This year Chichester Festival Theatre is taking on Oklahoma! with their usual mix of respect for the piece and urge to find a new viewpoint on it.
FOLLIES – National Theatre ★★★★★
It’s been a while since the National Theatre last revived a great song and dance extravaganza and a Sondheim one at that. But with Dominic Cooke’s production of Follies, the NT’s reputation as one of the nation’s finest creators of musical theatre is restored.
Year in Review: Kristy Stott’s favourite productions of 2016
With Christmas in full swing, it feels like a good time to look back at the highlights of a busy year for theatre in Manchester. Here are Upstaged Manchester’s theatrical highlights of 2016. Which shows would make your list?
SWEET CHARITY – Manchester
Under Derek Bond’s masterful direction, the musical theatre classic fills the Great Hall – bursting with big Fosse numbers, a superb live band and extraordinary cast – it’s as if Sweet Charity was made to be performed in the round.
THE GO-BETWEEN – West End
Where Taylor’s recent Sheffield outing flooded the stage with talent, albeit with no big star on board, the casting feature of The Go-Between is of course England’s grand-daddy of musical theatre and the creator of Lloyd-Webber’s Phantom Of The Opera, Michael Crawford. No celebrity “stunt casting” here, the quality of Crawford’s performance brings real smiles. One would be pushed to find a better man for a role that requires not only emotional but vocal versatility, and while this national treasure may not be hitting Phantom-like notes, his performance is still certainly on the money.
THE GO-BETWEEN – West End
Michael Crawford returns to the London stage to star as Leo Colston, a man who is still haunted by events that took place fifty years ago… What would you do if you were made to deliver secret messages between two people who are in love but couldn’t publicly declare it? What would happen if you […]
THE GO-BETWEEN – West End
It has taken six years – and Michael Crawford – to bring Richard Taylor and David Wood’s poetic musicalisation of L P Hartley’s The Go-Between to the West End stage; and before the tired old debate begins as to what it is (opera? musical? play with music?), before anyone goes in search of a comforting label, let it be said that what really counts for something here is the storytelling.