Latest news with #musical
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Comedian Kayleigh Jones to perform in Oxfordshire this summer
A musical comedian will speak about her nine-year mission to find her dad when she brings her newest show to Oxfordshire. Kayleigh Jones will bring 'I Fed My Dad to a Pelican' to Goring Village Hall on July 9 at 7.30pm. The show, which was nominated for Best Debut Show at Leicester Comedy Festival, tells the story of how on Christmas morning in 2010, Ms Jones discovered the man she thought was her dad, was in fact not. Kayleigh Jones (Image: Karla Gowlett) Kayleigh Jones (Image: Karla Gowlett) Her debut hour takes the audience on a nine-year quest to track down her real father. Ms Jones said: "I have always enjoyed finding comedy in the darker life experiences. "Laughing at trauma is my go-to coping mechanism, which is lucky, as I seem to be someone who attracts bizarre life events. "Also, I did some research and, so far, it appears I am the only person in the world to have fed their dad to a pelican, so I'm making history here." Kayleigh Jones (Image: Karla Gowlett) Kayleigh Jones (Image: Lynsey Nicol) Ms Jones is a working-class comedy performer with a background in acting and musical theatre. She has performed at The Comedy Store London, the Bloomsbury Theatre, and the Glee Club. 'I Fed My Dad to a Pelican' received high praise from whose reviewer said: "I can honestly say this was the best comedy show I have ever seen and that includes Netflix's stand-up collection."
BBC News
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Speedo Mick: From rock bottom to seeing life story on stage in Liverpool theatre musical
Michael Cullen went from sleeping rough in Liverpool to raising £1m by doing charity walks in all weathers in just his swimming trunks. His story is now being celebrated in a stage as Clark Kent turns into Superman when he changes into his famous red underpants, Michael Cullen transforms into Speedo Mick when he pulls on his tight blue trunks."I got a little inkling of what Superman feels like when he puts his knickers on," Cullen laughs."I do feel different when I'm in my Speedos. Something happens. There's a change. I get a little bit more fearless."Speedo Mick doesn't have Suerpman's tights and cape - just a pair of walking boots and, if it's cold, an Everton FC scarf and woolly has criss-crossed the British Isles bare-chested for charity come rain, shine or snow. His most extreme challenge was walking between, and up, the tallest mountains in England, Scotland in Wales in mid-winter."Minus 18 at the top of Ben Nevis. I walked to the top of it and survived it. I never got hypothermia," he marvels. "So something happens when I put my Speedos on. I get a completely different frame of mind. I'm just so determined to get through the day without putting my clothes on." In photos, Speedo Mick often pulls a tough-guy bodybuilder pose for the cameras. But that bravado is part of the in a rehearsal room where actors are preparing for a musical that will tell his story, Cullen, 60, is fully clothed, softly spoken and first pulled on the Speedos to swim the English Channel in 2014, despite never having had a formal swimming lesson until he booked the support boat."It was miraculous that I got across because I was training with men who were born in a pair of Speedos," he jokes. "They were faster swimmers than me, better swimmers than me, their technique was much better than mine."But I had something that they never had, and that was a determination..." He trails off. "I'm just getting a bit emotional... a determination and a will to complete something of that magnitude." That determination comes from "the same place that my negativity comes from", Cullen suffered "a lot of turmoil" during his childhood in Liverpool, using and abusing drink and drugs from his teens, and becoming homeless."I just got lost in it all, to be honest," he says. "It was a sad life. It was terrible and it was torturous, and I was doing it to myself. But I just couldn't stop."He finally got clean in 2001, and resolved to turn the negativity in his life into something positive."It used to hold me down for a long, long time, but now it propels me forward. That's my engine. I suffered for a very long time, and now I just don't want to do that any more."After defying expectations and a shoulder injury to swim across the Channel, Cullen "wanted the world to know that this had happened".So he ordered a pair of blue trunks with the name of his beloved football team on the back, and "went to all the matches after that with 'Everton' emblazoned on my bum". "The fans were so generous," he says. "I could have got ripped to shreds at any point. But they were all applauding and passing money, and putting it in my bucket, and putting it in my knickers. There were not very many other places that you could put it!"His scantily clad presence started raising smiles and funds at away matches, too."I had a front row seat as far as seeing all the generosity, all the kindness, and all the love that people could give," Cullen says."There's a lot of negativity going on in the world, and I was just seeing all this positivity. It was making a massive difference to me, as well as everyone else."Seeking new challenges, more money and bigger reactions, Cullen embarked on a series of increasingly ambitious charity walks - to Everton matches in Wembley and Lyon, then 1,000 miles from John O'Groats to Land's 2021, he traipsed for five months and 2,000 miles between London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Dublin and Belfast; before climbing Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scafell didn't always welcome the sight of a middle-aged man in skimpy swimming trunks, however."There was some really negative stuff as well," he adds."I got spat at, pushed to the floor, had a pint thrown over me, got thrown out of a few pubs after trying to go in to get a bit of food."Which was funny because I hadn't had a drink for 16 years and I was still getting thrown out of pubs." Highs and lows Speedo Mick's 2023 walk took the amount raised for charities supporting mental health, disadvantaged young people and homelessness past £ that was his final major outing. "I knew I only had a certain timeframe for me to carry on doing it in my Speedos. You can't be doing it when you're 80."And despite their similar taste in underwear, Speedo Mick is not gruelling challenges took their toll, having "a massive detrimental effect on my mental health and my personal relationships", Cullen mission has been followed by "a big comedown", he says. "After the last one, I hit the ground at 1,000mph and I ended up in a clinic because I had a big breakdown."Looking back now, I wasn't managing myself. It feels like I paid a massive price by doing all that stuff. It was too much for me. It was all too much." The stage show, which opens at Liverpool's Royal Court theatre on Tuesday, has given Cullen a new the surface, it is about a "total hero" who "took on lots of big life-affirming tasks and completed them and raised lots and lots of money", says Boff Whalley, formerly of rock group Chumbawamba, who has written the music."But the real story is why he wanted to do that, and at what cost was he doing that."It's saying, 'He's like you, he's got problems and he's struggled with addictions and mental health problems, and this was his way of finding a way through those'."The show's writer John Fay agrees. "He's a very inspirational and charismatic man. He can walk into a room and just make people smile. And the stamina of the guy, and the things that he's achieved, can seem superhuman."But the most important part about him is that he's extremely human. He's got his own fragility. He's like everyone else in the world."Liverpool actor Paul Duckworth is playing the title role, and says Speedo Mick is "a local legend"."We all have our complexities and our vulnerabilities. He's a very thoughtful, very sensitive guy." 'Nowhere to hide' As well as attempting to capture Cullen's character, Duckworth must pull off the Speedo Mick look."There's only a few moments [in the show] when he gets to throw on a T-shirt, because most of his achievements were all done in his Speedos," the actor says with a hint of trepidation. "There's nowhere to hide."It was quite a shock when I put them on the other day. Michael was the only person who saw me in them. In Mick's words, 'You've got to own the knickers. You've got to own the Speedos, mate.' I'm trying to get that mentality."The show is the story of an eccentric, big-hearted but fallible character, although Cullen had reservations about putting it on stage."I was a little bit anxious over the fact that I'm making myself vulnerable again, because I'm telling everybody about my personal life," he says. "They're going to see a completely different side here."However, he hopes the show will start conversations about addiction, mental health, overcoming challenges, and recovery."But the biggest message I hope people take out of it is that it's OK to be you, all of you, whatever's gone on in your life - it's OK to be you, and to take hope."Take hope from this story because you never know what's going to happen. I've got a play about my life on at the Royal Court theatre, and that's a win right there. It's amazing."Speedo Mick The Musical is at the Royal Court in Liverpool from 3 June to 5 July.
Globe and Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
In Stratford's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, never before has cheering for the bad guys been so fun
Title: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Written by: Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbek Performed by: Shakura Dickson, Jonathan Goad, Liam Tobin, Sara-Jeanne Hosie, Derek Kwan, Michele Shuster Director: Tracey Flye Company: Stratford Festival Venue: Avon Theatre City: Stratford Year: Until Oct. 25, 2025 Critic's Pick The Stratford Festival sure seems to have a thing for the French Riviera. Last year, the fest's Avon Theatre was transformed into La Cage aux Folles's colourful Saint-Tropez nightclub. Now, just six months after that soft hug of a musical closed, the theatre has once more been vaulted to warmer climes with a gangbuster production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – complete with many, many palm trees. One of the early 2000s' lesser-produced musicals, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the eponymous musical adaptation of Frank Oz's 1988 film, is a hoot and a half – and its relative obscurity suggests that most audience members will get to enjoy the twists of its story and score. David Yazbek's songs, equal parts catchy and clever, teem with earworms and sneaky double entendres – good luck getting the musical's penultimate Dirty Rotten Number out of your head when you leave the theatre. The show's basic premise is quite simple: Lawrence Jameson (Jonathan Goad) is a con man worthy of Saul Goodman, living large in an expensive villa on the sea. His chummy accomplice Andre Thibault (Derek Kwan) helps him to steal women's jewellery and cash – it doesn't hurt, risk-wise, that Andre is the resort town's chief of police. When one day a younger cad appears on the scene, a syrupy southern drawl on his lips, Lawrence realizes his reign as the Riviera's chief sleaze might be in danger. And so, reluctantly, he takes Freddy Benson (Liam Tobin) under his wing. A perfect mark soon appears – soap heiress Christine Colgate (Shakura Dickson) – and before long, a strange love triangle emerges between the coast's most vile swindlers and its sweetest, most generous guest. Of course, chaos ensues. Jeffrey Lane's whip-smart book, though somewhat devoid of authentic pathos, is surprising, edgy and nimble, resulting in a vibrant, uncomplicated musical that hardly feels its two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Originally slated to be directed by the late Bobby Garcia – the run is instead dedicated to his memory – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is instead efficiently steered by Tracey Flye. It's a highly enjoyable yet imperfect production. Stephanie Graham's choreography is at times overly busy, and Ranil Sonnadara's sound design could use a few tweaks. Particularly at the top of the show, Yazbek's lyrics have a habit of getting lost in the brass. (That's not helped by the actors' faux accents – Kwan's French joual, in particular, is often quite muffled.) Acting-wise, Flye's cast simply flies – Goad and Tobin work in terrific synchronicity, and Dickson, charming as ever, doesn't broadcast the musical's cheeky ending before it arrives. Sara-Jeanne Hosie's Muriel, too, is funny and swank. Musically, the production is less consistent – opening night sound issues aside, Dickson's belted high notes are occasionally a hair flat. Goad, too, often approximates songs' notes rather than landing squarely on them. Tobin, meanwhile, saddled with the show's most demanding song-and-dance numbers, gleams in the role of Freddy – he's reliably tuneful and relentlessly witty. Michele Shuster is another standout in the impactful side role of Jolene Oakes – it's a shame we don't see her much after the first act. On the technical side of the Riviera, Lorenzo Savoini's attractive set makes a fab playground for the titular scheming scoundrels. Sue LePage's costumes, on the other hand, occasionally feel a touch random, neither anchoring the show in any particular time period nor telling us much about the characters wearing them. These are all fairly minor gripes, though, for what's so far been the most watchable of the Stratford Festival's four openings this year. Yes, the show shares more than a few similarities with last year's La Cage aux Folles, and that show wore its heart on its sleeve in a way I found myself missing here – at a certain point, laughing at oily thieves starts to feel a bit icky in the absence of less superficial subplots. (A budding romance between Muriel and Andre, played almost entirely for laughs here, tries to fill that gap, but only to moderate success.) On the whole, though, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a damn good time, a creative programming choice that's been given a hilarious, mostly well-executed production by Flye and her team. In all truth, I'll probably catch it again before it closes this fall: Never before has cheering for the bad guys been so fun.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘What would a kid do in this situation?' Engineering Starlight Express's dazzling return
Howard Hudson (lighting designer): I saw the original production many times. The scale and feel of it were unlike anything else. Complete escapism. I used to skate around the living room singing the songs. Andrzej Goulding (video designer and animator): It's such a part of popular culture – Starlight Express is even referenced on Family Guy. But I didn't know a huge amount about the musical aside from the fact that it was on roller-skates and it was trains. Tim Hatley (set designer): I was studying at Central Saint Martins in the 80s and went to see Starlight because its designer, John Napier, was coming in to do a project with us. We'd been doing Shakespeare but this was almost like a fairground ride. I mean, they high-fived the audience – some of whom had seen the show 50 times. Gabriella Slade (costume designer): People who saw Starlight when they were kids are now bringing their own families. In our audience you can be up close with some of these characters and costumes. That's quite rare. Tim Hatley: For those who saw it the first time round, we wanted to give it a different spin. With a flexible space like this, the world is your oyster. Do it in the round? Have it like a tennis court? We had lots of thoughts and lots of models. Everybody's waiting on me to come up with the concept. Lighting, video, even skating and choreography – they can't get on with their work until they know where the slopes are and how steep they are and where the video wall is. Gabriella Slade: The original Starlight is probably one of the most iconic shows of all time. From a design point of view, it's just heaven. On a revival it's important, I think, to reference what has been before to a degree – we wanted to continue that spirit but also, 40 years on, shape it for a new generation. Tim Hatley: We didn't want to just copy what John had done before. And we didn't want to be stuck with real trains running through tunnels and over bridges. Gabriella Slade: The brief is really tricky! In our early conversations, we talked about the core components of a train and how to present those in a costume for performers who need to be able to move as easily as possible and to fall safely. There was a lot of aerodynamic chat! Andrzej Goulding: As soon as we landed on the idea of train tracks through space, where we're sat as an audience became the race planet. There are other planets out there, like Electra's and Greaseball's. There's no direction of that in the script. It's completely left up to the team. References can come from anywhere but there's that amazing 80s advert for Milky Way with the red car and the blue car where they're kind of floating through the air. It's that kind of world. Tim Hatley: With video gaming, what kids are used to now is very different to playing with the old Hornby train sets. Andrzej Goulding: I had a train set as a kid, one of those little wooden ones. You pretend they're anything. Starlight was like mixing Mario Kart with trains and setting it in space. The reason you can go over the top is it's the point of view of a child. Having the kid, Control, on stage is a bit of a masterstroke – you can do even more because they're directing what happens. We'd often ask: What would a kid do in this situation? Gabriella Slade: We're in a child's bedroom – Control's outfit had to look like it had been made at home or bought, or a hybrid of the two. The jumpsuit vibe felt right – a bit cosmic. Howard Hudson: We had to keep the childlike essence of the piece – this is a child's imagination – while using such ultra-modern technology. So there are moments that are incredibly simple, like a single star flying in. Tim Hatley: There were three separate designs: auditorium, front of house and the show. As a theatre designer, you're not usually governing where the audience are going to sit – or worried about where they are going to be coming in and out. With this, it was a priority. Gabriella Slade: First off, you read the script, listen to the music and collate research images. From there, you form sketches or initial shapes and start to think about fabrics. Then you go into much more fully rendered concept sketches integrating the fabrics. That, of course, is costed and there's a process of research and development. We had a skate school for a number of weeks so were able to access our company quite early on for fittings. Some of the shapes are not form-fitting, so we needed to make sure they would be all right going around corners in the auditorium. Tim Hatley: I'm very old fashioned. I work with model boxes. We had an enormous one for this because there were so many collaborators who weren't necessarily in the world of theatre, but also because it was a space that didn't really exist yet. So people needed to understand the auditorium. Howard Hudson: The skaters had to get used to having mega bright lights in their eyes as they try to navigate these routes around the space. There are more than 600 moving lights in the show, which has probably one of the biggest rigs for a musical. For the Starlight sequence in act two we have 250 of these star units that fly above the audience – each has got six LEDs on it. Then there's however many kilometres of LED tape. Tim Hatley: We've got LED set into the floor and the skaters go over that. It's not like using the old tungsten lights which got very hot, but it does warm up, which causes the plastic on top to expand. So there was a lot of development. I was able to give Howard places to put lights where you normally wouldn't have them, like coming up through the floor. It became clear to me that it needed a rock concert feel. The songs were rearranged to have a more contemporary, poppy sound too. Howard Hudson: Early on, we built a pre-visualisation studio with huge screens and had a 3D version of the set on a computer. Andrzej was able to feed his content into that and we had the whole rig there. So we would watch actors rehearse a number then go into our studio and work out how to light it. Andrzej Goulding: Lighting and video are closely intertwined because there's only so many photons you can throw on stage. Howard and I have worked together several times. The Starlight rehearsal room had a full set and the two of us sat there tracking the race, drawing a map of what goes where. The hardest thing in theatre, compared with film, is that an audience can look anywhere. Our job is to pull the attention of the observer. We used a live camera in the races to help follow the characters. And we used a leaderboard. It took us a long time just to sculpt the journey of those races. Tim Hatley: For the ramps, we talked to skaters who had been in the show before. How do we get that amount of speed up in that amount of space? Those were technical problems which were all new to me. We collaborated with a company that builds skate ramps and parks. It's a timber surface – we've used some metallic paints in there too, to pick up the video. We've got moving scenery but where those joins are the surfaces have to be perfect and seamless. You can't have any little gaps that might get worse during the run. Andrzej Goulding: Video design should only be there if it's serving the story. If you're just doing something for the sake of looking fun, it weirdly makes things slower. There's also only so much spectacle you can do. A show is all about peaks and troughs, following the storytelling. If you're peaking the entire time, it's boring. Howard Hudson: Luke [Sheppard, the show's director] has the most technical mind. I'm convinced he could be a lighting designer if he wanted to. We've collaborated for years and have developed a kind of shorthand – we started out at the Finborough and now work on these massive commercial musicals together. Set designers build models and costume designers do drawings whereas lighting is so visceral. You need to see the lights in the space, so we're always the last people to come in. And we're doing our job in front of 150 people in the theatre. So it's a bit nervy. Gabriella Slade: It was important to make sure that each group of characters had a visual identity: carriages, trucks, steam engines, electric trains. They needed to feel cohesive when put together but have differentiations as well. Campbell Young and Helen Keane were our wigs and hair designers and Jackie Saundercock was our makeup designer. We had a brilliant collaborative relationship. The integration of the hair and makeup feels like one unit, which is always the aim. Each character has their own iconography, too. The designs need to be bold enough for you to identify who's who and where they are in the races. Howard Hudson: For Electra's song AC/DC we wanted laser units to give a quality of light you don't get from normal fixtures. We went down to a laser company and spent a day experimenting with the looks we could get. It almost comes out of nowhere in the show and adds another layer of spectacle you don't get out of a traditional lighting unit. Gabriella Slade: The backpacks have handles, which are important for racing together. For me, the backpacks suggest a power bank or a battery – and they light up so actually have their own batteries! It's all an extension of the actual costume. Greaseball's spark gun creates another really lovely extension of the image. It's got the same yellow and black scheme and that moment really fits the energy of her song. Howard Hudson: We couldn't use traditional manual followspots because people are moving so quickly. So we use an automated system called Zactrack. Performers wear tags that send tracking data to the lighting desk, and we're able to tell the lights which person to follow around the space. Andrzej Goulding: Video is slow. Every time we want to do something, it's got to be rendered. We've got all these multiple layers. You've got to put in a lot of hours. I'll sit up until three in the morning if I'm not happy with one little thing. I just want to make sure it's right. The scale of it was enormous. I tend to work on my own but got the biggest team I've ever had on a show. If you surround yourself with the right people it's fun to do. And super satisfying when everything's working in synergy. Howard Hudson: Whenever I go in and see it again, I think: Crikey, how on earth did we achieve that? Tim Hatley: There's not a bad seat in the house, and they're all very different. I don't think I've designed a show where that has been the case so much. Sitting in what we call the side tracks, looking down, you're very close. If you're at the back, you get the whole overview and a real sense of the video. Gabriella Slade: Some fans come in costume. It's so lovely to have people recreate the designs. I'm never not amazed that they want to spend the time to do that. Andrzej Goulding: The craziest thing was going on to do a 'normal' show afterwards – one without people on roller skates! You're wondering why everyone's moving around the stage so slowly. Starlight Express is booking at Troubadour Wembley Park theatre, London, until March 2026
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Please don't fart, this is art' – Stephen Sondheim's musical The Frogs review
The interval playlist includes Crazy Frog, which isn't by Stephen Sondheim. But the composer's own springy numbers are the best reason to catch this rarely seen musical based on ancient Greek satire. Aristophanes, writing at the fag end of a protracted war, conjures demigod Dionysos, accompanied by Xanthias, his slave ('though I prefer 'intern''). He braves the underworld to reclaim a dead genius, picking Aeschylus over Euripides. The musical's Dionysos considers George Bernard Shaw, but eventually plumps for Shakespeare. Originally staged at Yale in 1974 (Sondheim: 'One of the few deeply unpleasant professional experiences I've had'), it was expanded for Broadway in 2004 (Sondheim: 'It suffered from inflation'). The extended version takes a jape too far. We open with the best number: a fanfare plus jaunty injunctions to the audience ('Please – don't fart. / There's very little air and this is art'). Dan Buckley's droll Dionysos and Kevin McHale's Xanthias, all wriggle and snicker, begin their quest, though Burt Shevelove's book makes scenes feel more like skits. Herakles (Joaquin Pedro Valdes) is a himbo totting up his abs, the boatman Charon (Carl Patrick) a lugubrious stoner and Pluto, lord of the underworld, has a breathy cabaret number delivered by regal guest star Victoria Scone in a brushed steel bouffant. The musical never develops Dionysos' daddy issues or frog phobia, or nails its notion that the ribbiting amphibians represent stick-in-the-mud grouches impervious to change. The frogs get a waddling ballet, in goggles, bobble toes and spangly waistcoats – choreographer Matt Nicholson devises nifty, wide-legged moves. But Shaw's battle with Shakespeare, trading smug aphorism and voluptuous word-painting, is an awful slog, unleavened by Georgie Rankcom's heavy-footed production. 'You can stop rhyming right there,' snaps Dionysos, but it would take more than a testy god to halt Sondheim, for whom rhyme was reason. 'Hippy-dippy insurrectionists' meet 'hasty pasty-faced perfectionists,' while a song to Shaw moves from animosity through pomposity to verbosity. Melancholy songs also slide between the shtick (Sondheim has a bittersweet tooth). The god's final call to arms can't give gravity to this show – but however stodgy the setting, the songs still shine.
