Category: Regional

The New Vic Theatre’s in-house Christmas production of The Little Mermaid offers a fresh retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale, combining circus artistry, live music and atmospheric design to create a vibrant underwater world. In this version, young mermaid Coralie dreams of seeing life above the waves. When she rescues a human boy stung by jellyfish,…

Set in the bright and breezy world of Better Best Bargains, a seaside superstore where Friday nights are for dancing in the aisles, Here & Now follows Caz and her friends as they navigate a summer filled with love, lies, and the promise of a “happy ever after.” Beneath the glow of glitter and barcode scanners, romance blossoms,…

The Bodyguard tells the story of Rachel Marron, a world-famous music superstar whose glittering life hides a dark threat — an anonymous stalker fixated on her every move. When former Secret Service agent Frank Farmer is hired to protect her, sparks inevitably fly. Both used to being in control, their clashing worlds gradually give way to…

There’s an infectious buzz radiating through Derby Theatre this week as Kristian Thomas Company brings Everybody’s Talking About Jamie to life in a production bursting with passion, energy and unapologetic flair. From the opening number, it’s clear that this is a company that knows how to entertain — and how to move an audience. Everybody’s Talking About…

The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical has stormed into Stoke’s Regent Theatre this week, bringing with it a high-octane, vocally vibrant retelling of Rick Riordan’s bestselling novel. For those unfamiliar with the tale, the story follows Percy Jackson—a seemingly average New York teen who discovers he’s the demigod son of Poseidon. When Zeus’s lightning bolt…

The classic 1935 romantic comedy Top Hat returns to the stage in this dazzling new touring production from Chichester Festival Theatre, currently lighting up the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. With a score of glittering Irving Berlin standards and a story full of mistaken identity, unrequited love and high society glamour, the show is every bit…

13 Going on 30: The Musical is the latest screen-to-stage adaptation hoping to tap into the millennial nostalgia boom—and with its pop-culture legacy, it certainly comes with built-in audience affection. The story, first popularised in the 2004 rom-com starring Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo, follows 13-year-old Jenna Rink, a socially awkward teen desperate to grow up…

2:22 A Ghost Story has built its reputation on being a play that is as much about what you don’t see as what you do, and the Stoke leg of the UK tour at the Regent Theatre confirms why it continues to pull audiences in. The premise is deceptively simple: Jenny and Sam, a young couple who have…

James Graham’s Dear England is a play that shouldn’t work as well as it does. On paper, a drama about Gareth Southgate and the England men’s football team could so easily have been little more than locker-room caricature and sporting cliché. But in practice, what unfolds on stage is a gripping, humane and wonderfully entertaining piece of…

Few musicals have left as deep an impression on British theatre as Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers. First performed in 1983, it tells the tragic story of twins separated at birth: Mickey, raised in hardship in a working-class Liverpool household, and Edward, raised in comfort and wealth by a childless upper-middle-class couple. Fate draws the two…