victories of Henry V goes once more unto the breach at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme on Tuesday.

Wolverhampton Grand hosts the 1960s musical Dreamboats and Miniskirts from Tuesday until Saturday.

Touring specialist Heartbreak Productions is on the road with Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in the Parish Field at Market Bosworth on Wednesday.

The Shakespeare’s Globe small-scale touring programme takes a new production of Romeo and Juliet to the Regent Theatre, Stoke from Wednesday until Friday.

Little Earthquake’s production of The Boy Who Became a Beetle visits St John’s School, Walsall Wood on Wednesday, Uplands Manor School, Smethwick on Thursday, the Studio at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry on Friday and mac birmingham on Sunday and Monday 29 June.

Organised Chaos Productions stages Lightspeed by Clem Haran in the Pavilion Arts Centre Studio, Buxton on Thursday.

The Intermediate Youth Theatre Companies at Mansfield Palace Theatre join forces to bring a number of favourite stories to the stage, including The Ugly Duckling and Hansel and Gretel, in Many a Tale to Tell at Create Theatre, Mansfield on Thursday and Friday.

The 25th annual Stafford Festival Shakespeare which this year will stage Much Ado About Nothing at Stafford Castle runs from Thursday until Saturday 11 July.

Written by Duncan Macmillan and performed by Jonny Donohoe, Every Brilliant Thing is a Paines Plough and Pentabus Theatre Company presentation in the Studio at Derby Theatre on Friday and Saturday.

MadCap Theatre Productions presents Laurie Hornsby's World War II-themed musical, Postcards From The Seaside, which celebrates the British home front at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, at Lichfield Garrick on Friday and Saturday.

All-male company the Festival Players takes to the outdoor arena at mac birmingham with Shakespeare’s As You Like It on Saturday.

Haste Theatre tours its black comedy Beyond Cragporth Rock, “a roller coaster of bleak laughs and horror”, to the Neville Studio at Nottingham Playhouse on Saturday.

South African choral legend Ladysmith Black Mambazo joins award-winning choreographer Mark Baldwin in Inala, which features current and former dancers from the Royal Ballet and Rambert, at Stoke’s Regent Theatre on Saturday.

Birmingham Royal Ballet continues to present artistic director David Bintley’s first and arguably most famous piece, Carmina Burana alongside the world première of his latest one-act ballet The King Dances at Birmingham Hippodrome until Saturday.

Northampton’s Royal and Derngate and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse’s co-production of Arthur Miller’s “play for the screen” The Hook continues in the Royal, Northampton until Saturday.

A festival of plays inspired by the Staffordshire Hoard—the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found—continues at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre, with a double bill of Theresa Heskins’s Unearthed and The Gift by Jemma Kennedy on until Saturday 25 July and Caroline Horton’s Tranklements opening on Tuesday and continuing until Saturday 4 July.

At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, Hugh Quarshie and Lucian Msamati team up to play Othello and Iago in Iqbal Khan’s production of Othello which continues in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until Friday 28 August and plays in repertoire with The Merchant of Venice which continues until Wednesday 2 September; in the Swan Theatre, John Ford’s rarely performed play Love's Sacrifice continues until Wednesday 24 June and Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta until Tuesday 8 September.

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