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A night at the opera: That Bastard Puccini! (Park Theatre)

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It’s hard to imagine that it’s only been 130 years since Puccini first premiered La Boheme. Nowadays, it’s a revered classic, and guaranteed to be on any opera company's annual programme if it needs to stay afloat. It’s a crowd pleaser with its melodrama of poor, impoverished artists loving, starving and dying in Paris. But Puccini’s La Boheme had a less auspicious beginning, with one of his contemporaries accusing him of stealing his idea and being poorly received on its first outing. And that’s at the heart of That Bastard Puccini! Currently playing at Park Theatre , writer James Inverne uses the friendship and rivalry between the two composers, Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, to weave a comic tale of creative frustration with an awful lot of facts and tidbits about the opera scene at the time. It’s part comedy, part music appreciation.  It opens with Leoncavallo (Alasdair Buchan) at home with his wife Berthe (Lisa-Anne Wood), cursing about Puccini’s latest work, which is drawn ...

New cast photos: Shakespeare in Love


New cast photos from the production of Shakespeare in Love are out. The new cast took over at London’s Noel Coward Theatre on 12 January 2015.



The production’s second company stars Orlando James as Will Shakespeare opposite Eve Ponsonby as Viola De Lesseps.


Joining them in the cast, Nicholas Asbury plays Wessex, Neal Barry plays Henslowe, Richard Bremmer plays Tilney and Sir Robert De Lesseps.

Paul Brennen plays Fennyman, Suzanne Burden plays Queen Elizabeth, Ryan Donaldson plays Ned Alleyn, Edward Franklin plays Marlowe, Ncuti Gatwa plays Wabash, Gregg Lowe plays Sam, Andy McKeane plays Ralph, Peter Moreton plays Burbage, Joy Richardson plays Nurse, Charlie Tighe plays Nol and Stuart Wilde plays Webster.

The cast also includes Aaron Anthony, Jonno Davies, Peter Hannah, Nick Hart, Joshua Higgott, Sioned Jones, Sandy Murray, Ellie Nunn, Thomas Padden, Stevie Raine, Elliot Rennie and Florence Roberts.


The limited season ends 18 April 2015.

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