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February 12, 2018February 12, 2018

BPREVIEW: Birmingham Royal Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty @ Birmingham Hippodrome 13-24.02.18

Words by Lucy Mounfield / Pics by Bill Cooper

On 13^th February, Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) will bring their production of the classical ballet The Sleeping Beauty to the Birmingham Hippodrome stage.

Evening performances will be held at 7:30pm from Tuesday to Saturday, with matinees held (after the opening night) each day except Wednesday and Friday. Ticket prices vary depending on the date and time of performance, as well as seat positioning.

In addition to the standard performances, and in common with many Hippodrome productions, great lengths have been taken to create accessible variants for BRB’s The Sleeping Beauty. There will be an audio described performance on Saturday 17^th February at 2:30pm, preceded by a touch tour of the stage and props at 10:30am. A relaxed performance will also be held on Tuesday 20^th February at 2pm.

For direct show information, including a full breakdown of show times, prices and online ticket sales, click here.

First performed in 1890 in St Petersburg, this staple of the classical repertoire was a collaboration between the famous composer Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky and the Russian Imperial Ballet, by whom he was commissioned to compose a score.

Since then, The Sleeping Beauty has been widely performed and adapted, becoming part of the repertoire of ballet companies all over the world – past performances of it at the Hippodrome have included Matthew Bourne’s vibrant, modern take. Of the many dance adaptations of the classic fairytale, Peter Wright’s version arguably stands as the epitome of the opulent and spectacular ballet of the Russian tradition.

It’s no surprise then that Birmingham Royal Ballet have chosen to kick off 2018 with Peter Wright’s masterpiece which aims to be true to the classical style, featuring Tchaikovsky’s score performed by Royal Ballet Sinfonia along with original choreography by Marius Petipa.

The Sleeping Beauty is a fairy story based on a classic French fairy tale – most viewers will be familiar with it through the famous Disney film adaptation Sleeping Beauty. On the day of her birth, Princess Aurora is cursed to grow up to be beautiful but to die from a prick to her finger from a spindle by the evil fairy Carabosse as an act of petty vengeance. The good Lilac Fairy is unable to lift the curse, but manages to alter it so that the princess is subject to a 100 year sleep instead.

At its core, The Sleeping Beauty is a magical story of good versus evil set to spectacular dancing and an iconic score. With Mathew Bourne’s Cinderalla recently gracing the Hippodrome stage, taking another classic tale – this time transplanting it into London during the Blitz, it will be nice to get back to some good old fairy tale escapism. Perfect for anyone wanting to sweep away the February blues.

The Sleeping Beauty – Birmingham Royal Ballet

Birmingham Royal Ballet presents The Sleeping Beauty at the Birmingham Hippodrome, running from Tuesday 12^th to Saturday 24^th February. For direct show information, including venue details, production times and online ticket sales, visit www.birminghamhippodrome.com/calendar/birmingham-royal-ballet-sleeping-beauty

For more from Birmingham Royal Ballet, visit www.brb.org.uk

For more from the Birmingham Hippodrome, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.birminghamhippodrome.com

February 5, 2018February 6, 2018

BREVIEW: The Late Marilyn Monroe @ The Blue Orange Theatre 30.01.02

Words by Charlotte Heap

Premiering at The Blue Orange Theatre, Darren Haywood’s play, The Late Marilyn Monroe, tells the tale of the famous blonde bombshell’s untimely death in 1962. Arguably one of the world’s favourite film stars, Monroe’s shock demise at 36 combined with her high octane life (rumoured to include an affair with the president) immortalised her celebrity.

Like most, I’m familiar with Monroe’s image, life and the conspiracies around her death but The Late Marilyn Monroe and Taking Chances theatre group brought to voyeuristically vivid life Haywood’s version of her last hours. The audience is forced to watch Monroe, played with breathless confidence by Tania Staite, alternately vulnerable and raging as she consumes the huge quantities of barbiturates that ultimately lead to her overdose.

Set in Monroe’s bedroom, emphasising the claustrophobic chaos, Monroe is visited only by her housekeeper, paid assistant / friend, and her doctor in her last day. The staging is effective, although the shabby set is an issue: it may seem like a quibble but it rankled with me. Marilyn Monroe would not have had (badly) whitewashed walls.

Mrs Murray, charmingly played by Ellie Darvill, provides motherly care and much needed comic relief. Monroe’s loneliness is magnified through the use of the telephone (both lifeline and torturer) to frame the story of her last hours while Pat and Ralph (Dru Stephenson and Martin Rossen, friend and doctor respectively) offer little other than a soundboard for Marilyn’s monologues: both are ultimately ineffectual counsellors, and the doctor character in particular feels like a plot device, giving Monroe more sedatives before rushing out to dinner.

Haywood is a self-proclaimed fan of Monroe and the depth of his knowledge (and reverence) is shown through his script. Officially Monroe committed suicide, but Haywood nods to the best known theories (such as ‘Bobby’s’ – Robert Kennedy’s – involvement in Monroe’s evident mental distress) throughout the play: intelligently weaving references to fact and mythology to leave the audience asking whether Monroe was delusional or if dark forces were really out to get her. After all, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

The many challenges that faced Norma Jeane are articulated clearly, if at times heavy-handedly. Her beginnings in an orphanage, a stint in a mental institute, two failed marriages, studio troubles, her ‘scandalous’ nude modelling past, her various affairs with stars such as Sinatra, her battles with drug addiction, ageing, plastic surgery, and her casting couch experiences are all alluded to. Monroe’s ‘suicide’ (although Haywood favours the more palatable accidental overdose narrative) makes sense to the audience: this was a very troubled woman.

Trying to include all of Monroe’s many issues though means that The Late Marilyn Monroe misses a trick: there’s modern meaning, as the promotion promised, particularly pertinent in the climate of Hollywood’s #MeToo Campaign, but it feels tokenist and unexplored.

To me though, it mattered little. The Late Marilyn Monroe is a well-written tragedy, it doesn’t need to be a cautionary tale for #MeToo. It’s a familiar tale that Haywood and Taking Chances bring fresh feeling to; you know that Monroe is going to die, but right till the end you can’t help hoping that Haywood might have rewritten history.

For more on The Late Marilyn Monroe, visit www.facebook.com/events/140065786793449

For more from Taking Chances, visit www.facebook.com/TakingChancesTheatre

For more from The Blue Orange Theatre, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.blueorangetheatre.co.uk

February 3, 2018

BREVIEW: Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18

Words by Ed King

We filed slowly, languidly into the hall. The auditorium was vast… But not silent, which is an immediate win for a Birmingham crowd.

I love my home city, but it can be a tough cookie for any touring artist – from the Insane Clown Posse to Ani DiFranco, you just can’t be sure when it come to a Birmingham gig. And I have never seen comedy at the Symphony Hall; a huge room, indeed a ‘vast auditorium’, one a friend astutely described as “the 1980’s trying to do the 1950’s”.

But if tonight isn’t sold out, then it’s a damn near close. All I can count are the empty chairs stuck in traffic or cursing an AWOL babysitter. Booking Joe Lycett as support was a bold local move too. So bold it could have even backfired, as Lycett takes to the intimidating plateau that is the Symphony Hall stage (without a orchestra on it at least) and makes it as cosy as your living room. Cosier, in fact, like the living room of a good friend but one who won’t expect you to clean up afterwards. Or a total stranger’s when you’ve drunk too much to care.

Taking us to the interval and in some case to our seats, as with the unlucky couple that arrive a little late (once the show had started, once the stand up comedy show had started, once the stand up comedy show had started in front of thousands of people that can see you’re in the wrong aisle) Lycett confidently segues from jokes of civic humour to the best use for an Amazon Alexa. Extreme, funny, and extremely funny, the now Kings Heathen is about to embark on his I’m About to Lose Control and I think Joe Lycett (nice) tour, kicking off the day before Valentines. Definitely one to watch out for, and then watch. If you can. It’s pretty much sold out too.

Sauntering onto the big and empty Symphony Hall stage, “it’s a long walk…”, Katherine Ryan looks resplendent in pink silk (I think) with red frills. Or her Vagina Trousers, as we are quickly informed. So there’s an image that will never leave my mind. Assured, tempered by a tour that’s been running since September, and all the qualities that a stand up Faust would be picking his scabs to sign, seal and deliver, Ryan opens with jokes about relationships, the ending of relationships, and moving six thousand miles away with your fingers crossed – an oddly narcissistic approach to putting your emotional cards on the table. Immediately engaging, Ryan turns what could have been trite into fresh and personal material, inviting us into walk though the weird worlds we all inhabit (even if some of us aren’t totally aware of our terrain). Honest, the fun side of frustrated, and cut to perfection; I will never look at a dolphin in quite the same way again.

From jibes about her “ineffectual butler” daughter, be it stalking Anna Kendrick or learning the difference between “day wine and night wine”, to an accentuated recount of when her family came over from the “trashy part” of Canada to see her small London freehold, Ryan has a firm grip on her delivery. Its gut wrenching; at one point I honestly feel the cartilage between my ribs ask me to stop. But by the time my favourite line of the night is uttered, namely that the Frank Sinatra standard ‘My Way’ is the “anthem of a cunt”, it’s clear there is to be little respite. And I will love that sentence until the day that I die.

But Ryan’s wrath is anything than just pure self deprecation, as everyone from her school gate peers – the bake sale obsessed Julie (who I swear is a more fertile version of my step mother) to the Lycra obsessed husband who would get “hate fucked” back in his box, get an astute poke in the ribs. And if you’ve ever spent “two Christmases” traversing a bitter and empty motorway…

Celebrity culture is also in range, as public domain miscreants – from R Kelly to the misogynists of musical theatre – receive a taste of the lash. But don’t worry, an escape to any would be sexual predator is offered; just “don’t fuck vulnerable women”, as the chant that never was (but should have been) rings around the back rows of the West End.

There is even a little time for some proxy president poking, filtered through the plight of “the world’s most unlucky gold digger” Melania Trump. And despite the clear attack at the abject horror that currently sits in The White House, this once again over used subject is the conduit for another piece of acerbic genius – namely that the maligned First Lady is only “one line of coke and an aggressive hand job” away from inheritance and freedom. We can but hope. Or perhaps even help, to a point. I know a guy with some cracking Colombian flake…

Katherine Ryan’s Glitter Room is on tour across the UK until the 24^th March 2018. For more on Katherine Ryan, including full tour dates and online ticket sales, visit www.katherineryan.co.uk

For more on Joe Lycett, visit www.joelycettcomedy.co.uk

For more from Live Nation UK, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.livenation.co.uk

For more from both the Symphony and Town Halls, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk

February 2, 2018February 2, 2018

BPREVIEW: Trudy and the Romance @ Castle & Falcon 03.02.18

Words by Ed King

On Saturday 3^rd February, Trudy and the Romance play at the Castle & Falcon in Balsall Heath, with support from Quinn, Deaf Balloons and P.E.T

Doors open at 7pm, with tickets priced at £7 (plus bf) – as presented by Birmingham Promoters. For direct gig info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

*This gig has been rescheduled from 14^th November 2017, with original tickets still valid. For more information please visit the Birmingham Promoters event page, click here*

Combining their ‘whip-smart imagination and tongues firmly lodged in cheeks’ with ‘a veritable witch’s brew of lovelorn sea shanties and mutant rockabilly pop’ (just an awesome description) Trudy and the Romance hark back to the bygone days of Teddy Boy cool but with a post millennium pop edge. Coming to Birmingham from their home town of Liverpool, Trudy and the Romance play one of their first 2018 dates at the Castle & Falcon before heading over to Manchester in April.

Formed in late 2014, Trudy and the Romance’s recent Junkyard Jazz EP has been picking up momentum and music press adulation since its release in November 2017, with DIY Mag citing the 5 track extended play as ‘a new record of crackers.’ We’d be happy with that. Their ashtrays are pretty awesome too.

Supported by the Sam Lambeth fronted Quinn, always worth a looksie, Trudy and the Romance will be further joined on stage by Wolverhampton’s Deaf Balloons and Birmingham’s ‘Grrl punk band’ P.E.T – the latter we hear strange and curious things about, but have yet to see strut their loud and hopefully funky stuff on stage. One for the shopping list though.

‘Is There a Place I Can Go’ (live) – Trudy and the Romance

Trudy and the Romance play at the Castle & Falcon on Saturday 3^rd February – with support from Quinn, Deaf Balloons and P.E.T. For direct gig info, including venue details and online ticket sales, visit www.castleandfalcon.com/event/trudy-romance-quinn

For more on Trudy and the Romance, visit www.trudymylove.com

For more on Quinn, visit www.soundcloud.com/quinn

For more on Deaf Balloons, visit www.deafballoons.bandcamp.com

For more on P.E.T, visit www.facebook.com/petbanduk

For more from the Castle & Falcon, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.castleandfalcon.com

For more from Birmingham Promoters, visit www.birminghampromoters.com

February 2, 2018

BPREVIEW: Brief Encounter @ REP 02-17.02.18

Words by Lucy Mounfield

From Friday 2^ndto Saturday 17^th February, the Birmingham REP’s main stage, The House, will host Kneehigh Theatre’s adaptation of Brief Encounter – written and directed by Kneehigh’s former artistic director, Emma Rice.

Brief Encounter will present evening shows every day at 7:30pm (except Sundays), with a Saturday matinee at 2:00pm on 10^th and 17^th February.

Extra shows will included a captioned performance at 2pm on Thursday 8^th February, an audio described performance at 7:30pm on Friday 9^th February, a relaxed performance on at 2pm on Thursday 15^th February, and a BSL interpreted performance at 7:30pm on Friday 16^th February.

Tickets to Brief Encounter at REP are priced at £10-£15, dependent on the day and time of performance. For direct show information – including all performance times, venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

Originally commissioned and produced by David Pugh & Dafydd Rogers and Cineworld in 2008, opening at the Birmingham REP, Kneehigh Theatre have revived the production with a new cast for a 2018 UK tour.

Prior to debuting Brief Encounter ten years ago, Kneehigh Theatre have produced numerous theatrical adaptations such as Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death – as well as family favourites such as 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips based on Michael Morpurgo’s classic novel.

Kneehigh create ‘vigorous, popular and challenging theatre and perform with joyful anarchy’ – taking the seemingly unadaptable and making it come to life on stage with bold and charismatic touches. The Cornish theatre company has been producing shows for over 30 years, with a portfolio that has helped them build a reputation and tour circuit far beyond the ‘breath taking barns on the South Coast of Cornwall’ where they began.

Kneehigh Theatre’s Brief Encounter is adapted from Noël Coward’s screenplay for the 1945 film of the same name, which was based on Coward’s 1936 one-act play Still Life. The film, directed by David Lean, has become widely regarded as a cornerstone of British cinema and has been hailed as a romantic masterpiece by many critics.

Brief Encounter has also garnered a special place in many people’s hearts – arguably defining the society and frustrations of a wartime generation. On the eve of the second world war, Laura, a married woman with children, encounters a chance meeting at a railway station with a man called Alec. From their casual conversations the two are immediately attracted to one another, they arrange further meetings – despite the social taboos of the time – and soon fall in love.

“I’m a happily married woman. Or rather I was until a few weeks ago. This is my whole world and it’s enough, or rather it was until a few weeks ago. Your heart dances. The world seems strange and new. You want to laugh and skip and fall forever… You are in love. You are in love with the wrong person.”

With lines such as these it’s easy to see why many have fallen in love with the characters and unapologetic, ‘haunting’ romanticism of Coward’s writing – a man who was no stranger to the attention of a more clipped and unforgiving era.

Kneehigh Theatre have tackled such themes of love and desire before in their productions of Rebecca, Tristan & Yseult, and A Matter of Life and Death, marrying the light and dark elements of romance, punctuating stark realist moments with dark comic bursts of theatricality. Hopefully with her adaptation of Brief Encounter, Rice will retain the essence of Coward’s witty yet candid script whilst maintaining her signature inventive and breathtakingly bold direction.

Brief Encounter – Behind the scenes with Kneehigh Theatre

Brief Encounter runs at the Birmingham REP from Friday 2^nd to Saturday 17^th February. For direct show information – including all performance times, venue details and online ticket sales, visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk/whats-on/brief-encounter

For more from Kneehigh Theatre, visit www.kneehigh.co.uk

For more from the Birmingham REP, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk