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Theatre PREVIEWS
Under Milk Wood
The REP, Birmingham, Mon 2 - Sat 7 June
Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood started out
as a 1954 radio drama, later being adapted
for both stage and film. Widely considered to
be a work of real genius, it provides its audience
with the opportunity to share in the lives
of a host of eccentric characters, all of whom
reside in the small Welsh fishing village of
Llareggub (the village name is ‘bugger all’
written backwards). This new production,
directed by Terry Hands, has been well
received by theatre critics, and is touring to
mark the centenary of Thomas’ birth in 1914
and the sixtieth anniversary of the play’s
British premiere.
Horrible Histories:
Barmy Britain
Birmingham Town Hall,
Weds 11 - Sun 15 June
If you love the Horrible Histories series - and
why the heck wouldn’t you?! - then Barmy
Britain is a show well worth catching.
Alongside providing answers to such searching
questions as ‘what would happen if a
Viking moved in next door?’ and ‘would you
stand and deliver to dastardly Dick Turpin?’,
the show also invites its audience to escape
the clutches of Burke and Hare, move to the
groove with the partying Queen Victoria and
prepare to do battle in the First World War.
In short, and as its publicity says, it’s ‘a truly
horrible history of Britain - with all the nasty
bits left in!’.
The Duchess Of Malfi
Old Rep Theatre, Birmingham,
Thurs 26 - Sat 28 June
This is a Birmingham School of Acting version
of John Webster’s Jacobean masterpiece.
An example of English renaissance
drama at its finest, The Duchess Of Malfi
starts as a romance but ends as a tragedy,
along the way touching upon a wide range
of themes, including the status of women
and the misuse of power. When a recently
Happy Days
Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June
Television viewers of a certain age will well remember Happy Days, the legendary US sitcom
about Milwaukee-based family the Cunninghams, set in the rock’n’roll days of the 1950s. The
show scored a massive hit with 1970s and ’80s telly-watchers, in the process making a star of
Henry Winkler, the actor who immortalised the character of the self-styled King of Cool, Arthur
‘The Fonz’ Fonzarelli. This brand new musical promises to reacquaint fans of the TV series
with all their favourite characters, including Potsie, Ralph Malph, Joanie, Chachi and Pinky
Tuscadero, the latter being played on this occasion by former Sugababes and Atomic Kitten
star Heidi Range.
widowed duchess marries a lowly steward
and bears him three children, her two corrupt
brothers decide to exact a terrible revenge...
A Taste Of Honey
Malvern Theatre, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June
Shelagh Delaney was only eighteen when
she wrote A Taste Of Honey. In so doing, she
not only gave notice that a bright new talent
had arrived on the scene but also established
herself as a major player in the cultural
movement that became known as ‘kitchen
sink realism’. The movement was at its
height during the late-1950s and early-1960s,
and saw playwrights such as Delaney and,
equally famously, John Osborne, exploring
social and political issues by focusing on the
domestic situations of the working-classes.
At the centre of Delaney’s play is the character
of seventeen-year-old Jo, whose attempts
to break free from the shackles of her manhunting
mother lead her into the arms of a
black sailor, by whom she becomes pregnant.
A touching tale of a young girl’s journey
into adulthood in 1950s Salford, A Taste
Of Honey here stars Shameless and Waterloo
Road favourite Rebecca Ryan, and is
helmed by Hull Truck Theatre’s new Artistic
Director Mark Babych.
Sizwe Banzi Is Dead
mac - Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham,
Thurs 5 - Sat 7 June
This thought-provoking revival has enjoyed
plenty of critical acclaim since opening last
summer, with actors Sibusiso Mamba and
Tonderai Munyevu garnering great praise for
their terrific performances. Helmed by Genesis
Future Directors Award-winner Matthew
Xia, the play is set in apartheid-era South
Africa, and was written in 1972 by white
South African playwright Athol Fugard and
black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshon.
Sizwe Banzi’s looking for work, but his passbook
has expired and deportation seems
inevitable. So when he stumbles across a
dead body with a passbook, Sizwe has a
choice to make - either to accept the fact
that he can’t get work to support his family,
or to pretend that he’s met with a tragic end
and instead adopt the identity of the dead
man... Eclipse Theatre and the Young Vic are
the organisations behind this Tony-nominated
exploration of life under a brutal regime.
3 Summers
Library of Birmingham, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June
A national tour follows for this production -
after it’s become the first full-scale musical to
be staged in the Library of Birmingham’s Studio
Theatre, that is. Set in the psychedelic
’60s, the show follows the efforts of four
young girls seeking fame and fortune. When
Pen, Maz, Heff and Princess rent rooms from
the reclusive Freddie Savage, they soon
realise they’ve found themselves a ‘mother
hen’... Boasting a live band and backing
singers, 3 Summers features sixteen Swinging
’60s-inspired original numbers.
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