News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1257: 29 March 2026
Editorial
Six years ago today, I was teaching a webinar to online degree students, just as I was this afternoon. However, the world suddenly changed in March 2020; Philip Fisher has marked the sixth anniversary of the COVID lockdown in his feature this week.
The last thing I saw in a theatre was the world première of Back to The Future the Musical at the Opera House (which never finished its Manchester run). The following week, I was due to review Winsome Pinnock’s Rockets and Blue Lights at the Royal Exchange Theatre, but I heard in the morning that it was to be cancelled (it never returned) so tried to switch to Robert Lepage at The Lowry, but he flew back to Canada (and, as far as I’m aware, never came back to Salford). By the evening, the UK was shut. I wasn’t to be inside a theatre again for another 14 months.
Philip has looked back on that time, how the immediate effects on theatres were not as severe as was at first feared and how it has changed theatre in many ways since. There have been some positive changes, such as a huge increase in both the quality and the availability of streamed and recorded theatre, which is never the same as being there but can greatly increase the size and diversity of a theatre’s audience.
Philip also mentions the increase in invitations to influencers and bloggers from some theatres. There are some very good and incisive bloggers writing about theatre who are worth reading, but influencers are there to promote a product in return for money or other benefits and not to give a truthful, informed opinion.
That isn't a major problem in my region, although I sometimes joke that to get invited to a press night at one of ATG’s Manchester theatres, you have to be in Hollyoaks or Coronation Street. I never get invited any more to the theatre where I saw my last show before lockdown unless the producers invite me, and I know a few other reviewers who used to be regulars there who have said the same.
I was very sorry to see that the actor Ben Keaton had died suddenly at the age of 69. He is probably best known on TV as the boring priest in Father Ted, but I first came across him on stage as a terrific Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers (with Joseph Alessi and Toby Sedgwick—what a cast) at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, Christmas 1995, a production that was revived at Upper Campfield Market in 1998 while the theatre was being repaired after the IRA bomb of 1996. I also saw him at the Royal Exchange in Harvey and American Buffalo and at The Lowry in the touring cast of The Play What I Wrote. I only met him once, when he did a spot as the boring priest in one of our Manchester Theatre Awards ceremonies, and he was lovely.
Up in Edinburgh, co-founder of The Stand Comedy Club, Tommy Sheppard, where I have been many times during the festivals, is stepping down as chairman after more than 30 years. The club began in 1995 in a pub basement on Grassmarket attended by seven people and now has permanent venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle.
Finally, we’re three weeks away from the start of the Snooker World Championships. Its home for some years, the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, has just been awarded £45 million, the majority from central and local government for a major refurbishment. There had been rumours of it moving to somewhere larger, but the refurbished venue will allow the audience capacity to be increased by 50% when required and to be configured for theatre productions as an end stage or in-the-round.
The latter makes it sound to me like a larger version of the Bolton Octagon, where current Sheffield Theatres Artistic Director Elizabeth Newman was based when I first knew her.
Liverpool Improvisation Festival 2026 will feature 18 live shows including three world premières plus seven workshops to learn from international practitioners.
Producers China Plate and Fuel have begun an initiative, Touring Together, to take midscale theatre across the UK and are collaborating with five theatres on the project.
Producers China Plate and Fuel have begun an initiative, Touring Together, to take midscale theatre across the UK and are collaborating with five theatres on the project.
Producers China Plate and Fuel have begun an initiative, Touring Together, to take midscale theatre across the UK and are collaborating with five theatres on the project.
Producers China Plate and Fuel have begun an initiative, Touring Together, to take midscale theatre across the UK and are collaborating with five theatres on the project.
