Latest news with #HelloDolly
North Wales Chronicle
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- North Wales Chronicle
ITV game show hosted by Mel & Sue looking for contestants
They are hoping to find "fun" and "enthusiastic" people for the programme, which is called Win Win. Made in collaboration with the People's Postcode Lottery, "contestants with larger-than-life personalities" will need to be available to appear in the studio every week for six weeks. In a statement, ITV said: "Prizes are likely to include dream holidays, cars and once-in-a-lifetime sporting & entertainment experiences. Win Win is looking for contestants with a 'larger-than-life' personality (Image: Hello Dolly/ITV) "The series also builds to an epic finale where one contestant is GUARANTEED TO WIN at least ONE MILLION POUNDS." While you won't need great general knowledge to be on the programme, common sense will definitely be an advantage. All the questions will revolve around the responses given to a massive survey of the Great British public "revealing how we behave and what we think about all aspects of life". If you want to apply for the game show, you can do so on the website here. The deadline for applications is Monday, June 30, and applicants must be over the age of 18. Part of the process will require the applicant to upload a 2-3 minute video sharing some details about who they are and some interesting facts about themselves. Giving further details, the broadcaster said: "We would encourage you to complete your application as soon as you can, as auditions start immediately. Any applications received after this deadline may not be considered. Recommended reading: Tracy Beaker star Dani Harmer reveals she nearly landed this iconic Emmerdale role BBC bosses issue statement on future of Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor Who amid reports EastEnders fans 'gutted' as last remaining BBC soap family member to exit "Only fully completed applications that have an uploaded application video will be considered. "Should we wish to progress your application further, a member of the casting team will be in touch." If you need any help completing your application, please get in touch at casting@
Telegraph
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Mrs Warren's Profession: Imelda Staunton and her daughter make a winning double act
This classy, period-dressed production of one of Bernard Shaw's best-known plays brings Imelda Staunton back to the West End as Mrs Warren, a woman of means who harbours the societally unacceptable secret that her wealth derives from prostitution (formerly her own, now that of others in 'hotels' she manages in Europe). What's not to like? Well, at the risk of sounding like an ingrate, I'd say Dominic Cooke's briskly efficient, interval-free revival courts seeming a bit anodyne, especially given the PR promise that Cooke and co are bringing this once contentious, long-banned 1894 work 'crashing into the 21st century' (they don't). That said, few should pass up the opportunity to see Staunton on stage. Even laying aside the fact that she has been the Queen in The Crown, she qualifies as revered acting royalty. A musicals doyenne of late (witness her Olivier-winning turn in Hello, Dolly!), without breaking into song she can still rivet attention with just a glance or a twitch of the shoulders. An added draw is that her daughter, Bessie Carter, has been cast as Mrs W's vivacious, anti-sentimental and recalcitrant offspring Vivie. Though physically dissimilar, Carter (a star of Bridgerton) carries her mater's thespian DNA in her sparkle and subtlety – a smirk, a bemused look, and you're hooked. (Others may spot affinities with her father Jim, Downton's Mr Carson; a game you can play all night.) The big scenes between mother and daughter are quietly tremendous, and crackle with a genuine sense of a familial bond without becoming cosy. When Kitty spells out just what a wretched life she narrowly escaped by going on the game, you see the scales fall from Vivie's eyes and sympathy flower. Staunton gives her character a nicely brittle air, combining defiance and defensiveness, with a residual cockney accent – an obstacle to full respectability which she perforce craves instead for her girl. When that status is spurned, for trading on the exploitation of other women – Vivie resolving to forge her own proto-feminist path of toil – you glimpse how crushed, wounded and lonely Mrs Warren is and the comfortless and possibly childless world Vivie's noble resolve may result in. Despite being of its time, their showdown conveys the age-old tussle between parent and child and crystalises the ethical wrench between improving one's lot and not hurting others. Topical in a way – what hidden agonies fund well-heeled or Western lifestyles today? – but elsewhere a tepidity sets in. The mute, scene-shifting contributions of a female chorus in undergarments, sporting accusatory looks to mournful music, feel reductively decorative and aren't enough to save Chloe Lamford's sparse, black-walled set from visual insufficiency. The male actors handle their polished but sometimes still dusty side of the dialogue with stiff dependability – among them Robert Glenister as a creepily predatory elder businessman, and Kevin Doyle as a comically twitchy, archetypally compromised vicar, with a past of his own. Shaw, the old radical, would be glad to see how his work has endured – but wouldn't he also want it showing a bit more fire in its belly?
Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Mrs Warren's Profession review — Imelda Staunton battles with Bernard Shaw
It's less than a year since we saw Imelda Staunton taking on polite society as the bustling matchmaker in Dominic Cooke's elegant revival of Hello, Dolly! at the London Palladium. Now here she is at the Garrick, back in harness with Cooke and playing a character who makes a much more dubious living out of human frailties. George Bernard Shaw's study of Kitty Warren, a successful brothel keeper who is trying to build a relationship with her bluestocking daughter, caused a scandal in its time. Treating sex as a business like any other put the playwright at odds with the guardians of morals: it wasn't until 1925 that London saw a public performance, three decades after the play was written. The problem now, of course,
