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Review: Life of Pi
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Making Soundwaves
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Just some of the great plays and musicals showing in the Midlands in 2024...
& JULIET
Ever wondered what would’ve happened to Shakespeare’s Juliet if she’d just ditched Romeo rather than topping herself?
Well, here’s your chance to find out, courtesy of this award-winning musical from the writer of hit television series Schitt’s Creek.
Touring the Midlands after doing great business in the West End, the show boasts a playlist of much-loved pop anthems. Featured songs include Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time, Katy Perry’s Roar, and the chart-topping Since U Been Gone, It’s My Life and Can’t Stop The Feeling.
Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Monday 7 - Saturday 12 October; Birmingham Hippodrome, Monday 21 April - Saturday 3 May 2025; Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Monday 12 - Saturday 17 May 2025
101 DALMATIANS THE MUSICAL
If you’re dotty about dogs, you’d be barking mad not to catch this new show when it stops off in the Midlands during the summer.
Telling the story of fashionista Cruella de Vil’s attempts to swipe all the Dalmatian puppies in town to create her fabulous new fur coat, the production visits the region direct from the London West End.
The Alexandra, Birmingham, Tuesday 2 - Saturday 6 July; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Tuesday 20 - Saturday 24 August
Please note, image used is from a previous tour
A CHORUS LINE
The story of a group of performers auditioning for a Broadway show, A Chorus Line fuses dance, song and authentic drama. Set on the bare stage of a Broadway theatre, it focuses on the performers as they learn their audition moves, each revealing their most personal stories in interviews with the director.
The show was originally produced by Leicester Curve and features hit numbers One, I Hope I Get It, Nothing and What I Did For Love.
Adam Cooper - who took the lead role in Sir Matthew Bourne’s famous all-male production of Swan Lake back in the mid-1990s - takes top billing.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 10 - Saturday 14 September
ALADDIN
West End & Broadway hit Aladdin is visiting Birmingham Hippodrome as part of its first-ever UK & Ireland tour.
Based on Disney’s classic 1992 animated film, the production not only features the movie’s original songs but also new music by eight-time Academy Award-winning composer Alan Menken.
The hugely popular show continues its record-breaking run on Broadway. Since opening there in 2014, multiple productions have launched around the world, including the West End version, which has racked up in excess of 1,200 performances.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Wednesday 9 October - Sunday 3 November
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
This is a night out not to be missed by fans of the 1980s. Based on the Academy Award-winning 1982 film starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger, the show tracks the heady romance that develops between Zack Mayo - a United States Navy Aviation Officer Candidate - and a young, captivating and seriously fiery woman named Paula Pokrifki. The story unfolds against a backdrop of classic 1980s pop songs from the likes of Blondie, Bon Jovi, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. It also features the Oscar-bagging hit Up Where We Belong, which was written for the film by Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings and recorded by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.
Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Monday 6 - Saturday 11 May; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Monday 23 - Saturday 28 September
BEN AND IMO
Legendary composer Benjamin Britten’s struggle to write an opera in time for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II provides the subject matter for Ben And Imo - a play which is premiering at the Royal Shakespeare Company next month.
The new work focuses on the timely arrival in Britten’s life of the inspirational Imogen Holst, the daughter of composer Gustav and an accomplished musician in her own right...
Originally written by Mark Ravenhill as a radio play, Ben And Imo is directed by Erica Whyman.
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Sat 6 April
BONNIE & CLYDE
This award-winning musical tells the Great Depression-era story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, two small-town nobodies destined to become one of America’s most notorious couples. The production stars Catherine Tyldesley, best known from her time in Coronation Street and on Strictly Come Dancing.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 3 - Saturday 7 September
COME FROM AWAY
This Olivier and Tony Award winner tells the incredible real-life story of 7,000 air passengers who were grounded in Canada in the wake of 9/11...
As evidenced by its aforementioned success in the glittering-prizes stakes, the show has proved to be an enormous international hit, with audiences on their feet night after night.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 21 May - Saturday 1 June; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Tuesday 5 - Saturday 9 November
CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG
Everybody’s favourite flying car makes a welcome return to the Midlands, complete with the Sherman Brothers’ memorable score.
When eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts creates an amazing flying car, he takes his family to the fictional country of Vulgaria. But all is not well in the European barony, where the sinister Baron Bomburst has decided to make children illegal...
Truly Scrumptious, Toot Sweets, Hushabye Mountain and the Oscar-nominated title song feature among the show’s best-known musical numbers.
Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Tuesday 22 - Sunday 27 October
Please note, image used is from an old tour
DEAR EVAN HANSEN
Dear Evan Hansen has enjoyed extraordinary success since premiering nine years ago, picking up coveted Olivier, Tony and Grammy awards and proving so successful that it was even made into a film (albeit a poorly received one).
The show focuses on title character Evan, a high-school senior with social anxiety whose desire to fit in sees him telling a terrible lie that eventually catches up with him.
The production makes its two Midlands stop-offs as part of its first-ever UK & Ireland tour.
The Alexandra, Birmingham, Tuesday 22 - Saturday 26 October; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Tuesday 1 - Saturday 5 April 2025
FRANKIE GOES TO BOLLYWOOD
Frankie never wanted to be a star; she just wanted a family. But after a chance encounter with an up-and-coming director, she finds herself transported to Bollywood...
Described as a breathtakingly colourful journey of romance, sweeping songs and vibrant dance, Frankie Goes To Bollywood has been inspired by real stories of British women who’ve been ‘caught in the spotlight of the biggest film industry in the world’.
The show is a Rifco Theatre Company, Watford Palace Theatre and HOME Manchester co-production.
Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Tuesday 11 - Saturday 15 June; Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Tuesday 2 - Saturday 6 July
GREASE THE MUSICAL
Dust off your leather jackets, pull on your bobby-socks and get ready for the most fun-filled, high-octane rock & roll party of them all. Grease is the original high-school musical, featuring all the unforgettable songs from the hit movie, including You’re The One That I Want, Grease Is The Word, Summer Nights, Hopelessly Devoted To You, Sandy and Greased Lightnin’.
The Alexandra, Birmingham, Monday 15 - Saturday 20 July
HAMILTON
It would require a seriously strong mantelpiece to successfully support all the silverware that this breathtakingly impressive show has accumulated across the years...
Its roll-call of glittering gongs includes 11 Tonys, seven Oliviers, the Pulitzer Prize for drama and a Grammy for best musical theatre album.
Blending hip-hop, jazz, blues, rap, R&B and Broadway, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cultural phenomenon tells the story of America’s Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton. An immigrant from the West Indies, Hamilton became George Washington’s right-hand man during the Revolutionary War and helped shape the foundations of modern-day America.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 25 June - Saturday 31 August
I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY
A new musical featuring the era-defining output of legendary record producers Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman, I Should Be So Lucky comes complete with a contribution from Aussie pop princess Kylie Minogue, whose first five albums were produced by the talented trio.
The musical has been written and directed by Birmingham-born Debbie Isitt, who is best known for her hit Christmas show, Nativity!, and its subsequent movies...
The Alexandra, Birmingham, Monday 1 - Saturday 6 April
LADIES DOWN UNDER
Amanda Whittington enjoyed such a big hit with her play Ladies Day that she decided to write a sequel - and this is it.
When Hull-based fish-factory colleagues Pearl, Jan, Shelley and Linda hit the jackpot at Royal Ascot, they decide to head off for the adventure of a lifetime Down Under. But once they’re there, it becomes blindingly obvious that each of them is on a very different journey...
New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday 30 March
ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES THE MUSICAL
The stage musical version of long-running BBC TV comedy series Only Fools And Horses has been a major hit in the West End and will no doubt prove itself to be a nice little earner - as Del Boy himself might say - when it visits the Midlands in the autumn.
Stopping off at two of the region’s theatres as part of a UK tour, the show features material from the television series as well as ‘an ingenious script and 20 hilarious songs’.
Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Monday 21 - Saturday 26 October; Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Monday 2 - Saturday 7 December
THE 39 STEPS
Anybody who remembers the various film versions of John Buchan’s classic spy thriller will be hard-pressed to call any of them ‘humorous’ - so it’s a bit weird, to say the least, to think of this stage version having bagged the Olivier Award for best new comedy! Nonetheless, that’s exactly what it did, courtesy of some imaginative thinking on the part of its creative team.
So why not catch up with handsome hero Richard Hannay as he battles to remain impressively stiff-upper-lipped in the face of dastardly murders and life-threatening encounters with double-crossing secret agents...
Oh, and there are some beautiful and mysterious women involved, too - so it’s not all bad news for our intrepid hero!
Four fearless actors play no fewer than 139 roles in this real gem of a show.
The Alexandra, Birmingham, Tuesday 4 - Saturday 8 June
THE BOOK OF MORMON
The Book Of Mormon follows a mismatched pair of Mormon boys who are sent on a mission to deliver the news of the Latter Day saints to the people of a Ugandan village - a place where war, famine, poverty and Aids are of far more concern than religion...
Featuring songs Spooky Mormon Hell Dream, I Am Africa, Baptize Me, All American Prophet and Tomorrow Is A Latter Day, the show has proved to be a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic, albeit a somewhat controversial one.
The Alexandra, Birmingham, Tuesday 3 - Saturday 28 December
THE SYNDICATE
The late Fay Weldon’s final play sees the writer’s daughter, Gaynor Faye, holding the directorial reins, with The Wanted’s Max George, Samantha Giles (Emmerdale) and Brooke Vincent (Coronation Street) taking top billing.
The story follows five supermarket employees whose lottery syndicate numbers come in just as their jobs and livelihoods are under threat. A share of the £18million jackpot will surely make their dreams come true. But then nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems - even the experience of becoming fabulously wealthy...
Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, Tuesday 18 - Saturday 22 June; The Alexandra, Birmingham, Tuesday 9 - Saturday 13 July
Image: The Cast of The Syndicate BBC TV
THE WIZARD OF OZ
Craig Revel Horwood stars as The Wicked Witch Of The West in this classic story from the pen of L Frank Baum, a terrific tale which has been delighting children for well over a century.
A marvellous mix of magic, mayhem and munchkins, it tells the story of Dorothy Gale and her unexpected trip over the rainbow to the colourful land of Oz. There, she meets the scarecrow, the tin man and a cowardly lion, heads off on a journey along the yellow brick road to find the Emerald City, and has more than one unpleasant encounter with the aforementioned wicked witch.
If ever a ruby-slippered girl was in need of a wonderful wizard...
Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 11 - Sunday 16 June; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Tuesday 30 July - Sunday 4 August
UNFORTUNATE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF URSULA THE SEA WITCH
Marketed as a tell-all tale of sex, sorcery and suckers, Unfortunate has a subtitle that makes it pretty clear what the show is all about. Ursula, for those who’ve never had reason to swim alongside Disney’s many and varied animated movies, is a villainous sea witch and the main antagonist in the Mouse House’s 1989 feature, The Little Mermaid.
A Disney Diva par excellence, she’s been making waves in her very own stage musical for the past several years and here reappears in Birmingham (did she arrive via the canals?) in the form of Orange Is The New Black’s Shawna Hamic.
The show features strong language, partial nudity, scenes of a sexual nature and plenty of trademark filthy humour - so if you’re of a decidedly delicate disposition, you may want to go swim in a different sea.
Birmingham Hippodrome, Thursday 11 - Saturday 13 April; Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Thursday 11 - Sunday 14 July
WICKED
Offering evidence that you simply can’t please all of the people all of the time, Wizard Of Oz spin-off Wicked had to dodge its fair share of slings and arrows when it opened in London in 2006.
The proof of the pudding, however, is most definitely in the eating, and 18 years after its West End debut, Wicked is still going strong.
Based on novelist Gregory Maguire’s ingenious reimagining of Frank L Baum’s famous tale, the show basically tells the story of The Wizard Of Oz from the perspective of two sorcery students, one of whom will become Glinda The Good, the other the Wicked Witch of the West.
If you’ve seen the show before, chances are you’ll be eager to catch it again when it visits the Midlands. If, on the other hand, Oz is a land to which you’ve yet to travel, then follow the yellow brick road to the Hippodrome box office just as fast as your ruby slippers will carry you...
Birmingham Hippodrome, until Sunday 7 April
WITHNAIL AND I
During the bohemian days of the late 1960s, two out-of-work actors - Withnail and Marwood - leave behind them the bright lights of London in favour of what they hope will be a cathartic holiday in the countryside.
But will their stay at the country home of Withnail’s flamboyantly gay uncle help reinvigorate their booze- and drug-addled brains and inspire them to kickstart their flagging careers as thespians?...
Nearly 40 years after its release, the film of Withnail And I is widely considered to be one of the greatest British movies ever made, so the arrival of this brand-new and first-ever stage version will no doubt delight its legion of fans. The show has been written by its original creator, Bruce Robinson, and is helmed by the Rep’s artistic director, Sean Foley.
The Rep, Birmingham, Friday 3 - Saturday 25 May
Please note, image used is from the film