Tag: Sharif Afifi

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News: West End performers join fundraising gala #CheerUpCharlie – The Show

Charlie Kristensen, the 11 year old passionate anti-bullying campaigner and much-loved host of the online chat show Musical Chairs with #CheerUpCharlie, will be joined by an exciting line-up for his fundraising gala #CheerUpCharlie – The Show on Sunday 31 October 2021 at 7.30pm at The Actor’s Church in Covent Garden, London.
 
Produced by Mark Robert Petty and hosted by Ben Stock and Hilary O’Neil, with Musical Direction by Tom Knowles, the evening will feature a whole host of the West End’s much-loved top musical theatre performers: Lewis Asquith, Lizzie Bea, Nikki Bentley, Daniel Boys, Kieran Brown, Robin Cousins, Maria Coyne, Ferris & Milnes, Adrian Hansel, Jacqueline Hughes, Sophie Isaacs, Melissa Jacques, Alison Jiear, Gemma Knight Jones, Carolyn Maitland, Nadim Naaman, Sara Poyzer, Oliver Savile, Jon Tarcy, Shona White and Jacinta Whyte as well as Joseph Fletcher and Natasha Volley from DMD+ (Deaf Men Dancing+, founded by Mark Smith), country cross-over duo One Trick Pony, This One’s For You – A Tribute To Elton John (with Dougie Carter, Ben Barrow and Sam Ebenezer), the cast of Rumi: The Musical, mind-reader Matt Daniel-Baker and ventriloquist Max Fulham. They will be joined by students from ASA Theatre Arts, London School of Musical Theatre, MX Masterclass and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Charlie also has some special surprises up his sleeve.

Continue reading “News: West End performers join fundraising gala #CheerUpCharlie – The Show”

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It Means Beautiful, for India Covid Relief

Irvine Iqbal has launched a new project called Same Voices Unite, which aims to raise awareness of the impact of Covid-19 in India and to get the message through, he has helmed a star-filled video featuring West End performers as part of its main campaign.

The video will feature a performance of Dan Gillespie Sells and Tom Macrae’s ‘It Means Beautiful’, from West End musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, sung by a cast of more than 30 performers. Audiences of the video will be directed to the One Family charity donation page. Continue reading “It Means Beautiful, for India Covid Relief”

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News: get some Pride at the Palace in June

For one night only (7th June), a host of Queer stars from the West End and beyond come together to celebrate their Pride in a spectacular concert.

Pride at the Palace celebrates our wonderful LGBTQIA+ community in all it’s glory with a set list that includes multiple Queer anthems, as well as songs you simply won’t be able to resist getting up and dancing to! Continue reading “News: get some Pride at the Palace in June”

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News: Ramin Karimloo and co-composer Nadim Naaman head the cast of ‘Rumi: The Musical’

Dana Al Fardan, one of the Middle East’s leading contemporary composers, and West End star Nadim Naaman today announce their second major stage musical, Rumi: The Musical. Rumi, based on a story about the 13th century philosopher and poet Rumi by Evren Sharma, follows Al Fardan and Naaman’s 2018 debut Broken Wings, which premiered in the West End at the Theatre Royal Haymarket before touring the Middle East.

Rumi: The Musical will launch first with a full-length concept album, with Ramin Karimloo and Nadim Naaman heading  a West End cast comprising entirely of performers of Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian heritage, and also featuring The Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra. Continue reading “News: Ramin Karimloo and co-composer Nadim Naaman head the cast of ‘Rumi: The Musical’”

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News: A Little Night Music comes to Holland Park

Stephen Sondheim’s wry and beautiful comedy of love and regret, A Little Night Music, comes to Holland Park for a single al fresco concert performance in the year of his 90th birthday. 

Presented by Quick Fantastic and Janie Dee in association with Opera Holland Park

Inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s film, Smiles of a Summer Night, and named after Mozart’s serenade, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Sondheim’s musical weaves a tapestry of songs and waltzes as new romances begin, ex-lovers reunite, and secret passions are revealed. The night smiles three times: first on the young, second on fools, third on the old. Last seen together in the National Theatre’s celebrated production of Follies, Janie Dee and Joanna Riding lead a cast of Olivier Award-winning performers (Sharif Afifi, Hiba Elchikhe, Danielle Fiamanya, Fra Fee, Hilary Harwood, Emma Kingston, Emma Harrold, Nadim Naaman, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Ella Tronson and Kayi Ushe), directed by Alastair Knights. Alex Parker conducts an eight piece ensemble of instrumentalists in Jason Carr’s critically acclaimed orchestration of Sondheim’s score.

In accordance with current guidelines on social distancing, capacity is strictly limited to 200. Tickets go onsale on 3rd August.

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Review: Hadestown, National Theatre

Way down in Hadestown at the National Theatre is one of the best musicals of the year

“Damned if you don’t. Damned if you do.
Whole damn nation’s watching you”

I loved Hadestown so much that I had booked to see it for a second time before I even got home from the first. Read more about that trip here, including me trying the National’s new smart caption glasses, and read on for a review that focuses properly on Anaïs Mitchell’s brilliant musical here. An adaptation of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, developed with director Rachel Chavkin, it riffs on the myth by relocating the action to a dive bar in the Deep South and redefines hell for our capitalist age. And they fill the Olivier with music, such music, that transforms Hadestown into the kind of experience that lingers long in the mind. 

Mitchell’s score succeeds so much because it establishes such an identity for itself that it dares you not to be seduced into the world of the gods, or at least New Orleans. At its best, its simply elemental – ‘Way Down Hadestown’ has the kind of tune that sounds like it has always existed and will not quit your brain anytime soon. And as you collect the influences – hints of Jason Robert Brown on ‘All I’ve Ever Known’, the Johnny Cash-esque call and response of ‘Why We Build The Wall’, the straight up musical theatre emotion of ‘Wait For Me”s chorus, to name but a few – you realise a new form of Americana has evolved here. Continue reading “Review: Hadestown, National Theatre”

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Review: Hadestown, via smart caption glasses at the National Theatre

I try out the new smart caption glasses while watching Hadestown at the National Theatre and am blown away both by the show and the frankly amazing technology 

“Eurydice knew how to survive
Orpheus…knew how to live”

The exceedingly kind folk of the National Theatre allowed me to go and see Hadestown a few days after the press night, as I was most keen to have a try of the Smart Caption Glasses which were brought into circulation on Friday. Acclaimed as “a revolutionary new way for people with hearing loss to enjoy performance”, for once the blurb more than lives up to its billing as I found them to be truly innovative and potentially life-changingly good. 

Without wishing to open a whole can of worms about access and diversity within the critical community, it has to be said that as a (deaf) reviewer, I never get to go to captioned performances. If and when they’re scheduled, the timetables just don’t allow for it, so – as in most of my daily life – I make do. I hear what I hear and guess the rest. So the idea of this facility becoming available was one I was most keen to investigate at the earliest opportunity.  Continue reading “Review: Hadestown, via smart caption glasses at the National Theatre”

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