Which show should we do in 2023?
As a society, we are always looking at the best ways to showcase theatre at its best and so while we prepare to bring you the spectacular Priscilla - Queen of the Desert in 2022 we are looking at what we should present next. The committee have taken a look through a long list of shows that we think you would love and our top five are below, we’d love your thoughts on them. Take a look through the shows and let us know your top three.
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A hilarious shipboard romp wrapped in one of Cole Porter's most magical scores. It's Delightful, Delicious, and De-Lovely! Anything Goes premiered on Broadway on November 21, 1934 at the Alvin Theatre, where it ran for 420 performances, becoming the fourth longest-running musical of the 1930s. A revised version of the show opened Off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre on May 15, 1962, starring Eileen Rodgers as Reno Sweeney and Hal Linden as Billy Crocker. In 1987, Lincoln Center Theater produced an updated version of the show. Opening at Broadway's Vivan Beaumont Theater on October 19, 1987, the show starred Patti LuPone, Howard McGillin and Bill McCutcheon, won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and played for 784 performances.
anything goes
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CABARET
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In a Berlin nightclub, as the 1920's draw to a close, a garish Master of Ceremonies welcomes the audience and assures them they will forget all their troubles at the Cabaret. With the Emcee's bawdy songs as wry commentary, Cabaret explores the dark, heady, and tumultuous life of Berlin's natives and expatriates as Germany slowly yields to the emerging Third Reich. Cliff, a young American writer newly arrived in Berlin, is immediately taken with English singer Sally Bowles. Meanwhile, Fräulein Schneider, proprietor of Cliff and Sally's boarding house, tentatively begins a romance with Herr Schultz, a mild-mannered fruit seller who happens to be Jewish.
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Calendar girls
When Annie's husband John dies of leukaemia, she and best friend Chris resolve to raise money for a new settee in the local hospital waiting room. They manage to persuade four fellow WI members to pose nude with them for an "alternative" calendar, with a little help from hospital porter and amateur photographer Lawrence. The news of the women's charitable venture spreads like wildfire, and hordes of press soon descend on the small village of Knapeley in the Yorkshire Dales. The calendar is a success, but Chris and Annie's friendship is put to the test under the strain of their new-found fame. Based on the true story of eleven WI members who posed nude for a calendar to raise money for the Leukaemia Research Fund, Calendar Girls opened at the Chichester Festival Theatre and has since become the fastest-selling play in British theatre history.
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Written in 1984 by ABBA songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and Tim Rice, Chess tells a story of love and political intrigue, set against the background of the Cold War in the late 1970s/early 1980s, in which superpowers attempt to manipulate an international chess championship for political ends.
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Two of the world’s greatest chess masters, one American, one Russian, are in danger of becoming the pawns of their governments as their battle for the world title gets under way. Simultaneously their lives are thrown into further confusion by a Hungarian refugee, a remarkable woman who becomes the centre of their emotional triangle. This mirrors the heightened passions of the political struggles that threaten to destroy lives and loves.
CHESS
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When Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady opened on Broadway, it collected six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, while the film version took home eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady is that rare musical by which all others are measured.
Eliza Doolittle is a young flower seller with an unmistakable Cockney accent which keeps her in the lower rungs of Edwardian society. When Professor Henry Higgins tries to teach her how to speak like a proper lady, an unlikely friendship begins to flourish.
My fair lady
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Join Captain Tempest and his fearless crew on their journey into hyperspace… and beyond! This winner of the 1990 Olivier Award for Best Musical bursts with red hot rock and roll hits, including Great Balls of Fire, Good Vibrations, Teenager in Love, The Young Ones and The Monster Mash. So fasten your seat belts, set your ray guns to stun and get ready for a cosmic adventure of meteoric proportions! Bob Carlton’s smash hit West End musical takes the 1956 film, with plot taken from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, raids the Bard’s other plays at will (and not always absolutely verbatim) and sets it to a score of great pop hits from the 1960s and 70s.
return to the forbidden planet
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