Cinderella and the Beanstalk: Theatre503

They’ve booked the venue They’ve bought the costumes. There’s just one problem. They’ve forgotten to cast any actors. When award-winning comedy trio Sleeping Trees brought their unique brand of slapstick comedy to Battersea’s Latchmere last year, they sold out with their fast, furious and madcap humour. Now James Dunnell-Smith, Joshua George Smith and John Woodburn…

Read More

An interview with Gypsy’s Gemma Sutton

This week we met the enchanting Gemma Sutton who has been wowing audiences in hit West End show Gyspy as Rose’s daughter June and now takes over from Lara Pulver in the role of Louise, a character who undergoes a chrysalis-like transformation to become the complex and eponymous Gypsy. There’s still time to catch Chichester…

Read More

MURRAY LANE: UNDRESSING THE WEST END (Part One)

Fancy rubbing shoulder-pads with Norma Desmond or helping Oliver Thornton out of his Basque? When Tiffany Graves, star of Chicago and The Producers gave us her “leading lady” list of the West End’s most interesting characters, one name was at the very top. Murray Lane has been dressing the biggest stars in the West End…

Read More

Knight of a Thousand Stars: Why the Ladies Love Kenneth Branagh

Like pubs, the Royal Family and cheese rolling, Kenneth Branagh is one of Britain’s greatest phenomena. Hollywood loves him, and so have a succession of incredibly talented and high-flying British women. So, what is it about our Ken that attracts the likes of Emma Thompson and Dame Judi Dench to love and

Read More

The West End’s Scariest Leading Ladies

From Females to She-males and from Queens of Carthage to Queens of the Desert, The West-End and Broadway both have long lived love affairs with not-to-be-messed-with women who’ve been pushed just that bit too far. Let’s face it, if you’d been left to raise a child in a warzone by a bloke who married you…

Read More

Gypsy – Chichester Festival Theatre

Theatrepaws review, 26 October 2014 “You Gotta Get a Ticket”. When Imelda Staunton battles onto the Chichester Festival stage, you could be forgiven for at first feeling underwhelmed. Rose Hovick (Momma Rose) is drab, diminutive and like the apartment in which she later performs her opening number (Some People), a little dowdy. Less Ethel Merman,…

Read More