Tag Archives: Leeds

John Shuttleworth’s Back!: comedy preview

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When John Shuttleworth last toured in 2017, he was on the brink of retirement. 2016 had wreaked its deathly toll on major celebrities (Rickman, Bowie, Wogan et al.) and Shuttleworth was feeling grimly vulnerable to the reaper’s scythe. We all thought he was packing it all in, that the superstardom he’d always imagined was tantalisingly just out of reach would never be his. Continue reading →

Phoenix Dance Theatre: The Rite of Spring & Left Unseen

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“The Rite just has to be shocking. If it doesn’t shake you to the core, if it doesn’t make you feel that the guts of the earth are opening up, or at least that the Royal Albert Hall is being immolated in orchestral violence, then the performers just ain’t doing it right.” – Tom Service, BBC Proms 2013 Continue reading →

The Princess and the Sprout: Christmas fairy tales for the woke and bookish

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Music, magic and mistletoe sprinkle the action of Wrongsemble’s brand new family show; a trio of fairy tales with a twist of Christmas spirit. A tight, resourceful cast put their many talents on display with happy harmonies, mischievous mouth-made foley and merry musical interludes. Continue reading →

Dress for strong currents and wade into The River

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Director Andy Love of Wildgoose Theatre continues his vein of delivering hitherto unseen plays to York with this sumptuous psychological drama by Jez Butterworth, set in a log cabin near a river, somewhere in modern England. The specifics of their surroundings are white noise, while the minutia of the dialogue is honed to a piercing point. Poetry and illustrious speeches furnish what appears to be a confident, if burgeoning, dynamic between The Man (George Stagnell) and The Woman (Claire Morley). These are people at home with each other, themselves and the outdoors. Continue reading →