A blog for the latest theatre, music, dance and performance photography from Andrew Billington - live performance photographer based in Staffordshire and photographing across the UK.
Beauty and the Beast - Key Theatre - Panto
Beauty & the Beast
Peterborough's longest running traditional family pantomime
Join us for a brand new panto written for the Key Theatre by Simon Egerton.
This year it's Beauty & the Beast: the story of a young woman who is caught up in a handsome chevalier's struggle to defeat an evil Wolf Queen's curse.
Prince & The Pauper - NVT - December 19
Prince and the Pauper
By Mark Twain
Adapted and directed by Theresa Heskins
Classic stories, spectacular adventures and lots of fun are the hallmarks of a New Vic Christmas show, and this year will be no exception! Bringing together the same creative team who brought to life our adaptations of The Borrowers, Treasure Island and the UK Theatre Award-winning The Snow Queen, this year we bring to life another classic adventure story in our stunning trademark style!
Prepare for a tale full of heart, filled with imaginative storytelling, live music, humour, puppetry and festive magic as we stage a brand new adaptation of The Prince and The Pauper.
Join us and be enchanted by this story of a chance meeting between two people, which might just change their lives….and the lives of everyone around them.
Don Giovanni - Clonter Opera
Don Giovanni is a bedazzling tragicomedy showcasing the genius of Mozart and Da Ponte at the height of their powers. The Martin Lloyd-Evans production will transport this serial seducer and charismatic anti-hero into the midst of contemporary society to reveal staggering hypocrisy hidden beneath a surface of respectability.
“Compelling, stylish, imaginative, colourful, gripping and refreshingly unpretentious.”
39 Steps - New Vic Theatre
I love a good piece of theatre and this is a fabulous piece of theatre.
And one that can only exist on stage as the joy is in the theatricality and conceit of 4 actors playing 120 roles between them….
From the New Vic Website:
Following on from our hugely successful productions of Around The World In 80 Days and Astley’s Astounding Adventures, thrilling spy drama The 39 Steps gets the New Vic treatment!
Richard Hannay, upstanding gent and all-round good guy, finds himself in a bit of a pickle when he wakes up to find a mysterious woman in his apartment. Dead. Now on the run, pursued by all manner of suspicious characters, can Hannay evade capture and clear his name of murder before it’s too late? Will he fall in love along the way? And what exactly are The 39 Steps?
A thrilling, inventive, fast-paced caper, four actors will play over 120 characters in this side-splitting comedy based on John Buchan’s famous spy novel.
Starring New Vic favourites: Rebecca Brewer (Playhouse Creatures), Gareth Cassidy (Treasure Island), Michael Hugo (Around The World In 80 Days) and Isaac Stanmore (Peter Pan In Scarlet).
GLORY - Red Ladder Theatre Company - The Dukes Lancaster
I love working with new people and it was great to go to The Dukes Theatre in Lancaster to photograph the new play from Red Ladder Theatre Company, directed by Rod Dixon.
I love working with new people and it was great to go to The Dukes Theatre in Lancaster to photograph the new play from Red Ladder Theatre Company, directed by Rod Dixon.
From the Red Ladder website:
The Dukes and Red Ladder in association with Tamasha present
Glory
Meet Dan, Ben and Sami.
Three wrestlers compelled over the ropes and into the ring to fight for glory. Three men wrestling with demons, life, each other.
Jim ‘Glorious’ Glory used to be somebody. In the heyday of British wrestling, he was a colossus. Now his empire has crumbled.
Through Dan, Ben and Sami, Jim catches a glimpse of resurrection; a chance to re-establish his great name and his decaying gym. But do they want to wrestle and restore Jim’s glory? Or do they have a different fight in mind?
Only one hero can emerge.
A new play from the writer of Partition and the award-winning The Chef Show – GLORY takes us into the wrestling ring in this painfully funny, sweaty and gutsy story about what people will do to achieve glory.
Glory has been supported through Arts Council England’s Sustained Fund.
Light Night - Site Specific Outdoor Theatre
Watch the city glisten and glow as Light Night Stoke-on-Trent magnificently transforms Burslem Town Centre over three evenings this January.
Join us and see the cityscape illuminated as world-class projections light up its heritage buildings, illuminated musical parades set the streets aglow and vibrant artworks ignite corners of the town.
Light Night Stoke-on-Trent builds on the energy, momentum and pride generated by Stoke-on-Trent’s bid to be UK City of Culture 2021 and is a free, evening event for the whole city and beyond taking place over three nights in Burslem Town Centre.
A Christmas Carol - Leeds Playhouse
IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE IN VICTORIAN LEEDS, BUT THE COLD-HEARTED EBENEZER SCROOGE HASN’T AN OUNCE OF FESTIVE CHEER.
As the cold night draws in, four ghostly spirits take Ebenezer on a magical journey through his past, his present and his future, hoping to show him the error of his ways. With Christmas spirit, fun, music and magic at its heart, this timeless Charles Dickens tale is brought vividly to life.
A LEEDS PLAYHOUSE PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION
WITH HULL TRUCK THEATRE.
No Fit State Circus
Contemporary circus combines live music, dance, stage design, text, and film with traditional circus skills. It is rooted in the travelling community who turn up, pitch a tent, drum up an audience, and then leave with only flattened grass and a memory to show they were ever there. The circus are the strangers who live amongst us – and if we run away to join them we are throwing off our inhibitions, our conventions, the rules of settled society. We are taking to the road knowing that there is no destination - only a journey.
Today, NoFit State is the UK’s leading large-scale contemporary circus company, producing professional touring productions and a wide variety of community, training, and education projects for people of all ages. Over the last ten years NoFit State's touring productions have visited 19 different countries, played to audiences of over 460,000, as well as receiving critical acclaim and winning numerous prestigious international arts awards.
Queens of the Coal Age - Royal Exchange Theatre + New Vic Theatre
By Maxine Peake
Directed by Bryony Shanahan
“WE ARE WOMEN AGAINST PIT CLOSURES AND WE’RE OCCUPYING THIS PIT”
Anne, Elaine, Dot and Lesley. Four ordinary women, facing the closure of their community. It’s 1993 and the Parkside Colliery pit may be winding down, but they’re not giving up.
Their bras stuffed with contraband, they take a tour of the pit and refuse to come up. Settling into the depths of the mine, making tissue roses and walking imaginary dogs, they face bribery and threats. But as they dig in, those up top start to realise these ladies are not for turning.
This powerful play full of Northern wit by Maxine Peake follows on from the critically-acclaimed Beryl, and tells the true story of four women taking a stand in the face of a changing world.
