Regional UK Theatre looking forward 2018

NST Studio Theatre City

Mark Ludmon examines the year ahead for regional theatre in 2018. Bolton girl Maxine Peake has made her mark on TV and the London stage but she returns to her roots with her second play, Queens of the Coal Age. Based on the true story of four women in Lancashire during the miners’ strike in the 1980s, it will be at the Royal Exchange in Manchester from 28 June to 21 July. Also at the Royal Exchange, Maxine Peake will star in Sarah Frankcom’s new production of Beckett’s Happy Days from 25 May to 23 June. Other highlights coming up at the Royal Exchange include Julie Hesmondhalgh in Kendall Feaver’s new play The Almighty Sometimes and April De Angelis’s new adaptation of Frankenstein. A new production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard directed by Michael Boyd, the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, will come to the Royal Exchange … Read more

REVIEW: Posh, Pleasance Theatre ✭✭✭✭

All female production of Psh at Pleasance Theatre

Aside from the device of making it an all-female cast, this is a powerful, enjoyable production. It may lose some of the masculine menace of the original but brings out more of the comedy in the writing and gives us plenty to ponder about the impact of gender in theatre performance.

Danny Boyle Presents Star Studded Dramatic Fund-Raiser

Danny Boyle

Fifteen children growing up in a poor and remote part of rural South Africa have inspired Academy Award winner Danny Boyle to bring their stories to life in London as part of a hard hitting special theatre production starring James McAvoy, Academy Award Nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kit Harington, Josh Hartnett, Christopher Eccleston, Zawe Ashton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. The Children’s Monologues dramatise the testimonies of young children growing up in Rammulotsi, a small rural township in the Free State province of South Africa. Invited to write about a day they will never forget, the Children’s Monologues retell the stories of young people expressing personal experiences in their own words, in their native Sesotho language. While some monologues capture moments of childish joy and wonder, many stories tell of desperate circumstances: what it is like to watch their parents die because of inadequate medical treatment, discover their mother has been gang raped … Read more