UK Theatre Network

For the first time ever, comedy legend and the most senile member of Monty Python will be bringing his "An Evening with the Legendary John Cleese” tour to the UK. Best known for his idiosyncratic turns in Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers, John Cleese will bring his unique comedic perspective to Glasgow audiences for three nights only: Mon 6 – Wed 8 June.

Cleese has achieved a lot in his career which started as a sketch writer for BBC Radio’s Dick Emery Show and then The Frost Report. After this stardom beckoned, and Monty Python was created with Cleese co-writing and starring in four series and three films.

He went on to achieve further great success as the neurotic hotel manager Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, which he co-wrote with his then wife Connie Booth. After huge UK success John went on to crack the USA with A Fish Called Wanda (which he wrote and starred in with Jamie Lee Curtis). The late 1990s saw the unstoppable Mr Cleese appear in the James Bond movie The World is not Enough and later Die Another Day. From writing to starring in plays, musicals, theatrical and comedy productions, to films and sitcoms, Cleese has done it all, and now it’s time for him to tell you about his jam-packed life.

Cleese says: "It is an evening of well honed anecdotes, psychoanalytical tit-bits, details of recent surgical procedures, and unprovoked attacks on former colleagues, especially Michael Palin".

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LISTINGS

An Evening with the legendary John Cleese

Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Mon 6 – Wed 8 June @ 7.30pm

Tickets: £21 - £33.50

Box Office: 08448 717 647 (bkg fee)

www.ambassadortickets.com/glasgow (bkg fee)

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Ramshorn Theatre, Glasgow (24 March-2 April 2011)

Strathclyde Theatre Group have joined forces with Radio Theatre Group to produce a (very) rarely performed dramatisation of Douglas Adams’s original radio plays.

You must know about Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, right?  The books topped best sellers lists back when books were popular, a BBC TV series followed in the 80s and Disney launched the big budget movie version in 2005 starring Martin Freeman.  But at the heart of all of these, often word for priceless word, are the original 1978 radio play scripts.

This production, from a collaboration of Strathclyde Theatre Group and Radio Theatre Group, sets the action in a radio recording studio that also has a sense of “spaceship bridge” about it. Live action sound effects are performed in plain view with skilful and effective sound and lighting design from Bruce Downie and Ursula McCue.  Do you think you could make a plate and a fork sound like an airlock opening in preparation to blast our heroes into space?  No problem for this company!  Direction from Susan C. Triesman and Bruce Downie utilised the space and effects well producing some vivid images and hilarious comic moments.  The cast flipped effortlessly from Douglas Adams’s creations to actors in a radio play adding more hilarity to the episodic ‘cliff hangers’ written into the original scripts.

Performances varied somewhat in the quality and consistency of accents, but characters remained resolutely in place throughout – particularly difficult in such an intimate venue.  Several cast members played diverse characters throughout the series to quite hilarious effect.  Paul Kozinski is a case in point; principally playing Marvin the Paranoid Android (“Life, … don’t talk to me about life”) but also delivering excellent character portrayals of Vogon Jeltz, Number 2 and Benjy Mouse (among others).  Principal players Barry Ward (as Arthur Dent), Euan Cuthbertson (as Ford Prefect) and Karen Barke (as the Narrator / Book) were impeccable throughout.  Bizarrely, seeing the face of the Book really adds to the performance despite the fact that the Book is a book and not a character!

This is a great fun production as part of the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival.  Not quite the answer to life, the universe and everything … but very close for any sci-fi comedy fans out there!

Listings information:

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

By Douglas Adams

The Ramshorn Theatre, 98 Ingram Street, Glasgow

24 March - 2 April 2011

0141 552 3489

Tickets £4 - £10 (www.ticketsoup.com)

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

King’s Theatre, Glasgow

Tuesday 8 March 2011

There’s a real buzz in the auditorium: many in the audience already know and love the Trocks. There’s an announcement before the show: ’All the ballerinas are in a very good mood tonight.’

The Trocks are a 16 strong company of professional male dancers, founded in 1974 to bring a playful, entertaining view of classical ballet to the widest possible audience. Starting in a loft in New York, they have since become a global dance phenomenon. Incorporating the full range of ballet and modern dance in their repertoire, they cock a snook at the absurd and ossified conventions of classical ballet, whilst gleefully celebrating its lyricism, its passion and its athletic aesthetic. The fact that the male dancers play all the roles, often in enormous size 12 pointe shoes, is a joy, and the overtly hairy chest of Odette in their signature piece, Act 2 of Swan Lake, adds to the hilarity of the evening without taking away from the exhileration of seeing some of the most graceful ballerinas ever. Pratfalls and gestures taken straight from Melodrama. Music Hall and early silent movies add to the tropes of transgression that are the dynamic of an evening that also includes straightforwardly beautiful dancing in the Pas de Deux Grand Classique. Their take on Balanchine, Go for Barocco, was a stunningly funny precision piece to the music of Bach, his elegance expressed through a group of what appeared to be competitive muscular 1930s bathing belles. And The Dying Swan was executed in a cloud of moulting feathers, and bows that lasted longer than the piece itself. The final dance, Raymonda’s Wedding, takes a typically ludicrous fantasy ballet narrative and comically violates it as really really large ‘female’ dancers are partnered with short ‘male’ dancers who can’t even see round them as they work together, and ‘accidents’ contravene the idea of grace: the Prince collides painfully with the prosc arch and a ballerina reappears from the wings with heavy black rimmed glasses on.

In ballet, dancers normally ignore the audience until the curtain calls…here the company engage with you from the start and you are genuinely invited to share the joke (or the joy) with them. They are dancing in travesti – not in drag – challenging the gender and race – and size – assigned stereotyping decisions that underlie normal ballet school and ballet troupe practice.

They have an awareness of the performance of personality, underlined by being gay in a world where assigned gender is a political as well as a corporal axiom, where the gay body has been the subject of exploration in performance art, and in the lives of gay men, predicated on a division of the self externally imposed. This lived reality chimes with the creation of glamorous names for classical ballerinas: the Trocks revel in dual Russian personae, male and female: punned pseudonyms such as Ida Nevasayneva and Mikhail Mypansarov.

They are all extremely accomplished and talented ballet dancers – with great comic timing and real rapport with the audience. It’s their love for the great traditions of Russian Imperial Ballet that enables them to work to such comic effect, producing both affection and respect. Even the final Curtain Call became a parody – of the grotesque inexpressivity of River Dance.

At the end of the show, you couldn’t imagine an audience all being in more of a good mood: when the Trocks are in town, it’s very much like being invited to the best party ever.

Susan C. Triesman

Listings Info:

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Tue 8^th and Wed 9^th March

Tickets: £14 – £27

Box Office 08448 717 648 (Bkg fee)

www.ambassadortickets.com/glasgow (bkg fee)

The UK tour goes on to:

New Wimbledon Theatre

Fri 11 and Sat 12 March

Brighton Dome Concert Hall

Tue 15 and Wed 16 Mar

Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall

Fri 18 and Sat 19 March

Milton Keynes Theatre

Tues 22 and Wed 23 March

High Wycombe, Wycombe Swan

Fri 25 and Sat 26 March

Birmingham Hippodrome

Wed 30 March 0- Sat 2 April

Sheffield, Lyceum Theatre

Tue 5 and Wed 6 April

Bradford, Alhambra Theatre

Fri 8 and Sat 9 April

Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Tues 12 and We 13 Apr

Salford, The Lowry

Fri 15 and Sat 16 Apr

The Circus of Horrors

The Four Chapters from Hell

Celebrating 15 bloody years

Following on from the huge success of The Asylum, & The Day of the Dead show’s The Circus of Horrors has had a major revamp & is back rockin’ & shockin’ with special brand new show created especially to celebrate its 15th bloody year.

The new show The Four Chapters from Hell will take you on a journey though all four of the Circus of Horrors incarnations, beginning in a French Asylum where the inmates are liberated and become the performers in the show.
After killing their leader, filled with remorse they move across to Mexico to try & revive him in the Day of the Dead celebrations.

The show then moves into Victorian London, it is the late 1890’s and the Freak Show has come to town, a young girl Ragen born in the Asylum, is woken from her deep sleep and runs away to join the circus before she is sacrificed by the Evil & undead Dr Haze and fed to the vampires.

But Vampires never die and the final twist to the story takes us into the future, and into 2020, a futuristic vision of mad max style civilization inhabited by Vampires, Zombies and the Undead. Regan now also undead seeks revenge on her evil slayer, all of course to disastrous consequences.

The show contains some of the greatest, most bizarre & beautiful Circus acts on earth. From dare devil flying trapeze to a vampiric crow woman suspended only by her hair, from whirlwind roller skaters to sword swallowers. All this plus pickled & bendy people, Voodoo Warriors, Knife throwers and an almighty cast of 26 of the wildest, weirdest but most of all greatest performers on earth.

This is without a doubt a musical masterpiece with the help of the Devil driven Rock n Roll of Dr Haze & he Interceptors From Hell.

Imagine if Quinton Tarantino had directed Cirque Du Soliel then you would be  only half way there.
THIS REALLY IS IT!

Listings Info:

The Circus of Horrors

Monday 14^th March

Tickets: £13 - £25

Box Office 08448 717 648 (Bkg fee)

www.ambassadortickets.com/glasgow (bkg fee)

Noel Sullivan came to our attention in 2001 as one fifth of the Popstars winning group Hear’say.  Since then he’s popped up in TV cameos but concentrated on musical theatre roles on tour and in London’s West End.  This year he plays the lead role of Galileo Figaro in the UK National Tour of the Queen and Ben Elton musical “We Will Rock You”.

How does playing Galileo Figaro compare to other theatre roles you have experienced?  It’s been a massive undertaking because of the scale of the role compared to others that I have played.  I’m really pleased to land this role because I know that they have never cast a ‘name’ in the role of Galileo before.  I feel like I’ve earned my stripes in the industry and this role represents serious progress for my career.

The songs are massive in terms of range and impact; how do you keep your voice in condition when you play 8 shows a week?  I have to look after myself because the role is as much a lifestyle as a job in terms of keeping my voice healthy.  I occasionally do ’24 hours of silence’ but I’ve found my voice getting stronger in the tour and it’s easier to maintain.

The tour runs until January 2012 reaching just under 1 million fans in that time.  How does it feel to reach so many people with your performance?  It’s amazing.  Those numbers are huge and I’ve never been on a tour for this long.  It’s daunting in a way … but it becomes possible when you take each venue and each performance one at a time.

Cardiff is the next UK city stop!  Are you excited?  I can’t wait.  For me, it will be a personal highlight because I feel that The Millennium Centre is one of the finest venues that we have to offer as a country and this will be my first time as the lead in a show of this scale coming home. 

Which songs get the best reaction for you?  Some are just blatantly obviously brilliant like “I Want To Break Free” where you can almost feel the audience enjoy it from the off.   As a singer “Who Wants To Live Forever”, “We Are The Champions”, …  and more are amazing to perform and have a range that you just don’t get in any other shows.  They’ve not been written for a tenor or a baritone, they’ve been designed for Freddie as a rock song, so they are unique.

Describe the audition process.  I was petrified by it all!  I did six auditions and an acting workshop onstage at the Dominion Theatre with Ben Elton.  That was quite a big deal because I remember him as a stand-up and comedy writer for TV when I was younger.  In the finals I sang in front of 35 people on the panel including Brian May and Roger Taylor.  Massively nerve wracking but ultimately satisfying when you land the role.

Its 20 years since the untimely death of Freddie Mercury and almost 9 years since WWRY opened in the West End.  What do you think drives the undying popularity of Queen’s music?  The songs are all so dramatic and each one has a brilliant hook or an amazing arrangement.  I said to Brian May that, as a kid, with my choral background, I really admired his arrangements.  He replied that having watched me go through the Hear’say process he would never imagined that I was the kind of guy who would come up to him to say I admired his arrangements!

You shared the stage with Brian May a couple of weeks ago as he surprised Glasgow fans with a special guest appearance … what was going through your mind as you sang your last note?  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was one of those moments that makes all the hard work and disappointments of your career worthwhile.  And there was a feeling from the audience that I have never experienced before.

Do you feel “under pressure” performing Queen songs?  Yeah! Even just from a financial level, there is so much money behind this show.  The technical support in the form of sound, lighting and effects is a level above what you would expect to see on a national tour.  But also the music … when you are singing those songs live there is a sense of responsibility … these are like ‘fabric of the nation’ songs.

Are you enjoying the experience in Glasgow? I really think that there are only a few places in the country where people go out with an attitude where they want to have a good time.  Glasgow is one of those places.  When you perform here, it feels like an event.

Do you get any time to relax or socialise when on tour?  I try to cram it in!!  It is really tempting with a cast that are so young and have a lot of fun … but you also have to have the responsibility on your shoulder that you’ll be knocking out those notes again tomorrow night.

You’ve had some quite diverse experiences since your 2001 talent show breakthrough on Popstars.  I saw you on Gavin and Stacey the other night!  Any particular highlights for you?  This part is definitely a career highlight for me and particularly sharing the stage with Brian May.  My first West End lead as Danny Zucco in Grease is up there and I got to sing with Cat Stevens on his Moonshadow tour … I should make a list of legends I want to work with …!

Any ambitions that you can tell us about?  I would really love it if I had the opportunity to play Galileo in the West End.  I have committed wholly to theatre this year.

Jenny Douglas is the 19 year old from Edinburgh who reached the quarter-final stage of the BBC’s “Over The Rainbow” search for Dorothy in 2010.  She has joined the national tour of the Queen and Ben Elton musical “We Will Rock You” in the role of “Meat”.  The show tours until January 2012.

What has your last year been like?  A bit mental!  I left high school, I went to college, I dropped out of college to appear on “Over The Rainbow”, I auditioned for We Will Rock You, I got the part and now I’m exactly where I wanted to be!  I think to myself … “how did that happen??”.

How did you feel about joining the cast of such a hugely popular show?   I don’t know how to put it into words … it was an amazing feeling.  I saw the show with my mum a year before joining the cast.  I was brought up on Queen music and I said to her “wouldn’t it be great if I could do that”.  I can really feel what the audience feel when the first number, “Innuendo” starts because I was in the audience not so long ago!

Do any of the songs in the show have a special meaning for you?  So many songs … I used to watch a Queen video that had music videos and backstage footage all the time!  I know exactly what Freddie wore in each of the songs!  I really love “No-one But You”, not just because I sing it … because it is a moving tribute to the greats of rock who died young.  The Glasgow audiences have reacted really strongly to that song – you can hear an “aww” out loud!  The audience can really add to the performance.

Have you been starstruck since you started the tour?  When Brian May and Roger Taylor came to the opening of the Glasgow show, that was something special.  When Brian played Bohemian Rhapsody onstage, we were all around him bowing “we’re not worthy” and I was actually greetin’, I was so happy!  I was inches from him.

Are Brian and Roger actively involved with the production?  Yes, they were involved in the audition process, they support the show on the press nights and events and I believe they have a strong say in casting decisions.  It really is their show.

Meat couldn’t be more different from Dorothy … which of the roles is a more natural fit?  I wouldn’t have auditioned for Dorothy if I didn’t think I could do it but Meat is more suited to me as a performer.  I see myself as a singer first and I can really sink my teeth into her songs.  I do bring a bit of my boldness and bossiness to the role – I didn’t realise I could be like that!  Meat takes that to the extreme, though.

You previously toured with “Any Dream Will Do” finalist, Keith Jack.  Did that experience help you?  Wow … that seems like ages ago!  Not directly, the tour was ‘here and there’ while I was at college so I didn’t have to leave home for long.  But Keith has been a great support to me through the auditions and a great friend.  One thing that I did learn to appreciate was that an audience pays real money to be entertained and Keith is such an amazing performer, I learned a lot from him.

Do you have any plans to record or release music in the future?  Not at the moment.  My “Pops” (my dad) would love that.  That’s what I really wanted when I was younger but I found a passion for acting and costumes and character voices so I’m happy in theatre for now.  I’ve written songs and I really admire artists like Adele and Ellie Goulding.  I’m only 19, though, and my voice is still developing so you never know …

The smash-hit musical collaboration between Queen and Ben Elton rocks into Glasgow this week for a month-long run at the city’s King’s Theatre.

The show premiered in 2002, achieving the enviable feat of combining 24 of the world’s best loved rock songs with a musical narrative that was engaging and entertaining in equal measure.  Set in a future world where musical instruments are banned and the only permitted music is “programmed”, the story takes the dumbed down x-factor inspired music era to a logical conclusion where rock has become legend.  Enter dreamer Galileo (Noel Sullivan) who ‘want’s to break free’ from this musical oppression and rebellious Scaramouche (Amanda Coutts) as his ‘somebody to love’ – you’re getting how this works!  The thing is, as fantastic as the story is, it all works very well because the show is bound together by some of the greatest songs every written, and characters are broadened by the keen wit of one Mr. Elton.

From a production standpoint, the show doesn’t disappoint.  Music is authentically reproduced with sound production and quality of players worthy of Queen’s legendary live performance reputation.  With Brian May and Roger Taylor actively involved with the tour, we couldn’t expect any less!  The show is very high tech (this is rarely a good thing on a touring production) but every queue was executed precisely with lighting, sound effects, dialogue, music and video all smoothly synchronized.  Mark Fisher’s production design had a real ‘wow factor’ throughout, Willie Williams’s lighting was possibly the best touring set I’ve ever seen and Arlene Phillips’s choreography showed great contrast between the Ga Ga and the Bohemian dancer groups adding an extra character dimension.

But even with all of these production superlatives, the show was still stolen by the performances onstage.  Noel Sullivan (of “Hear Say” fame) got a chance to show off his skills as a rounded actor as well as an incredibly talented vocalist hitting every Freddy Mercury inspired note.  Amanda Coutts blew the audience away with a powerful vocal performance and a highly likable comedic character.  These two were wonderfully supported by a talented cast including Jonathan Wilkes (Khashoggi), Ian Reddington (Pop) and local lass, Jenny Douglas (Meat).

People will be rushing ‘headlong’ for these tickets putting the box office ‘under pressure’!  Book today.

WE WILL ROCK YOU

Kings Theatre, Glasgow

Tuesday 18th January 2011 – Saturday 19^th February 2011

Performances: Mon – Sat 7.30pm, Wed and Sat mats 2.30pm

Ticket Price:  £17 - £41.50

Booking Line: 0844 871 7648 (bkg fee) Groups and Schools 0141 240 1122

Website: http://www.ambassadortickets.com/glasgow  (bkg fee)

Panto season is well underway – oh, yes it is!  The King’s Theatre, Glasgow lays on a fitting tribute to their late Prince of Pantomime, Gerard Kelly, with a spectacularly entertaining production of Snow White.

This is the first ever production of Snow White in over a century of shows at the King’s theatre.  Gavin Mitchell stepped into the late Mr. Kelly’s Doc Marten boots in the role of Muddles.  The character was delivered with great conviction and energy, winning over his new audience with a few hearfelt words about his old pal followed by a cheery “Hiya Gang” which will, no doubt, echo around the 100 year old venue for many years to come.  The performance was doubly impressive when you consider that Mitchell was originally cast as The Wicked Queen in this production – to say that these roles are poles apart would be as obvious as saying that 6 foot 3 inch Darius Campbell (playing Prince Lorenzo with natural style) makes the dwarfs look quite small!  Writer, Eric Potts, kept the wisecracks flowing at the optimum “10 jokes per minute” level and the audience were frequently in stitches.  Steven McNicoll played a hilarious Herman the Henchman while Barbara Rafferty got more boos than Agnews as The Wicked Queen.  Glasgow girl, Julie Matheson, played the title role showing admirable singing and acting talent.

The supporting cast, featuring those all important seven dwarfs, added to the spectacle of the production with fallabout slapstick from the diminutive co-stars and high energy dance routines from the talented ensemble cast.

All thought of cold weather and the “Big Freeze” was left at the front door as the bright costumes and colourful sets warmed the audience from curtain-up.  Music was upbeat and lively, if a little “electronic”, and featured the almost ubiquitous “Don’t Stop Believing” following the 2010 success of Glee.  All in all, a thoroughly uplifting and entertaining family show.

Treat yourself to some Christmas Cheer at the King’s this year!

Listings Info:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Until Sun 9 January 2011

Tickets: £6 - £24.50 

Box Office 0844 871 7648 (Bkg fee)

Groups and Schools Sales 0141 240 1122

www.ambassadortickets.com/glasgow (bkg fee)

Following the resounding success of BBC ONE’s BAFTA-nominated THE ARMSTRONG & MILLER SHOW, Ben Miller (Moving Wallpaper) and Alexander Armstrong (Mutual Friends) will be hitting the road in Autumn 2010 and touring a brand new live show around all the UK’s major venues. 

With their usual mix of the beautifully observed and the utterly barmy, Ben and Xander will be performing a parade of characters from their extensive dressing-up box and wig-store including; The street-talking WWII chav pilots; Brabbins and Fyffe, the filthy alter-egos of Flanders and Swann; Jilted Jim, dumped at the altar but still on his honeymoon; Terry Devlin, the royal correspondent who really KNOWS the royals; Dennis Lincoln-Park, the accident-prone culture buff; the Frank Dad; and so many more…

Ben and Xander comment: “We are cock-a-hoop to be stepping out on tour in Autumn 2010. Expect all your favourite Armstrong and Miller characters and sketches in a market-fresh brand spanking new show.”     

http://www.armstrongandmiller.co.uk/

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For more information please contact Mark Irwin (markirwin@theambassadors.com) or call 0141 240 1305

LISTINGS INFO

The Armstrong and Miller Show

Friday 22 & Sat 23 October @ 8pm

Tickets £21

Call: 0844 871 7648 (fees aply)

www.ambassadortickets.com (bkg fee)

Well, well, who would have believed it? The music of The Proclaimers is just made for the stage!

Showing now at The King’s Theatre in Glasgow, Sunshine on Leith is a

Leith, for those of you not from these parts, is the traditional dockland area of Edinburgh, and quite a different place from its more genteel neighbour.

Billy Boyd (Pippin Took in Lord of the Rings) is terrific as Davy, superbly supported by old pros John Buick and Ann Louise Ross as Rab and Jean, his parents.

But for me the star of the night is Jo Freer as Liz, as much for her sheer vitality as for her undoubted ability as an actress. Brilliant at the comedy, powerful in the more serious moments, and a talented singer bursting with energy and enthusiasm, she outshines a very impressive all-round cast, where Michael Moreland and Zoe Rainey also perform with great credit.

The songs are, inevitably, the core of any musical production, and, somewhat to my surprise, the work of Craig and Charlie Reid is very stage friendly. All the hits are here including Letter to America, I’m Gonna Be (500 miles), I’m on My Way and, of course, the wonderful title track, Sunshine on Leith, a deceptively simple but exceptionally moving ballad.

So, an excellent script by Stephen Greenhorn, a strong cast, well directed by James Brining, performing great songs. What’s not to like?

A hugely entertaining night out.