As there is no show in the studio this week it was the Changeling company that gratefully took the chance to rehearse tonight in the space that they will be performing in. First night is Saturday 8th May.
Monthly Archive for March, 2010
On this blog we mostly talk about plays you can buy tickets to but there is a whole other side to The Crescent Theatre including music-making. The biggest-selling show of the year is always the Christmas Wassail and there are regular slots in the season for musicals but the musical director, Gary Spruce, also creates opportunities for people to come together and make music throughout the year, sometimes in public and sometimes not. This recording was part of an educational project to encourage young people to make music which included a jazz band, a skiffle band and solo singers. This piece is Palestrina’s Alma Redemptoris Mater sung by members of The Crescent Theatre in St Paul’s Church in The Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham. If you’d like to hear more then the same people will be singing in the Christmas Wassail and if you’d like to join in then please apply to join the theatre through the membership page.
It’s all go at the theatre on the rehearsal front. There are currently 4 productions in rehearsal (My Mother Said I Never Should, Changeling, Acorn Antiques & Festen) and 2 more about to be cast. My Mother is first to go up on 17th April in the Studio.
To complement the run of Hamlet the ever inventive Crescent Youth Theatre are about to present Tom Stoppards ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ in the Ron Barber Studio. Catch it from Wednesday 24th to Saturday 27th March (matinee on Saturday).
Thomas Middleton’s and William Rowley’s classic tale of desire and revenge is at The Crescent Theatre from 8th to 15th May 2010.
After months of Saturday morning rehearsals, the cast and crew of the Crescent’s Youth Theatre production of ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD finally moved into the Ron Barber Studio this weekend.
We now have 10 days of frantic preparation ahead before the big opening night next week.
It’s been a real pleasure working with everyone on what is set to be a great show. Good luck!
Robert F. Ball
It’s the first chance to catch the eagerly anticipated Hamlet on Saturday. Pete Smith is Hamlet and Alan Marshall directs a very special version of possibly the most famous play of all.
‘The Indian Boy’ company have already completed two shows. Catch them this week between Tuesday and Saturday in the Ron Barber Studio.
In an interview in 2007, specially recorded to accompany the release of a DVD compliation of some of her best work at the BBC, Helen Mirren, who played Beatrice-Joanna in a 1974 BBC production of ‘The Changeling’, had this to say about the role and the genre;
“I adore Jacobean tragedy. I have a great affinity for it. I’ve done three altogether; The Duchess of Malfi which I did later, The Changeling and The Revenger’s Tragedy which was my first big role in the theatre. And I still love it and I’d jump at the chance to do another.
I think it appeals to my romantic nature; to my gothic nature. You know, I think if I was a young girl nowI’d be a goth because I love that sort of dark, but passionate, but emotional, romantic…it just, it appeals to me.
I think another reason I love Jacobean drama is the women’s roles are fabulous. They’re great; they’re sexy, they’re extreme, they’re incredibly evil and they’re full of dichotomies and complexity and Beatrice-Joanna is an absolute case in point.
I’d love to do a modern day version of The Changeling because I think it’s a fascinating story of someone who is so repulsed, utterly repulsed by someone but actually finishes up completely obsessed by them. I mean he’s ugly; he’s physically ugly. He’s also lower class, he’s the servant – so she can’t see him even as a human being but he sees himself very much as a human being and he is absolutely obsessed by her. There’s a wonderful story about class.”
(Helen Mirren Remembers, 2007, BBC DVD)
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