Jon Bromwich has announced he will be retiring from his role as executive producer of British Youth Music Theatre in May 2022. Bromwich was instrumental in founding the leading musical theatre company (first known as Youth Music Theatre UK) for young people in 2003. He steps down from BYMT to spend time with his wife […]
Tag Archives | Howard Goodall
West End stars back initiative to get families writing their musicals from home
Make Your Own Musicals, a company started in lockdown, has been making musical activity packs for children to write their own original mini-musicals at home. Now, for the festive season, they are branching out into family pantomime packs to fill the void many families will be feeling this year. Make Your Own Musicals was designed […]
Love Story anniversary concert moved to September
The 10th anniversary concert performance of the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Love Story has been postponed until 20 September 2020 as the country battles the coronavirus. Originally scheduled to play London’s Cadogan Hall on 17 May, Love Story: 10th Anniversary Concert features original cast members Michael D. Xavier, Emma Williams and Peter Polycarpou. Xavier (Sunset […]
Girlfriends in Concert – Bishopsgate Institute
Girlfriends in Concert continues at the Bishopsgate Institute, London until 3 November 2018. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ With a five star cast led by Lucie Jones and Lauren Samuels this performance is unmissable. If you by some chance you can’t get along, then it’s being recorded live for release on […]
Video released of Lucie Jones and Lauren Samuels singing a track from LMTO’s Girlfriends
Video has been released of Lucie Jones and Lauren Samuels performing the song ‘Seize the Moment’ from Howard Goodall’s Girlfriends as a preview of the upcoming London Musical Theatre Orchestra’s version of the show at the Bishopsgate Institute early next month. Due to play a total of three shows at the Bishopsgate Institute on the […]
A Winter’s Tale – Youth Music Theatre UK – Rose Theatre, Kingston
A Winter’s Tale was performed by Youth Music Theatre UK at the Rose Theatre, Kingston. There’s a lot of valiant hard work in this show, directed by Bronagh Lagan with Greg Arrowsmith as MD, but the storytelling is far from clear (changing some actors in roles between acts doesn’t help) and in places it feels […]
London Musical Theatre Orchestra announces concert versions of Camelot, Girlfriends & A Christmas Carol
Lerner and Loewe’s haunting Camelot will return to the West End for the first time in decades this autumn when London Musical Theatre Orchestra presents a special concert version at the London Palladium. The multi-award-winning story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table is one of three more productions announced for the […]
The Hired Man – Union Theatre
The Hired Man continues at the Union Theatre, London until 12 August. Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ Melvyn Bragg’s 1969 novel The Hired Man was the first of three novels to chart the lives of the Cumbrian Tallentire family. Starting at the turn of the 20th century, the name derives from […]
The Hired Man to be revived at the Union Theatre
Melvin Bragg and Howard Goodall’s moving rural musical The Hired Man will return to London in July with a limited run at the Union Theatre. The show begins previewing on 19 July with a press night on 21 July – the last performance is on 12 August. Based on Bragg’s 1969 novel, the first of the […]
Remembering Stephen Clark – playwright, librettist and lyricist
Remembering Stephen Clark (2 February 1961 to 15 October 2016). Stephen Clark, the award-winning playwright, librettist and lyricist, has died at the all too early age of 55. Michael Darvell looks back at a career tragically cut short, but one that remained full of promise… Like his hero Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Clark seems to have had a […]
Stephen Clark, the award-winning lyricist and playwright, has died
Composer Howard Goodall has paid tribute to his friend, the award-winning lyricist, librettist and playwright Stephen Clark, who died at the weekend at the age of 55. Clark who was inspired to work in musical theatre after studying with Stephen Sondheim at Oxford University, wrote the book and lyrics for Goodall’s Love Story which was […]
The Hired Man – Cadogan Hall
The Hired Man at the Cadogan Hall, London. Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ The Hired Man, the 1984 love-child of Howard Goodall and Melvyn Bragg, is based on the latter’s 1969 novel, a semi-biographical account of his grandfather Harry Bragg’s life – one of millions of men caught between the poverty-stricken […]
The Hired Man – Jenna Russell and John Owen-Jones lead cast
Jenna Russell and John Owen-Jones will take centrestage in this September’s special concert presentation of Howard Goodall and Melvyn Bragg’s The Hired Man at London’s Cadogan Hall. Russell (Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park With George) will star opposite John Owen-Jones (Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera) in the roles of John and Emily in […]
The Kissing Dance – Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre
The Kissing Dance continues at Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre, London until 28 February. Rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ Oliver Goldsmith’s 18th century comedy She Stoops to Conquer sits on a clear line from Shakespeare’s funnier comedies to modern day farce. Its tale of improbable misunderstandings, disguises and deception skewers some […]
Bend It Like Beckham wins at Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards 2015
Bend It Like Beckham The Musical came out top at the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards 2015, winning The Peter Hepple Award for Best Musical. The award was presented to Gurinder Chadha (director and new book), composer Howard Goodall, Paul Mayeda Berges (new book) and producer Sonia Friedman the Evening Standard’s by Henry Hitchings. Bend It Like Beckham will play its final performance […]
The Kissing Dance at Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre – casting details
Casting has been announced for All Star Productions’ version of The Kissing Dance due to open at London’s Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre next month. Based on Oliver Goldsmith’s play She Stoops to Conquer, the show continues All Star’s commitment to reviving rarely produced musicals and is also the venue’s fourth show featuring music by Howard […]
Bend It Like Beckham The Musical will close on 5 March 2016
Bend It Like Beckham The Musical will play its final performance at the Phoenix Theatre on 5 March 2016, at the end of the cast’s year-long contract. Rehearsals began for the critically acclaimed production in March 2015 with a company led by Natalie Dew as Jess and Lauren Samuels as Jules. The producers are currently finalising both national and international touring […]
Interview – American actress Alexandra Silber back in the UK making her cabaret bow at Crazy Coqs
August has already been a big month for the American (but Scottish-trained) soprano ALEXANDRA SILBER as she’s just landed the part of Tzeitel in the Broadway revival of Fiddler On the Roof which opens on 12 November – eight years after she sang Hodel in the same show in the West End. And it’s going to get even […]
Broadway performer Alexandra Silber to appear at Crazy Coqs with special guests
She’s a Grammy nominee, a Broadway star, a BBC Proms headliner… and she has just five shows in the UK this year (1–5 September at London’s Crazy Coqs). It’s ‘the fastest-rising soprano in musical theatre’, Alexandra Silber. Born in LA, growing up outside Detroit, Michigan, Silber trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow before being cast immediately […]
Bend It Like Beckham The Musical – Phoenix Theatre
Bend It Like Beckham The Musical continues at the Phoenix Theatre, London. Star rating: 3 stars ★ ★ ★ Football-themed musicals aren’t exactly all that common. The only West End production that springs to mind is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Beautiful Game, which (until its recent Fringe revival at the Union Theatre) was best left […]
Bend It Like Beckham – first look at production images
First production images have been released for the new British musical Bend It Like Beckham, currently in previews with opening night on 24 June 2015. Earlier this year a further 200,000 tickets were released for sale at the Phoenix Theatre, taking bookings to 24 October 2015. Pictures by Ellie Kurttz. Natalie Dew plays football crazy Jess with Lauren Samuels as Jules, […]
New images – Bend It Like Beckham cast heads to rehearsal via Southall
Before rehearsals began, the West End cast of Bend It Like Beckham spent the day in Southall, West London, where the story of the musical is set, so here is a sneak peek at what they got up (images by Uli Weber). London previews begin for the new British musical Bend It Like Beckham on 15 May 2015 with opening night on […]
Bend It Like Beckham – Natalie Dew, Lauren Samuels and Jamie Campbell Bower lead cast
Casting has been revealed for Bend It Like Beckham which opens at the Phoenix Theatre on 24 June 2015. Natalie Dew will play football crazy Jess with Lauren Samuels as Jules, a player with the Harriers, a local women’s football team, and Jamie Campbell Bower as their coach Joe. Directed by Gurinder Chadha, with original music by Howard Goodall and lyrics by Charles Hart, Bend It Like Beckham has a new […]
Girlfriends – Union Theatre
Girlfriends continues at the Union Theatre, London until 23 November. Ubiquitous English composer Howard Goodall is a buzz name in the musical theatre world right now (he will be writing the music for the forthcoming show Bend It Like Beckham) and Girlfriends is the third leg of the Union Theatre’s trilogy which is running consecutively at this […]
Love Story – Union Theatre
Love Story continues at the Union Theatre, London until 25 October. The second of the Union Theatre’s trilogy of Howard Goodall musicals is perhaps his most well-known. Based on Erich Segal’s novel and film, Love Story premiered in Chichester in 2010 before a brief West End run, but the small, intimate scale of the story feels […]
The Dreaming – Union Theatre
The Dreaming continues at the Union Theatre, London until 27 September. Creating a convincingly mystical, enchanting and surreal setting for Howard Goodall (music) and Charles Hart’s (books and lyrics) take on A Midsummer’s Night Dream in the very basic confines of the boundary-pushing Union Theatre was never going to be easy. But, while it takes […]
The Hired Man – NYMT – St James Theatre
The Hired Man, presented by the National Youth Music Theatre, continues at the St James Theatre, London until 16 August. Timed perfectly to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, this National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) production is a moving and fitting tribute to the men that died in the so-called ‘war […]
Love Story – Octagon Theatre, Bolton
Love Story continues at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton until 12 July. “What can you say, about a girl, a 25-year-old girl, who died?” A lyric that comes at the end of the very first song in Stephen Clark and Howard Goodall’s blisteringly powerful musical adaptation of Erich Segal’s novel Love Story and in answer to the question asked – […]
Singular Sensations – Janie Dee – Charing Cross Theatre
Singular Sensations – Janie Dee in conversation with Edward Seckerson at the Charing Cross Theatre, London. This was the third in the series in which music journalist (and one-time actor and singer) Edward Seckerson talks to musical performers about aspects of their lives and work. Kerry Ellis and Howard Goodall were the first two guests […]
Singular Sensations – Charing Cross Theatre
Edward Seckerson – formerly the presenter of BBC Radio 3’s long-running musical theatre show Stage & Screen – is to host Singular Sensations, a series of in-depth encounters with stars of musical theatre at London’s Charing Cross Theatre. This winter’s inaugural season of intimate sessions will become a regular Sunday afternoon fixture for musical theatre enthusiasts. […]
