What's on in the Midlands

Published: 30 June 2019
Reporter: Steve Orme

Desert Island Flicks at Derby Theatre
The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart in rehearsal at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme Credit: Andrew Billington
Jodie McNee (Belvidera) in Venice Preserved in the Swan Theatre, Stratford Credit: Helen Maybanks

Jaymi Hensley of the group Union J leads the cast of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Birmingham Hippodrome from Tuesday until Saturday 13 July.

Aljaž Škorjanec, Giovanni Pernice and Gorka Marquez dance into the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham with Here Come the Boys on Thursday.

A “blockbuster, adventure and rom com rolled into one”, Desert Island Flicks involves two women who “reimagine, remake and spoof the most memorable movie moments of all time” in the Studio at Derby Theatre on Friday.

Oddsocks promises “music, magic and mayhem” with their version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at mac Birmingham on Friday and Saturday.

An adventure story about “technology, standing up for what you believe in and always expecting the unexpected”, a new play by Andy McGregor, Influence, is performed by Northampton Royal and Derngate’s young company in the Royal auditorium on Friday and Saturday.

Heartbreak Productions is on the road with an outdoor production of David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny at Caldecott Park, Rugby on Friday and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights at Bewdley Museum QEII Gardens, Load Street, Bewdley, Worcestershire on Sunday.

The world première stage adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Zog takes to the stage at De Montfort Hall, Leicester from Friday until Sunday.

Antonia Beck and Lucy Nicholls’s The Death Show, which “looks to better understand society’s relationship with death and dying, and why we struggle to accept our own mortality”, comes to life in the Studio at Derby Theatre on Saturday.

Lesley Joseph, Sarah Jane Buckley, Sue Devaney, Julia Hills, Judy Holt, Lisa Maxwell and Rebecca Storm have nothing to hide in Tim Firth and Gary Barlow’s Calendar Girls the Musical which continues at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham until Saturday.

The Leicester Curve and Birmingham Hippodrome co-production of The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1985 Oscar-nominated film of the same name, continues at Curve until Saturday 13 July.

Linal Haft plays Shylock in Stafford Festival Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice which continues at Stafford Castle until Saturday 13 July.

David Greig’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart continues to have its regional première at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday 13 July (press night Tuesday 2 July).

At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, artistic director Gregory Doran directs a new version of Measure for Measure until Thursday, 29 August while a gender-swapped version of The Taming of the Shrew, set in a 1590s matriarchal England in which women hold all the power, and Kimberley Sykes’s “fierce, exhilarating version” of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy As You Like It both continue until Saturday 31 August; in the Swan Theatre, John Vanbrugh’s comedy The Provoked Wife and Thomas Otway’s “savage political thriller” Venice Preserved run in repertory until Saturday 7 September; and in The Other Place, Crooked Dances, a “compelling” new play by Robin French which “examines music, time and attention in our modern digital age”, continues until Saturday 13 July and researchers shed light on the first English novel by William Baldwin with a free performance of Beware the Cat on Saturday 6 July.

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