REVIEW: Beautiful Thing, Above The Stag ✭✭✭✭
Julian Eaves reviews Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing at Above The Stag’s newly opened Vauxhall venue.
Jonathan Harvey
Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing Launches Above The Stag’s New Venue
LGBT+ Theatre Above The Stag will stage the 25th Anniversary production of Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing at their new larger home in Vauxhall.
Dusty The New Dusty Springfield Musical Tour
Dusty, a new musical based on the life of legendary performer Dusty Springfield is to tour in 2018. Written by Jonathan Harvey, Dusty the Dusty Springfield musical tour will start in Bath in June 2018.
Casting announced for Outlaws To In-Laws at King’s Head Theatre
Final casting has been announced for the world premiere of Outlaws to In-Laws, seven one-act plays by leading gay writers dedicated to the struggles and joys of gay men connecting with each other over the last seven decades. From the darkest days of criminality to the legalising of gay marriage, the works by Jonathan Harvey, Jonathan Kemp, Joshua Val Martin, Matt Harris, Patrick Wilde, Philip Meeks and Topher Campbell each represent one of the decades from the 1950s to the present day. The cast are: Elliot Balchin (Hollyoaks, Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth – Manchester and New York), Jack Bence (The Interceptor – BBC1, Eastenders, BadEducation), Myles Devonté (Exhibit B – Barbican, Hospital Chapel 6am – Southwark Playhouse), Michael Duke (Beautiful – Aldwych Theatre, Thriller Live – West End and World Tour, The Lion King – Lyceum Theatre), Alex Marlow (Halycon Days, Just Another Blockbuster – English Theatre Company), and James Richard … Read more
Casting Announced for Closer To Heaven Return Season
Casting has been announced today for Closer To Heaven, a musical by the Pet Shop Boys and Jonathan Harvey which is returning to the Union Theatre from October 21 to Saturday 28 November 2015 following a sell-out run earlier this year. (Read our review) Set against the backdrop of Soho’s pulsing clubland, Closer to Heaven tells the story of Dave, just off the boat from Ireland and determined to make something of himself. He is offered a bar job at a glitzy London nightclub, where he quickly becomes part of an unconventional family including Billie Trix, a fading rock star of the sixties and mother figure to the club’s habitués – Vic, the club’s owner and a middle-aged gay father and his daughter Shell, who Dave sparks an immediate connection with. But will Dave truly discover himself in London, or will he fall into a labyrinth of excess, false agendas … Read more
Beautiful Thing Tour Cancelled
The producers of Beautiful Thing have announced the closure of the production at the Leicester Curve on Saturday 30th May. Executive producer Tom O’Connell said, “It is with great regret that we have made the difficult decision to close Beautiful Thing early, but we are all immensely proud to have produced the show, led by a fantastic company and cast. After we staged an acclaimed West End season of the production in 2013, I hoped that this new tour would prove to be as successful but unfortunately the touring market can be an unpredictable place, as the closure of a number of high profile productions recently has shown. Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing remains a landmark and deeply relevant piece of theatre, and I thank every audience member who has come to see the show and who booked to see it elsewhere.” Beautiful Thing will play at Royal and Derngate Northampton … Read more
REVIEW: Closer To Heaven, Union Theatre ✭✭✭✭
What makes the musical stand-out is it unashamed gaiety, and I use that word in its modern sense. This is, as Nicholas De Jongh said when the piece premiered, “the first truly gay musical to be written and composed by Englishmen” to reach the West End. It is also essentially youthful, and quite uncompromising in dealing head on with the vagaries and traps of young adulthood: sex, drugs (use and sale), pop music, alcohol, predatory conduct, prostitution, love, survival, sexuality and, most compellingly, the family you create separate from the family into which you are born.
Beautiful Thing Tour Cast Announced
STOP PRESS: The UK Tour of Beautiful Thing will close after it plays Northampton and Leicester. For further information please see our news post. Full casting has been announced for Nikolai Foster’s celebrated anniversary production of Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing, which will return to the UK in 2015 with an 18 week UK tour, opening in Canterbury in March, then visiting Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Northampton, Leicester, High Wycombe, Cardiff and Brighton, with a West End run to be announced. Beautiful Thing is a glorious urban love story between two young men set on an inner city housing estate. It tells the story of teenager Jamie’s relationship with classmate and neighbour, Ste. Together the two boys find comedy, warmth and the music of Mama Cass through their loud-mouthed next door neighbour Leah. Jonathan Harvey combines comedy with drama in his critically acclaimed award winning play. Beautiful Thing truly captures what it … Read more
