Mates blogger: Not Exactly Billington


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Not Exactly Billington
Launched in 2012, Not Exactly Billington is a Leicester-based theatre blog run by Adam and Jasmine, who are keen to explore and promote the arts on a national scale while maintaining the importance of regional voices, perspectives and creative endeavours. The couple share blogging responsibilities and often collaborate on reviews, thus giving a broader response. For three years, they also successfully ran the #ReadaPlayaWeek initiative. Each week, they championed a different play, ensuring there was equal representation of male and female writers as part of their advocacy for gender equity and diversity in the arts. They tweet at @NoBillington.


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‘Entertaining comedy with pathos’: JACK ABSOLUTE FLIES AGAIN – National Theatre

In London theatre, Opinion, Other Recent Articles, Plays, Reviews by Not Exactly BillingtonLeave a Comment

“What will happen in England after we have won this war? Bunting! Bunting everywhere!” Richard Bean and Oliver Chris’ new play Jack Absolute Flies Again at the National Theatre takes R.B. Sheridan’s 1775 farce The Rivals and updates the setting to a Sussex country house in The Battle of Britain. The romantic pursuits, mistaken identities and malapropisms from The Rivals are combined with Bean’s typically bawdy sense of humour, some impressive aerial dogfights and a dose of WWII patriotism. The result is an entertaining, albeit safe and slightly too long, comedy with pathos.

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‘I’d be surprised if I see a more impressive piece of theatre this year’: ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS – Sheffield

In Opinion, Other Recent Articles, Plays, Regional theatre, Reviews by Not Exactly BillingtonLeave a Comment

All three plays in Chris Bush’s Rock/Paper/Scissors triptych run in Sheffield Theatres’ three spaces simultaneously with one cast. The overall piece is a logistical coup-de-théâtre. It’s also a perfect coming together of space and place in three funny, achingly profound and heartful plays about a city and its people on the cusp of change.

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‘A tear-jerking and heart-warming ode’: EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE — Leicester Curve & Tour

In London theatre, Musicals, Opinion, Other Recent Articles, Regional theatre, Reviews by Not Exactly BillingtonLeave a Comment

This past weekend saw the return of the much-loved West End Live in Trafalgar Square. A free festival for theatre lovers, the event has increased in popularity each year (I still remember the early years when everyone was crammed into Leicester Square and only a handful of shows took part!), and eventually it will outgrow its current home too (where next? Hyde Park?).

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‘Provocative & rousing, nostalgic & contemporary’: EAST IS EAST – Birmingham Repertory Theatre

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Twenty-five years after its first performance at the Rep, Ayub Khan Din’s comedy about a British-Pakistani family in 1970s Salford returns home to Birmingham. In Iqbal Khan’s production for the Rep and National Theatre, East is East feels like both a modern classic and as fresh as a new play.

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‘The emotion flooding from the stage is overwhelming’: THE COLOR PURPLE – Curve Leicester (Online review)

In Musicals, Online shows, Opinion, Regional theatre, Reviews by Not Exactly BillingtonLeave a Comment

Following on from the immensely successful Sunset Boulevard in Concert, Curve has reunited the company of 2019’s The Color Purple (a co-production with Birmingham Hippodrome) to once again bring a much needed dose of musical enrichment to theatre lovers worldwide.


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