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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 ...
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Life without art: Theatre Channel Episode Seven @thetheatrechannel

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Regents Park and the spaces around Regents Park Open Air Theatre transform into a magical world full of Rodgers and Hammerstein music in the latest episode of the Theatre Channel . Audition waiting rooms. Picnics in the park. Even the pond geese feature in this reinterpretation of the classic songs from the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook. Theatres are still playing to half capacity since being an afterthought in the great unlock down. And so, the Theatre Channel’s episodes continue to serve as a reminder about what we’re missing. This time around, it’s singing and dancing in the park. Without the garbage or hordes of people mulling about.  Performances in and around the park taking a fresh look at the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook include Michael Xavier performing Climb Every Mountain/You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from The Sound of Music and Carousel on an empty stage. Josefina Gabrielle in an alfresco take on The Gentleman Is a Dope’ from Allegro. And Caroline Sheen turning Whistl...
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Streams of observations: Tales from the Front Line @TalawaTheatreCo

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The final films in the online series from Talawa Theatre Company’s Tales from the Front Line are now available. The series uses verbatim interviews with Black key workers to explore what it’s like living in Britain today. The pandemic, Windrush Scandal, Black Lives Matter are all reference points to suggest that the post-pandemic world should be a different one.  One of the new episodes features Adjoa Andoh, as a teacher with vaccine hesitancy. Yet among the disinformation and noise that’s enough to fill Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon, she decides to protect herself and get vaccinated. Since sometimes, all her children need is a hug.  Tales From the Front Line aims to create a record of the stories of Black people on the front line of the Covid crisis and designed as space for Back workers to share their experiences. Black artists and creatives have then taken the testimonies to convey stories with music, performance and choreography. The final series of films are avai...
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