News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1224: 10 August 2025
Editorial
It’s a long newsletter this week due to the 90 reviews from Edinburgh that our hard-working reviewing team have submitted—and I have edited—during the first week of the Fringe and International festivals. If your e-mail reader truncates it, you can click on the link at the top to read the whole thing in your web browser.
But it’s not all about Edinburgh this week. We also have reviews from Belfast, London, Sunderland, Salford (that’s me!), Chichester and even Seattle.
We have a new podcast episode from the Midlands in which Midlands Editor Steve Orme spoke to Karen Henson of Tabs Productions and actors Sarah Wynne Kordas and Mark Pearce about the Classic Thriller Season, which returns to Theatre Royal, Nottingham this week with new productions of three plays.
Yes indeed, this is episode number 298, and I have two interviews scheduled over the next couple of days, one Edinburgh related and one not, so number 300 is fast approaching. We released a special 200th episode in which we introduced you to some of our own reviewers back in 2020. I don’t have anything similar planned for the 300th, which should drop sometime in the next couple of weeks, but what will it be about? I haven’t decided myself yet, so we will all have to wait and see.
I get a lot of press releases for surveys or studies that are actually poorly disguised advertisements for the companies that commissioned them, that they would be grateful if we mentioned if we use the information. As Yes Minister showed us brilliantly four decades ago, surveys can be made to support any argument or its opposite depending on how you ask the questions. The comment that Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli about “lies, damned lies and statistics” has been adapted for the title of Philip Fisher’s feature this week based on one such press release.
It has long been known that many times more people in the country see live theatre than attend live sporting events each week, even though the amount of media coverage each receives would suggest the opposite. However, a claim that “nearly 80% of under-40s say a night at the theatre is their ultimate ‘digital detox’” seems very unlikely if the respondents were truly representative of the whole of UK society.
But the fact that the survey was carried out on behalf of a London theatre ticket agency (to whose affiliate scheme we happen to subscribe) may suggest that those who took part would be far more likely to attend the theatre than the ‘average’ person. Philip takes a more detailed and sceptical look at its conclusions.
We are only a week into the Fringe and International festivals and just a day into the Book Festival, so we will have lots more for you from Edinburgh over the next couple of weeks, but there is plenty of interesting theatrical activity in the rest of the country that we will also be covering.
The first stage production of Arnold Bennett’s The Grand Babylon Hotel will form part of celebrations to mark Stoke-on-Trent’s 100th anniversary of becoming a city.
A revival of a Kander and Ebb musical, a rehearsed reading of an American satire and the UK première of a docu-concert are at Leicester’s Curve 2025–26.
Northampton’s Royal and Derngate has welcomed new Generate associate artists who will be supported in their career and artistic ambitions over the next 18 months.
A revival of a Kander and Ebb musical, a rehearsed reading of an American satire and the UK première of a docu-concert are at Leicester’s Curve 2025–26.
A revival of a Kander and Ebb musical, a rehearsed reading of an American satire and the UK première of a docu-concert are at Leicester’s Curve 2025–26.
Birmingham-based Propel Dance, the all-wheelchair-user dance company, is back rehearsing for the first time since 2023, after receiving funding from Arts Council England.
Consumed Paines Plough, Belgrade Theatre, Sheffield Theatres and Women’s Prize for Playwriting in association with Lyric Theatre Belfast at Traverse Theatre
Tina – The Tina Turner Musical (Stage Entertainment, Joop van den Ende and Tali Pelman, in association with Tina Turner) - Liverpool Empire, Liverpool, –
Fat Ham (Royal Shakespeare Company with No Guarantees Productions, Public Theater Productions and Rashad V. Chambers) - The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, –
Death by Fatal Murder (Tabs Productions) - Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, –
Be More Chill (Old Joint Stock Theatre) - The Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre, Birmingham, –
As You Like It - Theatre Royal Bath / Ustinov Studio / the egg, Bath, –
Hedda (Theatre Royal Bath Productions) - Theatre Royal Bath / Ustinov Studio / the egg, Bath, –
FRIENDS! The Musical Parody (Mark Goucher, Matthew Gale and Oskar Eiriksson in association with The Barn Theatre Cirencester) - The Barn Theatre, Cirencester, –
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Elliott & Harper Productions and Catherine Schreiber, based on the original Leeds Playhouse production) - Congress Theatre, Eastbourne, –
Death Comes to Pemberley (The Mill at Sonning and STUDIO RA) - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, –
