In our special Christmas show preview issue, we talk to Susie McKenna, writer and director of Hackney Empire’s panto Aladdin, about that show and reviving her 2003 A Christmas Carol for the Arts Theatre. Plus we have 7 pages of panto and Christmas show listings covering the entire UK.
Also this week, model and actress Kelly Brook talks about her determination to develop her career in theatre, how she deals with negative reviews and why her current West End role is close to her heart:
I’d been back in LA doing a couple of films, but I wanted to be in London and near my family and boyfriend [rugby player Danny Cipriani] again. The rugby season starts in September so I asked my agent what was going on. TV has been taken over by reality, so unless you’re on Strictly Come Dancing or the X Factor it’s quite difficult. So we talked about doing a play and I was walking past the Noel Coward Theatre when I saw that Calendar Girls was playing and I got a strange feeling. It had been mentioned a few weeks previously, so I got my agent to get in touch with the producer David Pugh and we had a cup of tea…
…I lost my father to cancer a couple of years ago, so it’s a subject quite close to my heart and something I can really relate to.
Award-winning TV producers and former members of the Royal Ballet, Michael Nunn and William Trevitt’s latest offering is a radical reinterpretation of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring for BBC3, featuring a range of dance styles including pole dancing and tango.
Insight: If elected, the Conservatives plan to give communities more control over central government spending in their area by allowing them to trigger referencums on funding for local arts organisations and projects. Would this help to make the arts more democratic, or provide a way to censor artistics expression?
Theatres make enough money from their festive shows without pressurising parents into purchasing additional merchandise for their kids, argues Roger ‘Scrooge’ Foss
Dear John: “I’d like to have a go at writing my own material. How do I start, and what aelse can I do with my ideas if writing isn’t for me?”
Showpeople: Celia Adams, performing in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Lancaster; Kate Marlais, playing Cinderella at the Salisbury Playhouse; Russell Clough, playing Pinocchio at the Torch Theatre
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