Midlands productions

Published: 1 March 2015
Reporter: Steve Orme

Ultima Vez’s What the Body Does Not Remember at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry and Nottingham Playhouse
Vamos Theatre’s Nursing Lives at Wolverhampton’s Arena Theatre
Raymond Coulthard as King George VI in The King's Speech at Birmingham REP Credit: Hugo Glendinning

The Theatre Royal Wakefield production of Bouncers by John Godber visits Buxton Opera House on Monday and Tuesday.

Simon Beaufoy’s The Full Monty will have nothing to hide at De Montfort Hall, Leicester from Monday until Saturday.

Dance Touring Partnership presents “one of the most exciting pieces of dance ever made”, What the Body Does Not Remember by Brussels-based Wim Vandekeybus and Ultima Vez, at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Vamos Theatre’s Nursing Lives, “a love story set in the early 1980s of Thatcher’s Britain and the hard-working, heart-breaking, swing-dancing world of the UK’s wartime hospitals”, visits Wolverhampton Arena on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In celebration of the centenary of Arthur Miller’s birth, the Touring Consortium Theatre Company takes A View From the Bridge, featuring Jonathan Guy Lewis and Michael Brandon, to the Theatre Royal, Nottingham from Tuesday until Saturday.

Based on John Boyne’s best-selling novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the “heart-wrenching tale of an unlikely friendship between two innocent boys” which is set during World War II, tours to Northampton Royal from Tuesday until Saturday.

The Music and Lyrics and Royal and Derngate Northampton production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! which features Belinda Lang and Gary Wilmot is at Wolverhampton Grand from Tuesday until Saturday.

Claudia Morris stars in Secret Love, a musical celebrating the life and career of Doris Day, at the Lighthouse Theatre, Kettering on Wednesday.

The “unique” show Puppetry of the Penis is at Northampton’s Dernate on Thursday.

Among the highlights of this year’s Nottdance, an international festival of dance and performance, are Mmm Hmmm, presented by Verity Standen in association with Tobacco Factory (UK), at Lakeside Arts, Nottingham on Thursday; Belgian company Ultima Vez with What The Body Does Not Remember, choreographed by Wim Vandekeybus, at Nottingham Playhouse on Friday and Saturday; and The Amplitude by Gabriele Reuter and Mattef Kuhlmey in the Neville Studio at Nottingham Playhouse on Saturday.

East Midlands rural touring company New Perspectives takes Athol Fugard’s Playland to the University of Worcester on Thursday, Malvern Cube, Great Malvern, Worcestershire on Friday, Pattingham Village Hall, near Wolverhampton on Saturday and Florence Nightingale Memorial Hall, Holloway, Derbyshire on Sunday.

Claire Sweeney appears in Sex in Suburbia, “a new comedy about dating, men and finding Mr Right”, at the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham on Friday.

John Challis recalls anecdotes from Only Fools and Horses as well as other tales from his long career in Only Fools and Boycie at The Core at Corby Cube, Northamptonshire on Friday.

Foghorn Theatre Company takes over Lichfield Garrick with An Improvised Murder, a murder mystery improvised live on stage, on Saturday.

Physical theatre company WinterWalker takes its first major production, Three Keepers, a play without words for those aged eight and over, to the Brewhouse Arts Centre, Burton-on-Trent on Saturday.

Raymond Coulthard is King George VI and Jason Donovan is Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue in David Seidler’s play The King’s Speech which continues at Birmingham REP until Saturday.

The first play by Birmingham-born Steven Camden, more commonly known as the performance poet Polarbear, Back Down, “a coming-of-age story that is both insightful and incredibly funny”, continues in The Door at Birmingham REP until Saturday.

Birmingham’s Blue Orange Theatre continues to stage Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre until Saturday.

Rebecca Ryan continues in Mike Kenny’s adaptation of Siobhan Dowd’s novel Solace of the Road at Derby Theatre until Saturday 14 March.

At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Love’s Labour’s Lost and Love’s Labour’s Won (Much Ado About Nothing) both continue until 14 March; in the Swan Theatre David Troughton heads the cast of Thomas Dekker’s Jacobean comedy The Shoemaker's Holiday which runs until Saturday while the world première of Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppenheimer, about J Robert Oppenheimer, known as “the father of the atom bomb”, also continues until Saturday.

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