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The Herald Scotland
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'Spectacular': Review: The Lion, Witch & Wardrobe @ Festival Theatre
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Neil Cooper Five stars A World War Two soldier is playing We'll Meet Again on the piano at the start of this latest tour of C.S. Lewis' classic morality tale. The melancholy melody is about the most down to earth thing you're likely to see over the next two hours of a show that turns its dramatic world upside down in epic fashion. Scaled up by director Michael Fentiman from Sally Cookson's 2017 version at Leeds Playhouse, the result is spectacular. The opening song sets the tone for the wartime evacuation of the four Pevensie children, who are decamped to Aberdeen, where the allure for their new home's spare room proves too much for the eternally curious Lucy. Before she knows where she is she has gone beyond the flea ridden fur coats and landed in Narnia. As imagined by designer Tom Paris and original designer Rae Smith, the Narnia under the queendom of Katy Stephens' White Witch's more resembles some Fritz Lang styled dystopia driven by a constructivist chain gang who seem to have stepped out of a 1970s adult SF comic. Read more Yes, the White Witch has got the power, as she proves with her jawdropping metamorphosis at the end of the first act, but Spring is coming. This is the case even if Lucy's daft brother Edmund sells out his siblings for a bumper sized box of Turkish Delight personified by way of Toby Olié and Max Humphries' larger than life puppetry. Fentiman's slickly oiled machine is driven by Barnaby Race and Benji Bower's chamber folk score played by the cast of more than twenty throughout. Despite the show's grandiose staging, it is the humanity of the piece that gives the show its heart and soul. This is even the case with Stanton Wright's messianic looking Aslan, embodied by a life size lion puppet beside him as he spars with the White Witch and her well drilled minions. As Shanell 'Tali' Fergus' choreography navigates the cast from dark to light, it is the Pevensie clan who shine. Joanna Adaran as Susan, Jesse Dunbar as Peter, Kudzai Mangombe as Lucy and Shane Anthony Whiteley stepping up as Edmund for a Thursday matinee briefly halted by technical gods all rise to the occasion in a big show that never loses sight of the eternal story at its heart.
RTÉ News
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
'It's a spectacle - but it's also got a beautiful heart'
Stanton Wright stars as the mighty Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He talks to RTÉ Entertainment's John Byrne about the show as it heads to Dublin. The latest West End smash-hit production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is on tour and stops off at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre from May 6-10. It's based – of course - on C S Lewis' iconic children's book about a group of siblings who walk through a wardrobe into a magical kingdom. Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie are evacuated from London in 1940, to escape the World War II Blitz, and sent to live with Professor Digory Kirke at a large house in the English countryside. While exploring the house, Lucy enters a wardrobe and discovers the magical world of Narnia. Directed by Michael Fentiman and based on the original production by Sally Cookson, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was first performed at Leeds Playhouse in 2017, before transferring to London's Bridge Theatre, embarking on a tour across the UK and to Ireland, as well as running in the West End. Katy Stephens plays the White Witch (and Mrs Macready), alongside Joanna Adaran (as Susan), Jesse Dunbar (as Peter), Kudzai Mangombe (as Lucy), Bunmi Osadolor (as Edmund) and Stanton Wright (as Aslan). Aslan is no stranger to Irish audiences, given that one of our most popular rock bands - once fronted by the late, great Christy Dignam - got their name from CS Lewis's talking lion. So, who better to talk to about the show than Stanton Wright, who plays Aslan? John Byrne: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 's been around since the Narnia books were published in the 1950s and the story's remained hugely popular – what would you put that down to? Stanton Wright: I think there's a few things. It was one of the earliest fantasy stories that was widely accepted by a really big age group – younger to older people. I think it also speaks a lot to people, because it has a general sense of hope, and believing in things that you might not be able to see just yet. Knowing there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Getting through hard times. And the children, at the beginning of the story they're evacuees from World War Two. So there's that sense of escape from a harsh reality. But then they're also coming together and using imagination and things like that, to kind of escape and overcome things. We all need to be cheered up – there's always some reality we want to escape from, a reason to be cheered-up. A need to be entertained. This is the thing. With stories like this, they always need to be told. There's always some relevance, no matter what time it is in history. Even if it was something like when we were all in lockdown and getting through that. Even if it's something as simple as children been taken away from their normal homes – there are lots of things to identify with in . So I think people find a lot of strength in stories like this. The show is very fast-paced and must be quite a challenge for the cast. Can you give us a flavour of what an audience can expect? Honestly, I think there's almost every element of theatre in this production. We have live music, actor/musicians, we play live music on stage. There's singing and dancing. The set is incredible. We have flying. We have magic. We have puppetry. Obviously, we have animals. I'm the lion himself. There's so much thrown into the production. It all comes together in this beautiful and soulful story. It's a spectacle - but it's got a beautiful heart. It's a great night out. People who know this story will love it. People who don't know it, will fall in love with the story. We've been really looking forward to coming to Ireland, because the music in the show has a lovely, grassroots/folk element to it. We have violin, cello, whistle, accordion, guitar – things like that. So people can look forard to that. Are you musical yourself? Yeah. As well as playing Aslan – he doesn't rock up until about halfway through the story – so I play guitar, bass guitar and a bit of percussion in this particular show. There's about ten of us that also play an instrument, that form up the musicians. All of us on stage, we never have a moment's rest backstage. If we're not doing a quick change, we're probably singing or playing. It's very, very busy – and lots of fun. After the show I meet people, and half the time they don't recognise who I was and they certainly wouldn't think that we all play several different characters. But that's the nature of it – it's a proper ensemble piece. There's no one waiting in their dressing room with a cup of tea, waiting to go on stage. Have you played in Dublin before now or will this be your first time? Yes, I have. I was there just over a year ago, at The Gaiety Theatre. I did The Kite Runner, which was based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini. I had an amazing time. I've been there a couple of times, actually. I had a brilliant time, so we're all really looking forward to Dublin. I've never been to the Bord Gáis Theatre before, so I'm really excited about that. We've heard lots of good things from people that have performed there before, so everyone's looking forward to it. It's a great building. As you may know, with a lot of the old theatres, they may look beautiful on the outside, but as soon as you go backstage to the dressing rooms, they can be falling apart. And after Dublin, the tour returns to the UK and you're going to on the road until the New Year, basically. Yeah, it's a long, long job. We started back in November, and we were in Leeds over Christmas, and we're in a different city or town every week. Right up until January. It's great though. For us freelance performers, it's nice to have that employment for a long time! But it also has its own challenges – doing the same thing eight times a week for the whole year. So it's about making sure that it's fresh every time. And you have to remember that, for most people in the audience, it's the first time they've ever seen it. So you have to make sure it feels like it's brand new.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Big drop in plays staged by theatres over past decade
The number of plays and musicals staged by the UK's main subsidised theatres last year was down by almost a third compared with 10 years earlier, BBC research suggests. In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions - ranging from the National Theatre to the Colchester Mercury - opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014, a drop of 31%. Funding cuts and rising costs took much of the blame, with National Theatre executive director Kate Varah recently saying many in the industry are at "breaking point". But some venues said the shows they do stage are on a bigger scale than a decade ago, with the aim of running for longer on tour or in the West End. Last week, actress Lesley Manville warned that new talent had "less opportunity" to develop than when she was starting out in the 1970s. "It's going to be a diminishing discipline, because there's not always the amount of stage work available for them to go and do," she told BBC Radio 4 after winning an Olivier Award. Leeds Playhouse chief executive and artistic director James Brining said the venue had cut its number of homegrown shows from 12 to eight a year. "That decision to contract has been forced upon theatres because it's so expensive, and increasingly so, to make work," he told BBC News. "We love making work. So it's heartbreaking that the amount of work you can make is reducing, and it is reducing the pipeline opportunities for artists at the beginning of their careers." British theatre has "a serious problem" with the reduction in opportunities, added Brining, who is about to move from Leeds Playhouse to run the Edinburgh Lyceum. Many performers and crew start their careers in theatres before going on to work in TV and film, arts education consultant and theatre blogger Carl Woodward said. "A lot of Netflix stars and a lot of those people we see on dramas like Mr Bates vs the Post office and Adolescence cut their teeth in regional theatres. "And if those opportunities are no longer there, then those pathways don't exist. And that is a national scandal, I think." The theatre industry's financial pressures have had an impact on the workforce, with "chronic low pay, job insecurity, poor work/life balance," he added. Many venues said they now co-produce more shows with other theatres or commercial operators to spread the costs and risks. That also means those productions can be on a bigger scale. "Some individual productions that are made with the commercial sector are much, much bigger than anything we ever used to make," Birmingham Rep chief executive Rachael Thomas said. "So for us, yes there are fewer productions coming out, but we are spending more because the productions that we are making are so much bigger than they ever used to be." However, the Rep has lost all of its annual local council funding - once worth more than £1m a year - and smaller shows have often been squeezed out, Thomas said. "I suppose the subsidy enables you to take the risk on the productions that are never going to recoup what they've cost, and often that will be the smaller-scale productions." In 1995, the Rep's studio theatre staged the premiere of East Is East, four years before it became a hit British film. It couldn't afford to do a play of that scale in its studio today. "I cannot see a world in which we could now launch a play which has got a cast size of nine or 10 in our 133-seater studio space now as a new play," Thomas said. "For our model, and I would say for the vast majority of regional producing theatres, that is nigh on impossible." Salisbury Playhouse artistic director Gareth Machin said audience tastes had also changed, meaning it's harder to put on "serious drama", especially outside London. "When money is tight, people want a good night out and they don't want to take a risk," he said. "They're probably not coming out as much as they were, so when they do come out they don't want to take a chance on something they're not sure is going to be entertaining and a fun experience. "So there's less misery and risk." Nottingham Playhouse chief executive and UK Theatre joint president Stephanie Sirr said she didn't recognise the picture of a drop in productions, pointing out that "it does fluctuate from year to year". "I do think it's more difficult to produce these days," she continued. "The costs have gone up exponentially. Things like the energy costs really impact you if you're building scenery all day, or if you're running theatre lanterns all night." However, making more co-productions is a positive thing in most ways, and has meant "we've been able to really increase the scale of the work we produce", she said, with Nottingham's production of Dear Evan Hansen now on a major UK tour. A handful of venues staged more original shows in 2024 than 2014. They include Leicester Curve, which has put a focus on making musicals in collaboration with commercial producers, which can then go on the road. Curve has doubled its box office receipts over the past decade. "By sharing resources and risk, we're able to, by default, do more work and create and present more work," chief executive Chris Stafford said. "We are doing more with less in terms of public investment," he continued, but said the biggest challenge for many theatres would be affording essential building repairs and upgrades in the coming years. Annual funding from Arts Councils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Scottish equivalent has largely been stagnant for the past 10 years - while inflation has risen sharply - and many venues have had their local council subsidies cut. Many are also still recovering from the fallout from the pandemic. Last year, a survey by the group Freelancers Make Theatre Work depicted "a workforce that is at breaking point". Performer and group spokesman Paul Carey Jones said the BBC research "would come as no surprise to most theatre freelancers in the UK, who have been struggling with low rates of pay, career precarity and vulnerability, a lack of job certainty and a skills retention crisis for many years now. "It shows the need for action from government in terms of funding for the arts, but also from the theatre industry to support its freelance workforce, on which it entirely depends." The research for this story counted original and co-productions that opened in 2014 and 2024, including revivals, transfers and tours. They had to be professional in-person theatre productions, at least an hour long, and to have run for at least a week. If a co-production was jointly made by more than one theatre, it was counted as a single production. The research covered the 40 venues, festivals and touring companies that produce original theatre, were operating in 2014 and 2024, and had the highest annual grants in 2024/25 from the Arts Councils of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Creative Scotland and the Scottish government. Theatre could close after funding cut - councillor Struggling English museums and theatres get rescue funds Bristol Old Vic to review number of shows after losses Final curtain goes down on National Theatre Wales Top UK theatres staging more plays
BBC News
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Big drop in plays staged by theatres over past decade
The number of plays and musicals staged by the UK's main subsidised theatres last year was down by almost a third compared with 10 years earlier, BBC research 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions - ranging from the National Theatre to the Colchester Mercury - opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014, a drop of 31%.Funding cuts and rising costs took much of the blame, with National Theatre executive director Kate Varah recently saying many in the industry are at "breaking point".But some venues said the shows they do stage are on a bigger scale than a decade ago, with the aim of running for longer on tour or in the West End. Last week, actress Lesley Manville warned that new talent had "less opportunity" to develop than when she was starting out in the 1970s."It's going to be a diminishing discipline, because there's not always the amount of stage work available for them to go and do," she told BBC Radio 4 after winning an Olivier Award. 'Serious problem' Leeds Playhouse chief executive and artistic director James Brining said the venue had cut its number of homegrown shows from 12 to eight a year."That decision to contract has been forced upon theatres because it's so expensive, and increasingly so, to make work," he told BBC News."We love making work. So it's heartbreaking that the amount of work you can make is reducing, and it is reducing the pipeline opportunities for artists at the beginning of their careers."British theatre has "a serious problem" with the reduction in opportunities, added Brining, who is about to move from Leeds Playhouse to run the Edinburgh Lyceum. Many performers and crew start their careers in theatres before going on to work in TV and film, arts education consultant and theatre blogger Carl Woodward said."A lot of Netflix stars and a lot of those people we see on dramas like Mr Bates vs the Post office and Adolescence cut their teeth in regional theatres."And if those opportunities are no longer there, then those pathways don't exist. And that is a national scandal, I think."The theatre industry's financial pressures have had an impact on the workforce, with "chronic low pay, job insecurity, poor work/life balance," he added. Many venues said they now co-produce more shows with other theatres or commercial operators to spread the costs and risks. That also means those productions can be on a bigger scale."Some individual productions that are made with the commercial sector are much, much bigger than anything we ever used to make," Birmingham Rep chief executive Rachael Thomas said."So for us, yes there are fewer productions coming out, but we are spending more because the productions that we are making are so much bigger than they ever used to be."However, the Rep has lost all of its annual local council funding - once worth more than £1m a year - and smaller shows have often been squeezed out, Thomas said."I suppose the subsidy enables you to take the risk on the productions that are never going to recoup what they've cost, and often that will be the smaller-scale productions."In 1995, the Rep's studio theatre staged the premiere of East Is East, four years before it became a hit British film. It couldn't afford to do a play of that scale in its studio today."I cannot see a world in which we could now launch a play which has got a cast size of nine or 10 in our 133-seater studio space now as a new play," Thomas said."For our model, and I would say for the vast majority of regional producing theatres, that is nigh on impossible." 'Less serious drama' Salisbury Playhouse artistic director Gareth Machin said audience tastes had also changed, meaning it's harder to put on "serious drama", especially outside London."When money is tight, people want a good night out and they don't want to take a risk," he said."They're probably not coming out as much as they were, so when they do come out they don't want to take a chance on something they're not sure is going to be entertaining and a fun experience."So there's less misery and risk." Nottingham Playhouse chief executive and UK Theatre joint president Stephanie Sirr said she didn't recognise the picture of a drop in productions, pointing out that "it does fluctuate from year to year"."I do think it's more difficult to produce these days," she continued."The costs have gone up exponentially. Things like the energy costs really impact you if you're building scenery all day, or if you're running theatre lanterns all night."However, making more co-productions is a positive thing in most ways, and has meant "we've been able to really increase the scale of the work we produce", she said, with Nottingham's production of Dear Evan Hansen now on a major UK tour. 'More with less' A handful of venues staged more original shows in 2024 than 2014. They include Leicester Curve, which has put a focus on making musicals in collaboration with commercial producers, which can then go on the has doubled its box office receipts over the past decade."By sharing resources and risk, we're able to, by default, do more work and create and present more work," chief executive Chris Stafford said."We are doing more with less in terms of public investment," he continued, but said the biggest challenge for many theatres would be affording essential building repairs and upgrades in the coming years. Annual funding from Arts Councils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Scottish equivalent has largely been stagnant for the past 10 years - while inflation has risen sharply - and many venues have had their local council subsidies cut. Many are also still recovering from the fallout from the year, a survey by the group Freelancers Make Theatre Work depicted "a workforce that is at breaking point".Performer and group spokesman Paul Carey Jones said the BBC research "would come as no surprise to most theatre freelancers in the UK, who have been struggling with low rates of pay, career precarity and vulnerability, a lack of job certainty and a skills retention crisis for many years now."It shows the need for action from government in terms of funding for the arts, but also from the theatre industry to support its freelance workforce, on which it entirely depends." The research for this story counted original and co-productions that opened in 2014 and 2024, including revivals, transfers and tours. They had to be professional in-person theatre productions, at least an hour long, and to have run for at least a week. If a co-production was jointly made by more than one theatre, it was counted as a single research covered the 40 venues, festivals and touring companies that produce original theatre, were operating in 2014 and 2024, and had the highest annual grants in 2024/25 from the Arts Councils of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Creative Scotland and the Scottish government.
BBC News
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Animal Farm: How Olivier award-nominated play was made in Leeds
Marking the 80th anniversary of Animal Farm, a Leeds Playhouse production of the dystopian classic has been nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in British of the themes in George Orwell's story about an animal uprising and the seductive nature of power continue to impact modern-day times, those behind the theatre adaptation of the Olivier Awards in London, BBC News went behind the scenes to see how the contemporary version was created. Amy Leach, who directed the Animal Farm production, says the team tried to make the show relevant to life in 2025. "We were really interested in the themes around power and greed and the inequality of society. "That feels like what Orwell was really exploring in his original."She continues: "We looked at things like contemporary farming, factory farming, abattoirs. "We looked a lot at British industry and then the erosion of British industry." For these ideas to transfer to the stage, work needed to happen behind the scenes in the workshop - which was a job for Abe Ahmed and Dicken who is the head of scenic workshop, says the Leeds Playhouse workshop is "massive" compared to other theatres in the UK. "It's designed from an architectural point of having flat floors all the way through from workshop to stage," Abe says. He explains that, because of this, they can get a lot of pre-built designs through the building without any complicated lifting or logistical Dicken, who is the head of technical design, described the difficulties they faced when the production moved from London to Leeds in March. "Normally for a show that only happens at the Playhouse, we can make it in very big lumps, stick some wheels under it and drag it through. But you can't do that if it's going to London and various other theatres around the country," he says. Tachia Newall, who plays Napoleon, says one thing that makes the production so special is the incorporation of British Sign Language (BSL) and live audio descriptions."It's just a beautiful idea to let everybody in," Tachia who is physically disabled, adds: "I don't think I've ever been in such a space where disabled and deaf and hard-of-hearing performers weren't an afterthought."I don't think I've ever been in such a collaborative rehearsal space."Despite the dark nature of the play, the cast said they had a lot of fun performing. "In rehearsals, we all kind of cottoned on that, even though the subject matter was so dark and could be related to so many things happening around the world, we were just having a lot of fun doing it," Tachia Amy adds: "This team is so incredible and they're such a well-bonded group of humans. "We've had such a lovely time making this challenging and epic show." Announcing the nominations, the Olivier Awards said: "The competition for nominations has been intense in what has proven to be a transformative year, marked by a rich blend of dynamic new works, innovative interpretations of classics and a commitment to championing diverse voices and stories."The annual awards will be hosted by singer and West End star Beverley Knight and Broadway performer Billy Porter. The ceremony will take place at the Royal Albert Hall at 17:45 BST on Sunday. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
