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NEWS: Sheffield Theatres win big at 2016 UK Theatre Awards

In Awards, Children's theatre, London theatre, Musicals, Native, News, Plays, Press Releases, Regional theatre, Sticky, Touring by Press ReleasesLeave a Comment

UK Theatre has announced the winners of the UK Theatre Awards 2016 – the only awards to honour outstanding achievement in performing, producing and management in theatres throughout the United Kingdom. Sheffield Theatres is the big winner for its two Crucible musical productions of SHOW BOAT and FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS, nabbing five prizes in total.

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NEWS: UK Theatre Awards nominations announced, Ian McKellen recognised for Outstanding Contribution

In Awards, Children's theatre, London theatre, Musicals, Native, News, Press Releases, Regional theatre, Sticky by Press ReleasesLeave a Comment

UK Theatre has announced the nominations for the UK Theatre Awards 2016, which celebrate the breadth and depth of outstanding talent and achievement in theatre and the performing arts throughout the United Kingdom, on and off stage. Show Boat, which recently finished its West End run, receives the most nominations for a production (four), while fellow Sheffield Theatres’ musical Flowers for …

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DEVILISH – Landor Theatre

In London theatre, Musicals, Opinion, Reviews by Johnny FoxLeave a Comment

The Landor Theatre has made an occasional departure from its repertoire of well-focused chamber-sized revivals to host an original creation called Devilish. Possibly with an exclamation mark. Like Oklahoma! Only not remotely like Oklahoma! Starting not even from a novel, an anecdote really, in which an angel descends from heaven and is shot down into the melee of modern Britain, Chris Burgess has fashioned the slenderest of stories and a battery of lyrics with easy-listening-to-soft-rock music by BB Cooper.

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NEWS: Show Boat posts early closing notices after five-star reviews, 27 Aug

In London theatre, Musicals, Native, News, Press Releases, Regional theatre by Press ReleasesLeave a Comment

The limited season of Daniel Evans’ five-star Sheffield Crucible production of Show Boat will now play its final West End performance on 27 August 2016. Show Boat began West End previews at the New London Theatre on 9 April 2016, with opening night on 25 April 2016 after which Evans’ production was the recipient of a second set of five-star reviews. It had initially been booking until 7 January 2017.

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Diary of a Theatre Addict: 13 shows in London, 5 beyond, 11 in New York in April

In Broadway, Features, London theatre, Musicals, Opinion, Plays, Regional theatre, Reviews, Touring by Mark ShentonLeave a Comment

Across April I’ve duly seen 13 shows in London, one of them twice within the space of four days – namely the current revival of Guys and Dolls. I’d seen it twice before that, first when it originated at Chichester two summers ago and then when it transferred to the Savoy in January, and now again when it moved across town to the Phoenix with a substantially re-cast set of principals and I reviewed it for a third time. Then I returned to it yet again the same weekend to accompany a friend who was in town visiting from New York (yes, it’s that good!).

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SHOW BOAT – West End

In London theatre, Musicals, Opinion, Reviews by Johnny FoxLeave a Comment

In 1927, Jerome Kern shifted the shape of musical theatre from twee operetta to a tighter fusion of music with drama. He also designed Show Boat as a slap in the face to complacent audiences with its startling opening line ‘Niggers all work on the Mississippi’. In the Daniel Evans’ production which has arrived with bells and whistles and five-star accolades from Sheffield we have a version which is both polished and sanitized.

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SHOW BOAT – West End

In London theatre, Musicals, Opinion, Regional theatre, Reviews by Jonathan BazLeave a Comment

Show Boat at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre was the best musical that I saw last year and its London transfer is setting a very high bar for 2016. Daniel Evans’ production, mounted on Lez Brotherston’s spectacularly evocative set doesn’t just reprise one of Broadway’s greatest ever musicals, it recreates America’s Southlands and Midwest at the turn of the 20th century, with a spine-tingling intensity.