RSC takes triple Stratford look at shipwrecks
Royal Shakespeare Company actors this week begin staging in Stratford Shakespeare's shipwreck trilogy - three plays which form a series called What Country Friends is This?
The three plays explore love, loss and reunion. The first will be Twelfth Night and it'll be followed by The Comedy of Errors and The Tempest.
RSC associate director David Farr will direct Twelfth Night and The Tempest while Palestinian director Amir Nizar Zuabi makes his RSC debut with The Comedy of Errors.
David Farr said, "In this trilogy we're exploring the recurrent obsessions of Shakespeare with migration, exile and the discovery of yourself through others.
"Amir Nizar Zuabi and I are both keen to interrogate these in a modern context and we've chosen to use a shared design environment by Jon Bausor to do so.
"In these plays again and again Shakespeare returns to the image of man or woman as a drop in the ocean seeking another drop. He describes love and passion as being like the sea, and he sees in shipwreck the destruction and the revival of the self.
"For a man who appears never to have left his country he travelled far in his imagination. I look forward to continuing that journey with the wonderful cast we have with us."
The company includes Jonathan Slinger who played the title role in Macbeth - the first production in the transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He'll take the parts of Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Prospero in The Tempest.
Emily Taaffe will be making her RSC debut as Viola in Twelfth Night and Miranda in The Tempest. Her most recent theatre roles were for the National Theatre in The Veil, The Cherry Orchard and Nation.
Amer Hlehel will also be making his RSC debut. He comes from Palestine where he works with the ShiberHur company. He's appeared in Amir Nizar Zuabi's recent productions at the Young Vic and also had roles in Palestinian films including The Time That Remains, Amreeka and the Golden Globe Award-winning Paradise Now.
Twelfth Night runs from Thursday (8 March) until 15 May and from 12 July until 6 October.
The Comedy of Errors will run from 16 March until 14 May and 16 July until 6 October.
The Tempest will run from 30 March until 19 May and 13 July until 7 October.
All three will also transfer to London's Roundhouse in June.
Curve uncovers musical theatre jewel
Leicester's Curve is hoping to enhance its reputation for musical theatre with a revival of a show rarely performed in the UK, Gypsy.
Described as a "jewel" of American musical theatre, Gypsy was inspired by the memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee and charts the story of Mama Rose and her determination to live out her dreams of stardom through her two daughters.
Australian stage and screen star Caroline O'Connor will play Mama Rose. She's performed with the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras and in 1995 appeared in a Royal Variety Performance before Her Majesty the Queen.
As Velma Kelly in Chicago, Caroline O'Connor won the Mo Award for female musical theatre performer of the year and a Green Room Award.
In 2002 she made her Broadway debut, reprising her role as Velma Kelly. She also received an Olivier nomination for best actress in a musical for Mabel in Mack and Mabel.
Victoria Hamilton-Barrett who’s appeared in Flashdance, Grease and West Side Story takes the role of Louise while Daisy Maywood who starred in Curve's recent production of 42nd Street will play June.
The cast also includes David Fleeshman, Lucinda Shaw, Jane Fowler and Geraldine Fitzgerald who was also in 42nd Street.
The team that created Curve's revival of The King and I which is currently on tour is also behind Gypsy. Paul Kerryson directs, choreographer is David Nedham, designer Sara Perks, lighting Philip Gladwell, sound Ben Harrison and the score is directed by Michael Haslam.
The professionals will be joined by 17 children in two teams who will be on stage on alternate performances. Hannah Everest and Lulu Mae Pears will play baby June, and Hollie Pugh and Olivia Price will play young Louise.
Gypsy previews from Saturday (10 March), with press night on Thursday, 15 March. It runs until Sunday, 15 April.
Holocaust survivor and Anne Frank visit Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton Grand will tomorrow (Monday) be staging an education evening, Discovering the Diary, before the Touring Consortium Theatre Company visits the theatre with a new production of The Diary of Anne Frank.
Guest speakers tomorrow will include Dr Christoph Mick, associate professor at the University of Warwick, and Dr Isabel Wollaston from the department of theology and religion at the University of Birmingham.
The cast will be exploring key scenes from the play before a talk by Eva Schloss who's spoken to more than 1,000 audiences about her experiences. She survived the Holocaust and her mother went on to marry Anne Frank's father Otto.
The Diary of Anne Frank, featuring Christopher Timothy, Amy Dawson, Robert Galas, Dominic Gately, Sarah Ingram, Philip Marriott, Sally Oliver, Kerry Peers, Steven Pinder, Victoria Ross and Andrew Westfield runs at the Grand from Tuesday until Saturday.
What's on this week
Nottingham's Theatre Royal is one of only five venues in the UK to host Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night which features David Suchet, Laurie Metcalf, Trevor White and Kyle Soller and runs from tomorrow (Monday) until Saturday;- Russell Maliphant's Rodin Project dances into Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham on Tuesday;
- a new one-woman show investigating the historical links between artists and mind-enhancing drugs, Bryony Kimmings' 7 Day Drunk staggers into the studio at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry on Tuesday and Wednesday;
- Keith Jack gets his coat on when Coventry's Belgrade hosts Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat from Tuesday until Saturday;
- Welsh National Opera takes over Birmingham Hippodrome to stage Verdi's La Traviata on Tuesday and Friday, Beatrice and Benedict by Berlioz on Wednesday, and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro on Thursday and Saturday;
- Stoke's Regent Theatre expects some enchanted evenings as it welcomes South Pacific, with Rebecca Thornhill taking the role of Nellie Forbrush, from Tuesday until Saturday, 17 March;
- a "powerful multimedia stage production, exploring the theme of identity through a young woman's eyes", Lite by Marlene McKenzie is at mac, Birmingham at 1.30pm on Wednesday;
- Britain's only professional performing arts company of visually impaired people, Extant, starts a national tour of Sheer, written and directed by Maria Oshodi, at Wolverhampton's Arena Theatre on Wednesday;
- the musical comedy The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, a two-hander of Stephen Lowe's adaptation of Robert Tressell's book, is a Townsend Productions presentation at Nottingham's Lakeside Arts Centre on Thursday and Friday;
Cotton Grass Theatre stages Berlie Doherty's Thin Air, a "haunting family saga" set against a pilot's return from the First World War, at Buxton Pavilion Arts Centre Studio on Friday and Saturday;- at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, Helen Edmundson's new play The Heresy of Love continues in the Swan until Friday and David Edgar's new play Written on the Heart, which tells the story of the making of the King James Bible, and Measure for Measure both continue until Saturday;
- rock ‘n' roll musical comedy Forever Young continues at Nottingham Playhouse until Saturday;
- the Ukrainian National Opera of Kharkiv performs Puccini's La Boheme at Buxton Opera House next Sunday; and
- Bill Naughton's classic Alfie continues at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday, 17 March.