Midlands productions

Published: 25 February 2018
Reporter: Steve Orme

Paapa Essiedu as Hamlet at Derngate, Northampton Credit: Manuel Harlan
Finding Nana at Lincoln Drill Hall and Century Theatre, Coalville, Leicestershire Credit: Pamela Raith
The Winslow Boy at Birmingham REP

The hit comedy Hairspray the Broadway Musical visits Wolverhampton Grand from Monday until Saturday.

Major Labia presents its celebration of the wonder women of Nottinghamshire throughout the ages in Vulva La Revolution at Nottingham Playhouse on Tuesday.

The New Vic Youth Theatre performs Phoebe Éclair Powell’s These Bridges, part of National Theatre Connections, at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic on Tuesday.

Seven years after it premiered, Theatre Ad Infinitum’s “wordless tale of life, death and enduring love”, Translunar Paradise, blasts off to Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Celebrating the nation’s favourite food and performed in unusual spaces, Box of Tricks presents an immersive love story set to a soundtrack of Northern Soul and served with a fish-and-chip supper in Chip Shop Chips at Stahl Theatre, Oundle School, Northamptonshire on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Theatre company Les Petits returns to the high seas for Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs 2: The Magic Cutlass in the Studio at Curve, Leicester on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Rambert dances into the Theatre Royal, Nottingham with a triple bill of A Linha Curva by Itzik Galili, Symbiosis by Andonis Foniadakis and Ben Duke’s Goat from Tuesday until Thursday.

The Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet with Paapa Essiedu in the title role tours to Derngate, Northampton from Tuesday until Saturday.

David Edgar’s new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which features Phil Daniels, is at Malvern Theatres from Tuesday until Saturday.

Joe Pasquale plays Frank Spencer, Sarah Earnshaw is his wife Betty and Susie Blake takes the role of Frank's mother-in-law in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em at Buxton Opera House from Tuesday until Saturday.

“Lovingly ripped off from the hugely successful 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Selladoor Productions and Mercury Theatre Colchester’s “riotous comedy” Monty Python's Spamalot looks on the bright side of life at the Belgrade, Coventry from Tuesday until Saturday.

New Old Friends, which is “dedicated to creating original comedy theatre”, takes Crimes Under the Sun, with four actors playing “multiple outrageous characters”, to the Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton on Wednesday.

Celebrating the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Big Girls Don’t Cry steps back in time at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham on Wednesday.

Created by and featuring Strictly Come Dancing’s Kristina Rihanoff, Dance to the Music, which also features Robin Windsor and Chris Maloney, discovers dance through the ages at the Albany Theatre, Coventry on Wednesday.

Set “in a seaside hotel of childhood summers”, Jane Upton’s autobiographical play Finding Nana tours to Lincoln Drill Hall on Wednesday and Century Theatre, Coalville, Leicestershire on Friday.

A new play written by Caroline Jester and based on the true story of Kidderminster legends Frank and Wynn Freeman and their “selfless drive to get a town dancing”, The Dancing Club can be seen at Kidderminster College, Worcestershire on Wednesday, Clungunford Parish Hall, Shropshire on Friday and St George’s Hall, Bewdley, Worcestershire on Saturday.

Ashleigh Aston takes the lead role in Hamlet at the 105-seat Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham from Thursday until Saturday.

Ceridwen Theatre Company opens the new Studio at the Albany Theatre, Coventry with its “inventive and powerful” interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth on Thursday and Saturday while on Friday Lite is a one-woman, multimedia show written and performed by Marlene McKenzie which explores issues of identity, self-image and skin lightening through the eyes of a young black woman.

Zoo Indigo’s Rosie Garton and Ildikó Rippel, who in 2015 walked 220 miles across Poland and Germany, re-tracing the footsteps of Rippel’s grandmother and her children who were expelled from their home in 1945, perform No Woman’s Land in the Djanogly Theatre at Lakeside Arts, Nottingham on Friday.

For 20 years, the agricultural story editor of The Archers and writer of more than 600 episodes, Graham Harvey, brings to the stage the true tale of an unlikely Cotswold hero in No Finer Life in the MET Studio at Stafford Gatehouse Theatre on Saturday.

Tessa Peake-Jones, Aden Gillett and Timothy Watson appear in Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy which continues in the main house at Birmingham REP until Saturday, while in The Door, the world première of British Sikh playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Elephant also continues until Saturday.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is told through dance and music by Ballet Theatre UK at Mansfield Palace Theatre on Sunday.

Agatha Christie and Frank Vosper’s thriller Love From a Stranger continues at Northampton’s Royal and Derngate until Saturday 17 March.

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