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[Image description: cross-stitch: value connection over perfection]
More shows announced at Live
Live have confirmed their new season in full now (though I am sure, as ever, there will be some treats announced through the course of the year, so worth keeping an eye on their socials). As well as the big shows already announced, there are smaller and shorter run shows throughout the year, including some music gigs (such as the splendidly named Bitchfinder General).
Tom Radcliffe’s Wreckage, directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, is about the relationship of Sam and his fiancé Noel and what happens when their lives get upended. It sounds very promising.
Not on until November but Jay Rayner: Nights Out At Home is likely to sell out so get booking if you want to see this popular food critic in the flesh.
The season also offers the chance to catch up with a couple of shows you might have missed when they were on at Alphabetti, both of which I can personally recommend.
All White Everything But Me bagged writer / performer Kemi-Bo Jacobs a nomination for The Stage Debut Awards and the prize for Writer of the Year at the North East Culture awards, both of which were well-deserved. Jacobs excels in this sharply written story of Wimbledon winner Althea Gibson.
Present, written and directed by Ali Pritchard, offers an alternative festive vision, which manages to be uplifting even though it tackles the tough themes of homelessness and addiction.
A good year for gobscure
It’s been a cracking year for Live associate artist gobscure, who not only was one of the judges on the recent Playwriting Award, but was commissioned to write a response piece to Disco Pigs at Alphabetti and has one of their own shows, hope is a 4 letter word, coming up at that theatre in April.
Starring Zoe Lambert and Rebecca Glendenning Laycock – two actors I have been hugely impressed by in previous shows – and directed by Ali Pritchard, this promises “Twisted humour that liberates you from imprisonment, mixed with explosions of childlike wonder, beauty, and freedom” and, based on what I have seen of both gobscure’s work and the creative team’s, could be a real treat.
Meanwhile, over at Live, is yu have already survived, gobscure’s solo show, which is directed by Alex Kelly, and promises to travel “thru insurrection and punk, discovering post-trauma growth, rewilding and widened horizons for all”.
Other shows to catch
I very much enjoyed David Alnwick’s show about Victorian spiritualism and the mysteries of Dracula when I saw it at Alphabetti earlier this year, so I’m excited he is returning with something that sounds in a very similar vein, Charles Dickens’ The Signalman.
Another show to book now in case it sells out is Omid Djalili: Namaste, which was just announced for Northern Stage.
One show that sounds amazing – and which TBH I totally would have booked were it not a standing gig (ouch, my back!) – is Music from Twin Peaks played by the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Wylam Brewery, with guest vocalist Alice Zawadzki. It’s April 18 so get booking!
What I have been watching:
I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work so mainly bingeing my comfort shows, but I did see The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes at the weekend. A prequel to the originals, this look at the early days of the titular games feels as relevant as ever. A scene where a crowd who have placidly been watching children being slaughtered collectively loses their minds when someone dares ‘disrespect’ their flag feels particularly close to the bone right now…
What I have been reading
Again, work has taken up most of my energy this past week, but I have found time to read The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law, Kate Morgan’s fascinating book about the shifting legal and societal approach to crimes by and against women in Victorian / Edwardian times. I’m also very much enjoying Kate Manne’s Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, which looks at both systemic and internalised fatphobia and the damage that it does.
[Image description: the Walnut Tree by Kate Morgan]
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Remember: everything included is my personal preference / opinion, and while I strive to be accurate, I always advising checking with the relevant venue.