Tribute and tribulations

Published: 1 October 2022
Reporter: David Upton

Glitterball Credit: Ellie Kurttz

A Shirley Bassey tribute act’s midlife crisis features in a new play Glitterball .

Coming to Oldham Coliseum Theatre this October, it’s a cross-cultural comedy about a woman’s rollercoaster journey to find her voice, brought to life with live music.

Presented by Rifco Theatre Company and Watford Palace Theatre, it runs October 11–15.

Sonia’s life has always been a bit of a double act, brought up as one half of a Shirley Bassey tribute act. Alongside her overbearing mother Gloria, she left a trail of sequins across the working men’s clubs of East Anglia. Now she’s divorced, battling through the middle-age jungle, wrangling unimpressed teenagers and navigating rocky friendships.

Writer Yasmin Wilde has been an actress for more than 30 years. Recent work includes shows at Birmingham Rep, Manchester Royal Exchange and Stratford East, and TV appearances in After Life, This Is Going To Hurt, Shakespeare and Hathaway and Peter Kosminsky’s The Undeclared War.

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