What's On - June 2014

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WOLVERHAMPTON & BLACK COUNTRY WHAT’S ON ISSUE 342 JUNE 2014

THE MIDLANDS ESSENTIAL ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE WOLVERHAMPTON & BLACK COUNTRY

’ What sOn www.whatsonlive.co.uk

ISSUE 342

JUNE 2014

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June Editor: Davina Evans

2014

INSIDE:

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Annie Get Your Gun

Editorial Assistants: Brian O’Faolain

all-star cast in West End musical p29

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Managing Director: Paul Oliver

promising a Flawless performance p38

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Graphic Designers: Lisa Wassell Chris Atherton Accounts Administrator Julia Perry

Dawn French - brings new solo show to the region, page 24

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Website Development: Jim Pallett Contributors: Graham Bostock: Theatre James Cameron-Wilson: Film; Anita Champaneri: Eating Out; Alev Dervish: Music Eva Easthope, Kate Evans, Jessica Aston, Patsy Moss, Jack Rolfe, Jan Watts, Reggie White Head Office: 13-14 Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury, SY2 6AE

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News

A ROUND-UP OF LOCAL AND NATIONAL ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

Arts Council grant secures future of Midlands orchestra An orchestra which faced an uncertain future following the closure of West Bromwich arts venue The Public last November has received a £100,000 grant from Arts Council England. The People’s Orchestra, which formed two years ago, was both located and regularly performed at The Public. The funding will allow the orchestra to employ two essential members of staff - a Volunteer Manager and a Concert Manager.

Co-founder Sarah Marshall said of the grant: “This is fantastic news for the orchestra, and we can push on with an exciting artistic programme. As an amateur orchestra, run solely by volunteers, the move from The Public was very disruptive, and our existence has been very hand-to-mouth ever since.”

The People’s Orchestra perform an evening of Film Greats at Birmingham’s Adrian Boult Hall on Sunday 22 June.

Photography competition winner announced Thirty-one-year-old Sarah Harding from Cradley Heath in Birmingham has won a unique photography competition celebrating the traditional Japanese cherry blossom festival, Hanami.

Sarah was up against an impressive number of entrants, but triumphed in the competition because the judges felt that her image had ‘rather uniquely captured the cherry blossom on a rainy day’. The competition was organised in partnership with Ikon and Cafe Opus at Ikon. Sarah’s winning photograph will now be on public display at Cafe Opus.

Belgrade Theatre Unplugs its new season A festival which offers audiences the opportunity to enjoy rehearsed readings from the Coventry Belgrade Theatre’s forthcoming autumn season of home-produced drama is making a welcome return after enjoying great success last year. Entitled Unplugged, the week-long performance programme takes place at venues throughout Coventry and Warwickshire.

Highlights of the 2014 programme include readings from Peter Arnott’s Propaganda Swing, 2Tone musical Three Minute Heroes and the popular B2 Christmas show Oh No It Isn’t.

Commenting on the return of Unplugged, the Belgrade’s Artistic Director, Hamish Glen, said, “These events have been devised to offer people the chance to come and hear excerpts from our forthcoming autumn season in the form of rehearsed readings in interesting and inspiring settings. They aren’t fully realised productions with big sets and lighting; they are stripped back, ‘unplugged’ readings that I’m putting together with a group of talented actors, to give you a unique taste of what’s in store at the Belgrade throughout the rest of the year. Whether you’re a theatre aficionado or just looking for a fun and entertaining cultural experience, Unplugged promises to be a great showcase of some of the exciting theatre we’ve got coming up this autumn.” For more information, visit belgrade.co.uk/unplugged.

Parking Around in Brum A unique theatrical event is to be showcased at three outdoor venues in Birmingham this month. RoguePlay Theatre’s project - supported by Birmingham Rep, Active Parks and Birmingham City Council - will feature twelve local people who’ve undertaken an intense training programme in various circus disciplines. The result - a highly physical piece of theatre with a strong but simple narrative played out through circus acts, dance and physical theatre sequences - will show at the city’s Small Heath Park (8 June), Eastside Park (15 June) and Walkers Heath Park (15 June). All events are free, and will be supported by participatory workshops for both adults and children.

Lizard Lick Crew in Malvern North Carolina’s famous trucking duo, Ron and Amy Shirley, are to appear at this year’s Truckfest, at Malvern’s Three Counties Showground on 5 and 6 July. The couple, who host the hit show Lizard Lick Towing, will appear alongside celebrity truck driver Mark Dixon, The Only Way Is Essex star Joey Essex and Coronation Street actress Michelle Keegan.

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Gala Opera event for Compton Verney Warwickshire’s Compton Verney Estate has announced plans to host a Gala Opera in July. It’s hoped that the evening event will raise £15,000 for the restoration of the venue’s landscape and Grade I-listed chapel. The Gala will see one of Britain’s foremost chamber opera companies, Diva Opera, perform Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a marquee in the art gallery’s park. A range of tickets options is available for the black tie event. For more information, contact Alexandra Grimes on 01926 645 547, or via alexandra.grimes@comptonverney.org.uk

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Glee Club in search of weird and wonderful performers Birmingham comedy venue The Glee Club is on the lookout for unusual talent to take part in the venue’s latest venture, Andy Robinson’s Comedy Carousel. The brainchild of local comedian Andy, the Thursday evening slot will feature ‘people with weird and wonderful talents’ performing alongside top comedians from across the UK. Described as ‘the biggest change in live comedy in the past twenty years’, the new initiative will feature a high level of audience interaction, live use of the internet and a competitive element. Performers interested in taking part in the Comedy Carousel can apply via: comedycarousel@glee.co.uk

Lenny Henry kicks off new season at The REP

Gala boosts funds for Hippodrome Plus A recent fundraising event at Birmingham Hippodrome theatre has been hailed an unqualified success by its organisers. More than three hundred people from the region’s business community attended the fundraiser on 10 May. The event - sponsored by Hotel La Tour Birmingham in association with Shakespeare’s and supported by pantomime producer Qdos - raised nearly £50,000 via an auction and donations.

Money raised will help the theatre’s Hippodrome Plus programme, which funds education projects, access services and outdoor performances that increase engagement with young people across the city.

New Patrons for The Drum A Birmingham venue renowned for its programme of intercultural arts has welcomed two ‘phenomenal artists’ as its official Patrons. Pioneering jazz player Courtney Pine and Birmingham-born poet Dr Benjamin Zephaniah have chosen to lend their support to The Drum arts centre in the city’s Aston district, and will be instrumental in the venue’s Raising The Roof campaign.

The £4.8million fundraising project plans to redesign, refurbish and upgrade The Drum with new features, facilities and equipment.

The upgrade will increase the venue’s auditorium capacity and upgrade facilities for young people working in digital, arts, dance and drama.

Of his appointment, Courtney Pine said: “It’s a great honour to become a Patron of The Drum, particularly during the organisation’s twentieth anniversary. The Drum has evolved into an essential part of Birmingham’s cultural ecology, providing a creative intercultural platform in the UK’s most diverse city, which is home to Europe’s largest under-sixteen population.”

Courtney added that he hoped people would join him in “helping to make this visionary scheme a reality for young people in Birmingham.”

Dudley-born laughter merchant Lenny Henry is returning to the Midlands later this year to headline Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s Autumn and Winter season. The former Tiswas and New Faces star will appear at The REP in the stage premiere of Rudy’s Rare Records, which runs from 4 to 20 September.

Based on the successful BBC Radio Four series, which Henry co-created and in which he also starred, Rudy’s Rare Records is a touching comedy set in an old Birmingham reggae record shop at risk of redevelopment.

Commenting on his forthcoming engagement at The REP, Lenny said: “I’ve performed comedy gigs many times in Birmingham over the years, but this is my first straight acting role in the city and the first time I’ve been on stage at The REP, which is something I’m really looking forward to. Growing up in Dudley, I would come into Birmingham every Saturday to hang out in a record shop not too dissimilar to Rudy’s, so it’s a play that’s very close to my heart."

Rudy’s Rare Records kicks off a season at The REP which also includes a brand new staging of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, a new production of JB Priestley’s Dangerous Corner, Frantic Assembly’s award-winning production of Othello, a critically acclaimed stage adaptation of The Kite Runner, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms. The venue’s Christmas show is Roald Dahl’s The BFG.

IN BRIEF Classical feast in Coventry Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre has announced an exciting season of classical music for its 2014/15 season, launching with the Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra in October.

Armonico Consort get festive with Handel’s Messiah in December, with the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra joined by acclaimed Anglo-Russian violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky - visiting in February.

Celebrating the University of Warwick’s fiftieth anniversary next year, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will perform a programme of American music from Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein. The Royal Phil will be joined for the concert by the University of Warwick Symphony Orchestra.

Arts Council Collection’s committee acquires work from local artists Four West Midlands-based artists have had their artwork bought by the biggest loan collection of contemporary British art in the UK. Barbara Walker, Stuart Whipps, Chris Clinton and Lucy Hutchinson are among twenty-one artists whose work has been purchased by the Arts Council Collection's Acquisitions Committee. The Collection, which was founded in 1946, supports artists via the purchase and display of their work.

Commenting on the purchases, Peter Heslip, National Director Visual Arts, Arts Council England, said: “The Arts Council Collection’s Acquisition Committee is fortunate to have representation from curators and directors who work outside of London and bring their knowledge of regional artists. This means it’s one of few national art collections which is truly active supporting artists in the regions and helping them reach a wider public.”

The Collection’s acquisitions policy is characterised by a spirit of risk-taking combined with an informed appraisal of current practice. Across the years, the Collection has purchased works by numerous up-and-coming artists who’ve gone on to achieve international recognition, including Francis Bacon, Grayson Perry, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Coventry theatre company out on tour...

A theatre company which set up home in a former fish and chip shop five years ago is to head out on tour for the first time with a triptych of plays by Steve Waters. Shop Front Theatre will perform Waters’ Far From The Sea - a drama which dissects the fate of a city in a world of conflict - at Theatre Absolute along Coventry’s City Arcade from 17 to 21 June. The company then tours to Hull, Leicester and Exeter before returning to the region to perform at Birmingham’s Old Joint Stock Theatre on 11 and 12 July. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 5

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What we’ve got is four plays which are completely different from one another. They’re all really fun; really sunny and sparky. And they’re very badly behaved, too...

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Erica Whyman talks about Midsummer Mischief at the RSC...

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interview...

A woman of numerous firsts, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Deputy Artistic Director, Erica Whyman, has many years’ experience in theatres across the UK, and has a particular interest in championing new work. In 2013, Erica’s services to theatre were acknowledged with an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List. In her role at the RSC, Erica has been hugely instrumental in the planned re-opening of The Other Place, the Stratford venue in which the Company will this month present four new plays as part of its Midsummer Mischief festival. What’s On recently caught up with Erica to talk about her role at the RSC, gender politics in theatre, and why ‘wellbehaved women seldom make history’.

First and foremost, Erica, what’s your remit at the RSC? I’m Deputy Artistic Director, so basically I do what it says on the tin. I deputise for Greg Doran, the Artistic Director, which I suppose means not just being in the places that he can’t be, but working with him on the programming. I have a special responsibility for our new work, so Greg and I will talk in a lot of detail about, for instance, what we’re going to do in the Swan, which is a combination of Jacobean and Elizabethan work and plays that we might be unearthing, or plays that people love that they can only see with us, and new plays that we’ve commissioned. I have to look at how it all fits in with everything else in the programme. I also have a particular interest in making connections, inviting different kinds of theatre-makers to Stratford and to the West Midlands, either to spend some time working at the RSC or with other West Midlands artists.

You’ve been with the company now for just over twelve months. Coming from Northern Stage to such a major institution, was the transition a bit of a culture shock?

It was a bit strange at first because the theatre I was running in Newcastle had a staff of about forty-five. But there are big similarities between my previous and current roles, which I guess is why Greg asked me to come. At Northern Stage, we were interested in new work and were engaging with writers and other kinds of theatremakers - people who were devising new theatre. The year before I left, we’d joined a programme in Edinburgh which had quite a lot in common with my plans for The Other Place. So in terms of content it’s quite similar, but the scale and size of the RSC is quite different. There are some things about it that are completely wonderful and other things which are utterly bewildering, but I’m getting my head around them slowly.

So what was your brief when programming for the Midsummer Mischief Festival?

I sort of gave myself the brief. I’m charged with working out how we might open The Other Place, and I’m very excited about that.

We want to take hold of the steel box that houses The Courtyard auditorium and turn it into, amongst other things, a Studio Theatre.

That’s going to take us a couple of years, because although it’s not a huge project, we need to raise some funding for it, half of which we’ve already got in place. I was very aware that I’d talked quite a lot about radical mischief, the idea that Shakespeare’s spirit would encourage us to be quite daring in our theatre, both in our content and the way that we make theatre.

Also, 2014 is the fortieth anniversary of when Buzz Goodbody set up the The Other Place

in a tin hut on Waterside, essentially the same place where The Courtyard is now.

And so we didn’t want to miss this year. We wanted to celebrate her legacy, the legacy of The Other Place and, I suppose, herald what we’re going to do in the future. And also give people a little bit of faith that we mean what we say and that we’re going to do a different kind of smaller theatre in Stratford, in dialogue which complements the main programme. That’s where it came from. Then I started thinking about the Roaring Girls season. Obviously, Greg and I had programmed the Roaring Girls together, and I’ve been very close to the directors and the way that they’ve thought about those plays.

The plays really are magnificent, and are about quite remarkable women - but usually in a man’s world. So it seemed important to me that one of the roles of a national company, and a national theatre company with Shakespeare in our title, should be to make sure we’re listening to contemporary voices. We’re sort of asking ourselves, ‘what would Shakespeare be writing about now?’.

He was very interested in gender, as we know, and was quite bold about it. Four hundred-odd years ago, there was a lot of planned thinking about gender but also the asking of serious questions about equality.

So to me, it seemed completely appropriate to devise a very simple brief for our writers and say to them, ‘Actually, what if you wrote about well-behaved women’.

Why ‘Well-behaved women seldom make history’?

I came across a book titled the same about a year ago in New York. It was by the woman who’d originally said it, quite inadvertently, in a history article. She was a fascinating academic researcher and she’d been writing about a religious community in North America. At the bottom of a paragraph, almost as a throwaway line, she wrote: ‘Wellbehaved women seldom make history’. Years later, the slogan had been sent to her on a mug and she’d gone: ‘Oh crikey, it’s become this thing that everybody quotes!’. I came across her book and it started me thinking about good behaviour and bad behaviour, and how that feels like something which is applied to women in a different way to how it is men. So we started a process with the writers of thinking about that and, I suppose, gave them permission to be quite radical and quite daring about the issues.

And what about the plays you’ve chosen?

What we’ve got is four plays which are completely different from one another.

They’re all really fun; really sunny and sparky. And they’re very badly behaved, too, in the sense that there’s one which I’m directing that doesn’t really behave like a play at all. It’s a series of little vignettes that kind of amount to a revolution and ask the

question, ‘what would a revolution look like in 2014 if we were to have one?’. A sexual revolution, I suppose, or a revolution more broadly. These are not plays about women, but they take women seriously. I have a play in my double-bill that Timberlake Wertenbaker has written. It’s a new play about economics, about Europe and about how our language is limiting us. With the other two plays, which Jo McInnes is directing, one is more domestic in feel and is

by EV Crow. It asks deep questions about how we treat mothers and what it is to be a mother. The fourth play, by Abi Zakarian, really thinks about how the debate around feminism has got so stuck, again using quite theatrical techniques to suggest we’ve got ourselves in a place we can’t get out of in terms of men, women and gender politics.

The result of it all is quite thrilling, as they’re quite bold and unusual. They’re all short and sharp - each play is only an hour long - and it feels very nice to be doing something like this in Stratford, by contrast to the work that we make on The Swan stage or the RST stage.

Are there any plans to tour the plays postStratford?

I suspect they won’t have a long life, but never say never. The really lovely thing is that we have a collaboration with the Royal Court in London. The productions play Stratford for a whole month and then go to the Royal Court for a week to take part in their summer programme. One of the other plays, by Alice Birch, then goes on to be performed at Latitude Festival. It’s great they’ve got that London connection, but I was keen for it to be this way round and for more people to see the plays in Stratford.

Gender imbalance in theatre remains an issue. How do you personally think this can be addressed?

It is an issue, of course, but part of my answer is that we should celebrate our successes. I’ve been either running theatres - or, more recently, deputy of a major theatre - for seventeen years. I was the first woman to do any of the jobs that I’ve done, but I’m really not alone now. So I suppose I think it’s important that we notice when people do break through, when they’re in positions of influence, because I think we’re a bit hooked on the story that it’s all a disaster. I think there are other fields - I’m thinking about parts of the world where women and girls aren’t even allowed to go to school - which feel higher up the agenda. On the other hand, what I think is really shocking is how few terrific roles for women we have, both in terms of the images and stories we tell about women and the balance of our actresses, who don’t get as much of a look-in as our actors. We’ve obviously been talking about this a lot recently, and we were saying that www.whatsonlive.co.uk 7

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the thing which is shocking is that you very rarely see a play in which a woman is responsible for a significant piece of the world - whether that’s in the private sector, public sector, in government, in school, or whatever it might be - without it being thoroughly and utterly about her private life.

There’s a very strong sense that the women in our plays - and, indeed, on our television screens - are there to remind us that there’s a domestic sphere. This, to me, seems extraordinarily old-fashioned, because there are lots of women in very senior positions making a difference in the world. Women are doing very complicated jobs all over the place, but we don’t tell those stories. If we cover them, it’s about their love life and their marriages falling apart, or them not being able to cope with their washing machine.

These are all things which are part of life, but I do think there’s a gender bias in the way we select our stories. ‘State of the nation’ plays tend to be plays around men. That’s the thing which interests me most because I think there’s something we can do about it.

We can encourage writers - female writers to write us big plays, and male writers to remember that women play all sorts of roles in life and not just domestic ones. Of course, the more women in senior or influential positions in theatre, the better, because more of us are likely to be thinking about these issues. But we also have to expect our male colleagues - and Greg is very much on board with this - to take it seriously too.

that building as well. Our current costume store is a bit cramped and not in a great place, so much so that it’s difficult to have them on show to the public. So we’ll be rehousing that department so that the costumes will be on constant public display.

This will then create opportunities to tour the store and see the nitty gritty of many, many years of making costumes. There’ll also be the studio theatre, with about three hundred seats.

You’ve been in the business for a long time. How do you think people’s tastes have changed since you started out?

I suppose there’s more of a sense of adventure. There’s a generation of theatregoers who’ve now grown up with cinema and television screens being completely pervasive, including on their computers. I think this is a generation who want something from the live experience that’s a little bit more self-conscious, and I think that’s an exciting development. I also think that right now there’s a renewed seriousness about theatre and other art forms. The world’s been through quite a lot of change and continues to do so, with very difficult wars around the world, and we’re in a moment of trying to understand ourselves.

Maybe fifteen years ago we were a bit more preoccupied with entertaining ourselves.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think there’s a renewed interest in looking to theatre to present complex questions and maybe get some answers.

Again to quote ‘Well-behaved women seldom make history’, which female character in history has inspired you most on a personal level?

One of the plays, Timberlake’s play, deals with a woman who I knew nothing about. A woman called Bouboulina, who was an eighteenth century Greek naval commander who set up a fleet of ships to take on the Ottoman Empire and get Greece its freedom.

She sounds fabulous, and recently I’ve been very inspired by her. Also, I suppose some of the groundbreaking politicians that we forget about. People like Barbara Castle and Shirley Williams, who’s still going strong, really did change the way we think about politics and women. I worry that we forget they made so much change. We have these great role models and all we need to do is follow them.

Your first Main House production opens later this year. How would you describe The Christmas Truce?

I’m absolutely loving working on it. It’s such a moving and inspiring story which is, I think, quite an important antidote to - quite rightly remembering the tragedies of World War One. Although it won’t shy away from how tough it was, it’s a story not only of courage but also of peace. It’s about people who couldn’t resist peace, even if it were only for a night or two. That, to me, seems like a very Christmassy thing to do. We did some work on the script about six weeks ago and we were all in tears at the end - for the right reasons! It’s a beautiful story that’s set locally, so we’re really doing our research about the Royal Warwickshires.

Tell me about the long-term plans for The Other Place?

If we get all the funding in place this year, which I hope we will, then next year we’ll go on site. We won’t be changing the structure at all, but what we will do is build two new rehearsal spaces so that we can have the performing company for the main stages in

You sent out a plea to local people to come forward and share information. Has that benefitted the play?

Yes! I can’t tell you how many stories we’ve received! Hundreds! Too many to use, but even the stories that won’t make it into the play, or into the research, have been very useful background in helping us try and

Midsummer Mischief playwrights, from left to right: E.V. Crowe, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Abi Zakarian, Alice Birch. For further information on all four plays, visit www.rsc.org.uk

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understand how people feel about that war and what they remember. We’ve learned some things that we really didn’t know about Stratford. There were a couple of field hospitals - one of them in one of the theatre buildings and one of them in the Town Hall which were quickly overrun, so they had to move out to a big hall nearby. Also, we didn’t know that soldiers were shipped from Australia to the front line, and that when they were injured they were sent to Stratfordupon-Avon. So yeah, we’ve learned all sorts of things.

The RSC has a reputation for producing very successful Christmas shows. Is there a commercial pressure for this to be an all-singing, all-dancing production?

There’s always a pressure, but the pressure I feel is to make sure families have a really fantastic, Christmassy evening while telling them this true story. I don’t feel it has to be an all-singing version. There’s going to be live music, but it’s not a musical in the conventional sense. We’re aware that it’s a very different kind of show to make at Christmas, but I still think it’ll be uplifting and a lot of fun.

What are your future plans in your current role at the RSC. Do you have a personal plan?

Oh my God, no! As an organisation, we’ve got a five-to-six-year plan to think through all the Shakespeare that we want to do and which order we want to do them in. We’re giving a lot of energy to 2016 because it’ll be the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. His death has very rarely been commemorated, if ever. That’s a very important fixture, and I’m going to play my part in that by directing my first Shakespeare. I’ll be directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a rather unusual way, in that I’m going to have a different group of amateur actors in different touring venues across the country. So there’ll be twelve touring venues, as well as Stratford and London, and we’ll work over the next two years to find amateur actors to play Bottom and the Mechanicals. We’ll find children to play Titania’s fairy train. It’ll be an extraordinary thing, and then each of those groups will come to Stratford in the summer of 2016 and do a couple of nights on the main stage here. That’s a fairly big plan and takes up any remaining room in our heads!

Midsummer Mischief shows at The Other Place at The Courtyard Theatre from Sat 14 June to Sat 12 July

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Jason Manford Despite winning ITV1 charity-based talent competition Born To Shine, putting his new-found talent into practice by joining Alfie Boe on tour, and then starring in the critically acclaimed West End production of Sweeney Todd alongside Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, Jason Manford hasn’t forgotten his stand-up roots. Currently on the road with his First World Problems tour, Jason here talks about the attraction of stand-up - and why he sometimes wishes he was as miserable as Jack Dee...

“I’ve been really enjoying this show,” says Jason. “I have fun with the audience; it’s very friendly and relaxed and I never get bored of it. It’s an absolute joy. I love being on stage, and I want to say a huge thank you to the brilliant crowds for their loyal support!”

Jason’s charismatic style generates a real rapport with his audience, and his winning friendliness is no act. With this particular comic, what you see is what you get. “I’m the same on stage as I am in real life, which can be incredibly annoying at home! Jimmy Carr says that because he’s quite rude on stage, if he says 'hello' to a fan in the street, that will make their day. By contrast, because I’m nice on stage, unless I ask a fan if they fancy a brew, they’ll say, ‘He’s a bit rude’. I’m a victim of my own niceness. Sometimes I wish I’d gone down the Jack Dee misery route!”

Jason, who’s performed stand-up on BBC1’s Live At The Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and multiple Royal Variety Shows, has been struggling to contain his excitement about returning to live comedy.

“My show is essentially moaning about everyday life, but with punchlines,” says Jason. “People who haven't done stand-up focus on the negatives. They ask, ‘what’s it like to die on stage?’, and I always say, ‘It’s

horrendous, the worst feeling in the world’.

But the lows are so low because the highs are so high.

“Stand-up is a huge risk, but when it goes right, there’s nothing better. It creates a communal feeling that you just can’t beat.

You get all these people laughing and you think, ‘I did that!’. If you make one person laugh in a day, that’s great. Imagine multiplying that by ten thousand!”

Despite his sojourns into television with shows like 8 Out Of 10 Cats, QI, Big Fat Quiz Of The Year, League Of Their Own, Would I Lie To You, Show Me The Funny and Comedy Rocks, Jason admits that stand-up remains his overwhelming passion. “TV is simpler. You can do re-takes. But you're not getting an immediate response. You don't know if something is funny till weeks later. A lot of the time, it’s just professional reading.

It's reading while trying to make it look like you're not reading. Stand-up, on the other hand, is much more demanding. On stage, you're everything. You're the boss. You're the performer, writer, editor, director. You’re even Ofcom. You decide what to say. It's brilliant.”

Jason now has a very wide fanbase. “By now, people know that we share a sense of humour. They’re aware of what they're getting, and I’m aware of what makes them

laugh. The weirdest thing is fans who remember jokes that I’ve forgotten.

Sometimes I say to them, ‘I don’t remember that one. I must put it back in the act, it’s a good gag!’.

“It’s also really interesting to see the demographic of my audience. I get grannies, their kids and their kids. It’s great to see.”

Jason’s material is constantly evolving. “I only tour every couple of years. Over that period of time, your life and the people who surround you have changed. Also, as you get older, you get more opinionated.”

So why is his latest stand-up show entitled First World Problems?

“I’d seen the phrase online and liked it. It just sums up so much. I think the phrase emphasises those times when we moan about the most trivial things. It's as if we invent problems so we have something to moan about. I imagine someone in the third world just thinking that we’re all complete idiots!”

Jason Manford appears at Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, Fri 13 June; Palace Theatre, Redditch, Wed 9 July; The Place, Oakengates Theatre, Tues 15 July; Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa, Wed 16 July www.whatsonlive.co.uk 9

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Rhys Chatham on bringing A Secret Rose For 100 Guitars to Brum Rhys Chatham is a composer, guitarist and trumpet player from Manhattan who’s credited with ‘altering the DNA of rock music’. For over thirty years, Chatham has composed music for orchestras of electric guitars, combining classical compositions with the drive and rhythms of hard rock. His latest composition, A Secret Rose For 100 Guitars, receives its UK première as part of Frontiers Festival. What’s On recently caught up with Rhys to find out more...

Tell us more about A Secret Rose. What should audiences expect?

A Secret Rose is an orchestral piece written for one hundred electric guitars, bass guitars and drums. I’m a classically trained musician and didn’t really discover rock music until I saw a gig by The Ramones in 1976 at the New York club CBGB. From then on I went about merging the minimalist style of composing I was used to with the rock’n’roll music I loved. I started out composing for three guitars. By the 1980s, I’d worked my way up to one hundred. That many guitars playing together produces an amazing sound. Anyone who likes rock will enjoy this music.

The piece is performed by one hundred guitarists, many of whom have been recruited especially for this event. How did you find that number of performers?

I’ve created guitar orchestras all over the world. I put together a small team of musicians and technicians and we then work with a local promoter, who puts out a call for guitarists. Anyone can apply, as long as they can play; it doesn’t matter if they’re amateur

or professional. My team then reads through the applications and checks what kind of guitars people have, as some kinds work better with our amps than others. We’re usually over-subscribed. In Birmingham, we’ve had one hundred-and-sixteen applications, I think.

have the chance to play in an orchestra, but it really is such a powerful way of learning and enjoying music. I’ve seen many new groups form as a result of people meeting in our orchestras. One Portuguese man met his wife in our orchestra, and they’ve now been together for over seventeen years!

How do you go about teaching one hundred guitarists a piece of music in three days?

Well, you have to remember that I’m a minimalist composer, so the actual piece isn’t that difficult to learn. The complicated bit is putting all the separate parts together! I split the guitarists up into three groups, each of which learns the piece with a guitarist from my team. After two days of playing separately, we bring everyone together for a final day of rehearsals. It’s intense; three days is not a long time to learn seventy minutes of music.

Over your long career, you’ve worked and hung out with some unusual and incredible people. Do you have any particular stand-out memories?

I remember when Brian Eno came onto the scene I was in, in New York in the 1970s. He had his own label and he asked me to be part of a recording he was doing. Alas, I stayed out too late the night before and clean forgot all about it. I’ve regretted it ever since. New York then was such an exciting place. You could earn your keep from a few nights working in a bar or waitressing, and devote the rest of your time to music and art.

Things are so different for young artists these days.

I expect the guitarists have a great time, though?

I hope so - and, of course, they’re the stars of the show. It’s uncommon for guitarists to

Rhys Chatham presents A Secret Rose at Birmingham Town Hall on Sat 7 June. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 11

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Music George Ezra The Glee Club, Birmingham, Mon 16 June

Bristol-based Ezra is often described as having a voice beyond his nineteen years, and plays bluesy music that’s earned him extensive BBC attention.

With ‘new music’ champion Zane Lowe calling him ‘one of the most powerful and compelling new vocalists around’, Ezra featured on the Sound Of 2014 list, and has already supported stars including Willy Mason and Tom Odell. Debut album Wanted On Voyage, featuring Did You Hear The Rain? and breakthrough single Budapest, is released at the end of the month. Support at the Glee comes from Port Isla and Dancing Years.

Scott Bradlee/Postmodern Jukebox The Institute, Birmingham, Mon 16 June

The original mashup artist, Scott Bradlee began rewriting pop music back in the noughties, later gaining recognition for his Motown interpretation of Nickelback (in 2012). The musician, pianist and composer has reworked numerous hits - including Careless Whisper (a must-listen) and the Game Of Thrones theme - into 1920s-style smooth jazz tunes. Setting out to create “an alternate universe of popular music”, Scott wants audiences to see how “songs can be twisted, shaped and altered without losing their identities”. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear your favourite songs in a different light.

Public Enemy The Assembly, Leamington Spa, Wed 4 June

Named after a term that was used to describe individuals whose actions were deemed criminal or dangerous to society, Public Enemy have been around for twenty-five years, winning fans with their politically charged lyrics and hip-hop beats. Still courting controversy, rapper Professor Griff recently insulted Kanye West and his fiancée Kim Kardashian in the press, downplaying the association between music and the illuminati and concluding “Stuff ain’t real, man”. The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, joining fellow hip-hop favourites Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys.

Nick Mulvey Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, Fri 6 June

Nick is no newcomer to the music scene, having previously performed in the internationally successful jazz band Portico Quartet. After six years and numerous worldwide shows, he left the ensemble in 2011 to pursue his career as a singer-songwriter. His African-inspired guitar riffs, stunning vocals and captivating performances have bagged him a slot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury this month. Nick visits Wolverhampton as London Grammar’s support on their summer headline tour, following the release of his debut album, First Mind.

Dolly Parton LG Arena, Birmingham, Sun 22 June

Now here's a woman who's always had an ‘upfront’ sense of fun. Dolly Parton is one of the biggest and best-known names in country music and with a larger-than-life personality further recommending her, it's little wonder she's a living legend.

Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Dolly is the most honoured female country performer of all time, and boasts a back-catalogue of classic hits that includes 9 To 5, Here You Come Again, Jolene and I Will Always Love You. She visits Birmingham as part of a world tour in support of her forty-second studio album, Blue Smoke. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 13

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Music PREVIEWS Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Sun 29 June

Proving time and again that he’s much more than just a front man, Steve Harley’s not afraid to look at new ways of developing himself as a musician. Still, from his fans’ point of view, it’s his back-catalogue of hits that matters most - and Harley’s sensible enough to know that however much you may reinvent yourself, trying to deny a memorable past is futile in the extreme. With this in mind, he here performs (in full) the first two Cockney Rebel albums - 1973’s The Human Menagerie and 1974’s The Psychomodo and is ably assisted by the Orchestra of The Swan and its choir. A highlight of the show is sure to be the epic Death Trip. At twelve minutes in length, the song has never before been performed live with the full orchestration of the recorded version.

Thea Gilmore Artrix, Bromsgrove, Wed 4 June; The Assembly, Leamington Spa, Fri 6 June

A distinctly English take on the angst-rock blueprint of American artists such as Ani DiFranco and Alanis Morissette has seen Thea Gilmore gain both a cult following and critical acclaim.

Thea has played to sell-out crowds throughout the UK, and has appeared at major events such as T In The Park, V Festival and Cambridge Folk. She visits the Midlands following the massive success of her 2013 album Regardless, which featured the hit single Love Came Looking For Me.

Dexys

rock album Dig. Resurrecting classic rock, Heaven & Earth are refreshingly accessible, and very much in the same vein as Deep Purple and Bad Company.

Kasbah, Coventry, Wed 25 June

Rebranded from Dexys Midnight Runners in 2003, Dexys is the brainchild of the famously intense Kevin Rowland. A pop band with real soul, they’re very much on the comeback trail, and will here be performing songs from 2012’s One Day I’m Going To Soar - released a staggering twenty-seven years after their previous album. The band haven’t played Coventry in over thirty years, and are stopping off in the city as part of their warm-up schedule for Glastonbury. Old favourites such as Come On Eileen and Geno also feature on the playlist.

Remi Harris Trio & TG Collective Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Thurs 5 June

The young and contemporary Remi Harris Trio bring together traditional gypsy jazz and swing characteristics with influences from bebop, blues, rock, world music, contemporary jazz and popular melodies.

They’re joined for this Studio gig at Warwick Arts Centre by instrumental seven-piece TG Collective, whose sound features an intriguing mix of gypsy jazz, flamenco, jazz and contemporary classical music. Greatly admired for the intensity of their live performances, their original arrangements touch on influences as varied as Paco de Lucia, Django Reinhardt and JS Bach.

Hatful Of Rain Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham, Tues 10 June; Henry Tudor House, Shrewsbury, Sun 15 June

Named after a Tom Waits lyric, Hatful Of Rain are based in East Sussex, influenced by Old Time and remain true to the British stringband format whilst playing in a folk and roots style. Composing material strongly influenced by tradition, they perform using a single microphone to present a communal style of singing that’s both warm and intimate. True to their roots, they recorded their 2012 debut album in a converted barn.

Amp Fiddler Hare & Hounds, Birmingham, Wed 11 June

Singer and producer Joseph ‘Amp’ Fiddler is a keyboard, organ and piano player who’s shared stages and studios with Prince, the Brand New Heavies and Primal Scream.

Performing and creating in a musical style that encompasses funk, soul, dance and electronica, he’s a charismatic performer who’s best known for his work with Enchantment. Laying low in recent times, he released Basementality 2 earlier this year, a six-track EP featuring a duet with Raphael Saadiq.

Parquet Courts The Institute, Birmingham, Mon 23 June

Heaven & Earth O2 Academy, Birmingham, Thurs 26 June

Starting out as a solo project for guitarist Stuart Smith, Heaven & Earth came about when the former Sweet guitarist enlisted friends Richie Sambora, Joe Lynn Turner, Glenn Hughes, Camine Appice, Howard Leese and Kelly Hansen to help him record an album.

Released in 1998 to great critical acclaim, Stuart Smith’s Heaven & Earth was followed

by Windows To The World in 2001. More recently, the band have released bluesy hard

New York punk-rock four-piece Parquet Courts have the energy of The Clash, and perform with surly disdain. Putting out their first EP, American Specialities, on cassette in 2011, they followed up a year later with Light Up Gold, which was recorded in three days after the band pulled sickies from work. Now on the road with Sunbathing Animal, the boys have said it was “out of character” for them to spend so long in the studio recording the follow-up. They play five UK shows ahead of their Longitude and Latitude festival appearances in July. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 15

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Music GIG REVIEWS

Music LISTINGS

For further reviews, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk

For full listing information on gigs, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Prince LG Arena, Birmingham Given that Prince is one of the most influential recording artists of all time, it’s hardly surprising that the announcement of his return to Birmingham after a nineteen-year absence was greeted with a veritable frenzy of expectation. But could the reality of his long-awaited return live up to the expectation?

The answer was a resounding yes.

Throwing himself body and soul into a mammoth thirty-four-song set, the now-fifty-five-year-old ‘godfather of funk’ ably illustrated both his seemingly endless talent for self-reinvention and his pretty much unrivalled ability as a multi-instrumentalist and live performer.

A set by no means short of surprises got off to a characteristically playful start, courtesy of three false-alarm dips of the lights. Entering the stage to the pounding bass riff of Funk’N’Roll, and decked out in a fitted white suit and flared trousers, Prince (complete with full-bodied afro) channelled the spirit of his icon, Jimmi Hendrix. This was a performance refreshingly free from frills or special effects, the live experience instead being allowed to speak for itself.

The set combined funked-up reinventions of popular crowd-pleasers 1999, Controversy, Kiss - with extended renditions of lesser-known album tracks such as Raspberry Beret, and tantalisingly brief mashups spanning the entirety of Prince’s eclectic back-catalogue.

What stood out most, though, beyond the artist’s undisputed showmanship, was his musicianship. Shifting from virtuoso guitar solos reminiscent of Hendrix in his prime to stripped-back acoustic solos highlighting his pitch-perfect vocal delivery, Prince presented a set marked by chameleonic shifts in style, texture and mood, successfully steering the line between self-indulgence and celebration.

Special mention, too, must go to the all-female backing band, 3rdEyeGirl. Lead guitarist Donna Grantis’ intricate and unremittingly energetic solo sequences were a joy to behold.

Highlights of the evening included a full-bodied funk-rock reimagining of the 1999 album track Something In The Water (Does Not Compute), a richly soulful performance of How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore?, and the hotly-anticipated versions of ’80s pop classics 1999, Kiss and When Doves Cry. But the pinnacle of the evening came in the form of an epic live rendition of Purple Rain, which combined richly layered instrumentation with soaring guitar solo sequences reminiscent of a later-era Pink Floyd.

An awe-inspiring performance! Katherine Ewing ■■■■■

Neil Finn Symphony Hall, Birmingham With teatowels and tote bags for sale alongside tee shirts on the merchandise stand, it would be easy to dismiss Neil Finn as a middleaged, middle-of-the-road act. But while his audience demographic might suggest otherwise, the brilliant New Zealand singer-songwriter is anything but MOR. His former (and now on-off) band, Crowded House, always had far more depth and edge than a perfunctory assessment would suggest, and Finn’s recent solo album, Dizzy Heights, adds a variety of contemporary twists and textures to his typically melodic palate. But if the album is a triumph, this live show totally eclipsed it. Ably supported (as well as rejuvenated) by a formidable backing band featuring his wife and a group of musicians young enough to be his offspring (his two sons are regular cohorts), Finn showcased material from all areas of his CV in an inspired and inspiring performance. Bookending the curfew-breaking one hundred-andfifty-minute set with stunning solo acoustic readings of Crowded House classics World Where You Live and Better Be Home Soon, he slipped as effortlessly between piano and electric/acoustic guitar as he did between the various phases of his career. Indeed, it was surprising how easily the thirty-plus years of tunes slotted together; whether it was energetic rock (Locked Out, I Got You), psychedelic pop (Divebomber, Suffer Never), piano balladry (Message To My Girl) or simply the Weather (With You). Finn’s genial bonhomie - he performed the requested Enz song Six Months In A Leaky Boat despite it being one of his brother Tim’s tunes - further enhanced the experience. So, too, did the musicians, who seemed to be enjoying the evening every bit as much as the audience. Guitarist Jesse Sheehan even got an extended solo slot while Finn retuned his instrument.

In short, there really was some-Finn for everyone to enjoy.

Steve Adams ■■■■■

SUN 1 JUN MAKUINI AND THE HOODOO MEN The Robin, Bilston SMOKE FAIRIES Hare & Hounds, Birmingham TOUMANI & SIDIKI DIABATE Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry BLAKE & BRAZIL Irish Centre, Birmingham ROO PANES The Yardbird Jazz Club, Birmingham BACKYARD MUSIC BOYS Oozells Square, B’ham STEVE AJAO’S CLUB BEBOP Spotted Dog, Birmingham THE DAVE FARRANT BAND, BLANK PARODY & SECOND TRIP The Actress & Bishop, B’ham COWER, HOUNDS!, ONE LIFE LEFT & KRITICAL CHARGE The Flapper, Birmingham

MON 2 JUN THE DUNNETT/BAXTER BIG BAND The Yardbird Jazz Club, Birmingham HOT POTATO FEATURING YEDO GIBSON Birmingham Conservatoire CARNABY STREET: THE CONCERT Solihull Arts Complex VERSES The Asylum, Birmingham

TUE 3 JUN HOLLIS BROWN Hare & Hounds, Birmingham ANGELA BROWN The Robin, Bilston KROCK - THREE OBJECTS IN A CONCERT HALL Birmingham Conservatoire HOWLING BELLS Hare & Hounds, Birmingham JOHN FULLBRIGHT The Glee Club, Birmingham THE MARRAKESH EXPRESS Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham THE WEDDING CRASHERS The Jam House, B’ham

WED 4 JUN THE SEARCHERS Tamworth Assembly Rooms JONNY COLE'S BLACK COUNTRY BEACH PARTY The Robin, Bilston THEA GILMORE Artrix Bromsgrove ALPHA MALE TEA PARTY, MOUNT FUJI, WAX FEATURES & POCKET APOCALYPSE The Flapper, Birmingham SAM BAKER Hare & Hounds, Birmingham THE BLUES BAND Solihull Arts Complex PUBLIC ENEMY The Assembly, Leamington Spa UPRAWR 4TH BIRTHDAY The Asylum, B’ham FRANÇOIS THÉBERGE Birmingham Conservatoire

ANTA The Tin Music And Arts, Coventry ABANDOMAN - MOON ROCK BOOMBOX TOUR Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton WOODEN SHJIPS O2 Academy, Birmingham ALLUSONDRUGS, MILK TEETH & FIZZY BLOOD The Actress & Bishop, Birmingham THE SPEAKEASY Kitchen Garden Cafe, B’ham LAURENCE JONES BAND The Assembly, Leamington Spa THE FAMILY RAIN Hare & Hounds, Birmingham LUCAS D & THE GROOVE GHETTO The Jam House, Birmingham HANSU-TORI Ort Cafe, Birmingham

THU 5 JUN THE BEE GEES SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER PARTY WITH STAYIN' ALIVE Crewe Lyceum THE MOVE The Robin, Bilston THE BOHEMIANS - A NIGHT OF QUEEN Solihull Arts Complex BIG WOLF BAND The Roadhouse, B’ham ANGEL OLSEN Hare & Hounds, Birmingham MONKATHON FINALE The Yardbird Jazz Club, Birmingham WARREN SMITH WITH SPECIAL GUESTS Hare & Hounds, Birmingham REMI HARRIS TRIO & TG COLLECTIVE Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry JILL AND KATE The Actress & Bishop, B’ham MR BEN The Jam House, Birmingham MJ HIBBETT, GRACE PETRIE & GAVIN OSBORN Ort Cafe, Birmingham

FRI 6 JUN CBSO HEROES AND SUPERHEROES Symphony Hall, Birmingham THE INTENTIONS The Jam House, B’ham MOSTLY AUTUMN The Robin, Bilston HENRY PRIESTMAN Huntingdon Hall, Worcester LONDON GRAMMAR Civic Hall, Wolverhampton NICK MULVEY Civic Hall, Wolverhampton VOODOO ROOM Artrix, Bromsgrove THEA GILMORE The Assembly, Leamington Spa HOZIER O2 Academy, Birmingham PUTTING ON THE RITZ Upton House & Gardens, Warwickshire FOREST Hare & Hounds, Birmingham PIAF IN CABARET Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury THE RONALDOS Fleet Street Kitchen, B’ham

MISTY'S BIG ADVENTURE Hare & Hounds, B’ham FRAN THE MAN Irish Centre, Birmingham JOHNNY 2 BAD Irish Centre, Birmingham HOT RED CHILI PEPPERS The Marr's Bar, Worcester THE SUPERSKAS Newhampton Arts Centre, Wolverhampton MELLOW PEACHES, CHRIS CLEVERLEY & ELLIS TALBOT Ort Cafe, B’ham THE DESERT MONKEYS The River Rooms, Stourbridge THE QUO The Roadhouse, Birmingham THE SHAPES, DOMESTIC BLESS & HUFFY Route 44, Birmingham BLUES BOY DAN OWEN The Tin Music And Arts, Coventry THE YAMAHA SCHOLARS Symphony Hall, B’ham JACQUI DANKWORTH The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury THE JAKE LEG JUG BAND The Water’s Edge Bandstand, B’ham MILOS Malvern Theatres

SAT 7 JUN THE INTENTIONS The Jam House, B’ham THE JENTS The Slug and Lettuce, Birmingham LIMEHOUSE LIZZY The Robin, Bilston THE TREORCHY MALE VOICE CHOIR Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa CARLTON MALE VOICE CHOIR Huntingdon Hall, Worcester RHYS CHATHAM'S A SECRET ROSE Birmingham Town Hall ROCK ‘N’ ROLL PARADISE The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury SYMPHONY SOUNDS Symphony Hall, B’ham NICK OLIVERI The Institute, Birmingham NICK MALCOLM QUARTET The Hive, Shrewsbury DRENGE Kasbah, Coventry FABIO, BRYAN G & LENZMAN Hare & Hounds, Birmingham WHOLE LOTTA LED Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Shropshire MAETLOAF The River Rooms, Stourbridge SWEET BABOO Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry FOLLOW YOU HOME O2 Academy, Birmingham THE ELO EXPERIENCE Artrix, Bromsgrove BBC BIG BAND Bedworth Civic Hall TASKERS, THE MONICAS & SIERRA HOTEL The Flapper, Birmingham THE FATHER TEDS Irish Centre, Birmingham BROOKE SHARKEY, ADAM BEATTIE & LEANDER JONES Ort Cafe, B’ham BLOODSTOCK FESTIVAL'S METAL TO THE MASSES SEMI FINAL The Roadhouse, Birmingham DAVID COSLETT & JOSH KEMP Hare & Hounds, Birmingham THE CLONED STONES Route 44, Birmingham

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Music LISTINGS For full listing information on gigs, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk GOD DAMN The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton

SUN 8 JUN TALON - THE BEST OF EAGLES Lichfield Garrick COLIN BLUNSTONE & BAND The Robin, Bilston RED DRAGON CARTEL The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton KAST OFF KINKS Hare & Hounds, Birmingham DAVID LANG - CROWD OUT Millennium Point, Birmingham ELECTRIC CAKE SALAD, THE ROZ BRUCE INFUSION, TANG & ULYSSES The Actress & Bishop, Birmingham INTERPLAY & SONRISA Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry GENTLE FRIENDLY Hare & Hounds, Birmingham MARIAN & ALLY HARRON Irish Centre, B’ham MAGIC & LOSS - THE MUSIC OF LOU REED The Roadhouse, B’ham

MON 9 JUN THE ENEMY The Sugarmill, Stoke-on-Trent PEACE The Assembly, Leamington Spa BELLA HARDY New Vic Theatre, Newcastleunder-lyme THE KENNEDYS Henry Tudor House, Shrewsbury GHETTS The Institute, Birmingham

TUE 10 JUN HATFUL OF RAIN Kitchen Garden Cafe, B’ham RIVAL SONS O2 Academy, Birmingham BEN DRUMMOND The Jam House, Birmingham

WED 11 JUN GOSPEL CENTRAL The Jam House, Bi’ham THE FOUR SEASONS Number 8 Community Arts Centre, Pershore JOHN BRAMWELL The Robin, Bilston THREE STEP MANOEUVRE FUNKY ORGAN TRIO The Yardbird Jazz Club, Birmingham AMP FIDDLER Hare & Hounds, Birmingham ASIA Malvern Theatres DESERT SUN, VINYETTE & NEVERENDER The Roadhouse, Birmingham

THU 12 JUN BELLA HARDY mac, Birmingham ABBAMANIA Prince Of Wales Centre, Cannock JUDIE TZUKE Huntingdon Hall, Worcester BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE FOLK ENSEMBLE Foxlowe Arts Centre,

Leek ANATHEMA The Assembly, Leamington Spa CLUB CLASSICS LIVE The Jam House, B’ham MERCHANTS OF COOL The Roadhouse, B’ham

FRI 13 JUN ROCKET The Jam House, Birmingham PANIC ROOM The Robin, Bilston LADY BE GOOD Dovehouse Theatre, Solihull THE DRIFTERS Dudley Town Hall MAGOOL mac, B’ham THE MUMBLECORES The Flapper, Birmingham CASINO The Actress & Bishop, Birmingham PET SHOP BOYS LG Arena, Birmingham FRED ZEPPELIN The River Rooms, Stourbridge THE WEDDING CRASHERS The Water’s Edge Bandstand, B’ham ROBBIE MOORE QUINTET Symphony Hall, B’ham BOYS MAKE NOISE Artrix, Bromsgrove THE MAGIC OF MOTOWN Malvern Theatres 1215 Fleet Street Kitchen, Birmingham HIGHGRADE - SUMMER SESSION The Institute, Birmingham FOUR ACES Irish Centre, Birmingham THE FOO FIGHTERS TRIBUTE The Marr's Bar, Worcester MIDNIGHT BONFIRES Hare & Hounds, B’ham HOT RED CHILI PEPPERS The Roadhouse, B’ham BEAR & STEVIE E'S ROCK DISCO Route 44, B’ham THE PERSONAS The Sugarmill, Stoke-on-Trent SMITHED Moochers, Stourbridge QUILL The Assembly, Leamington Spa DUKE & DETECTIVE O2 Academy, Birmingham HOLLYWOOD ENDING Kasbah, Coventry

SAT 14 JUN ROCKET The Jam House, Birmingham TAKE THAT RELIGHTING THE FIRE The Robin, Bilston THE MOTOWN BLACK TIE MIDSUMMER BALL WITH RICHIE SAMPSONS DRIFTERS Nailcote Hall, Berkswell, Warwickshire STRICTLY ABBA Theatre On The Steps, Bridgnorth, Shropshire JOE BROUGHTON'S CONSERVATOIRE FOLK ENSEMBLE Huntingdon Hall, Worcester ROXY MAGIC The Roadhouse, Birmingham PHOENIX GOLD Irish Centre, Birmingham RHOMBUS The Marr's Bar, Worcester

The Pet Shop Boys - LG Arena, Birmingham

THE STRANGEST FEELING Ort Cafe, Birmingham BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNITY Route 44, B’ham THE BOOTLEG SHADOWS Tamworth Assembly Rooms, Staffs THE MOTIVES The Sugarmill, Stoke-on-Trent HALFWAY TO PARADISE Prince Of Wales Theatre, Cannock KILL THE ROMANTIC, STORMRIDDEN & PRIMER The Flapper, B’ham PIERRE BENSUSAN mac, Birmingham

SUN 15 JUN THE GRIMETHORPE COLLIERY BAND Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury ANDY JORDAN O2 Academy, Birmingham ADRIAN EDMONDSON & THE BAD SHEPHERDS The Robin, Bilston THE KENNEDYS Kitchen Garden Cafe, B’ham HOLLYWOOD ENDING O2 Academy, Birmingham HATFUL OF RAIN Henry Tudor House, Shrewsbury TOM HEALY Irish Centre, Birmingham THE REMI HARRIS GYPSY JAZZ PROJECT Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Shropshire MARTIN & ELIZA CARTHY Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Shropshire SARA SMITH TRIO Quality Square, Ludlow GIOCOSO SAXOPHONE QUARTET Oozells Square, Birmingham

MON 16 JUN WALSALL JAZZ ORCHESTRA Forest Arts Centre, Walsall ANDY JORDAN The Sugarmill, Stoke-on-Trent GEORGE EZRA The Glee Club, Birmingham ROD CLEMENTS Kitchen Garden Cafe, B’ham SCOTT BRADLEE & POSTMODERN JUKEBOX The Institute, Birmingham

TUE 17 JUN THE ILLEGAL EAGLES Bel-

grade Theatre, Coventry THE DELINES Hare & Hounds, Birmingham THE CYBORGS The Robin, Bilston TROYKA & PULCINELLA The Tin Music And Arts, Coventry JEFFREY LEWIS & THE JRAMS The Actress & Bishop, Birmingham

WED 18 JUN MOTOWN'S GREATEST HITS - HOW SWEET IT IS Belgrade Theatre, Coventry TAKING CARE OF ELVIS Malvern Theatres, Worcestershire HAMILTON LOOMIS The Jam House, B’ham BABAJACK The Robin, Bilston

THU 19 JUN TAKING CARE OF ELVIS Belgrade Theatre, Coventry QUEEN ALIVE The Robin, Bilston THE BLUES BAND Tamworth Assembly Rooms MEL DAY & THE SOUL SURVIVORS The Jam House, Birmingham HARP DUO Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Shropshire

FRI 20 JUN UP4 THE DOWNSTROKE The Jam House, B’ham AND FINALLY - PHIL COLINS TRIBUTE SHOW The Robin, Bilston LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING Solihull Arts Complex SHERRY COUNSELLORS The Sugarmill, Stokeon-Trent THE STAFFORDSHIRE BAND - MYTHS AND LEGIONS Forest Arts Centre, Walsall ABBA MANIA Belgrade Theatre, Coventry THE CLASSIC ROCK TRIPLE HEADER The Roadhouse, B’ham THE LOVED & LOST O2 Academy, Birmingham MISTY IN ROOTS The Assembly, Leamington Spa

COLDPLACE The River Rooms, Stourbridge PETE CHURCHILL Symphony Hall, B’ham THE DETACHED COLLECTIVE The Actress & Bishop, Birmingham PLASTIC PANTOMIME Fleet Street Kitchen, Birmingham LIFE & GOD DAMN Hare & Hounds, Birmingham HOT CLUB DE SWING FESTIVAL TEA PARTY Hare & Hounds, B’ham JOHN KIERNAN Irish Centre, Birmingham THE BIG WOLF BAND Route 44, Birmingham THE DELRAY ROCKETS Moochers, Stourbridge DAVID REA Quality Square, Ludlow RUDIE AND THE REVOLVERS The Water’s Edge Bandstand, Birmingham MR GEORGE’S FAMOUS LAST WORDS, KLASSIDE & ABBERLINE The Flapper, Birmingham

SAT 21 JUN UP4 THE DOWNSTROKE The Jam House, B’ham THE MOTELLAS Nailcote Hall, Berkswell AND FINALLY - PHIL COLLINS TRIBUTE SHOW Solihull Arts Complex THE STONES The Roadhouse, Birmingham KASABIAN Victoria Park, Leicester WORBEY AND FARRELL Huntingdon Hall, B’ham MICHAEL KING PRESENTS THE BILLY FURY YEARS Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury MOTOWN MAGIC The Swan Theatre, Worcester GREEN DAY UK The Robin, Bilston OLLY MURS TRBUTE The Great Barr Hotel, B’ham PRELUDE The Edge Arts Centre, Much Wenlock ROCK ANTHEMS Number 8 Community Arts Centre, Pershore THE WEEKEND ANTHEMS The River Rooms, Stourbridge BIG BAND FINALE CONCERT Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry

TIGER CUB O2 Academy, Birmingham THE HOT HEADS The Actress & Bishop, B’ham KIRVANA - A TRIBUTE TO NIRVANA The Flapper, Birmingham HOTWIRED Irish Centre, Birmingham RIFF RAFF The Marr's Bar, Worcester SOUR MASH Route 44, Birmingham WHITE NOISE THEORY The Sugarmill, Stokeon-Trent SOULSHAKE The Yardbird Jazz Club, B’ham KING PLEASURE & THE BISCUIT BOYS Moochers, Stourbridge SOUNDS OF SUMMER Town Hall, Birmingham WOODEN HORSE Artrix, Bromsgrove

SUN 22 JUN DOLLY PARTON LG Arena, Birmingham ALOHA FROM HAWAII Lichfield Garrick GEORGE BENSON Symphony Hall, B’ham THE SOUTH Crewe Lyceum TOUCHSTONE The Robin, Bilston CATHERINE FEENY Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham MALONE MALONE The Institute, Birmingham SHAWN CUDDY Irish Centre, Birmingham THE PEOPLE'S ORCHESTRA Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham SAM SAX MAN The Water’s Edge Bandstand, Birmingham

MON 23 JUN DOPETHRONE The Asylum, Birmingham PARQUET COURTS The Institute, Birmingham DAVID GRAY Symphony Hall, Birmingham

TUE 24 JUN MITCH LADDIE The Robin, Bilston JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall, Birmingham SUMMER PROM CONCERT Evesham Arts Centre

For full music listings in the West Midlands, visit. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 19

Music June Region One_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:29 Page 9

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Music June Region One_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:29 Page 10

Music LISTINGS For full listing information on gigs, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk HOLLY WILLIAMS TRIO The Glee Club, B’ham CHERRY GHOST The Institute, Birmingham EDWINA HAYES The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury

WED 25 JUN NURVRAX JAM The Yardbird Jazz Club, B’ham GARETH GATES O2 Academy, Birmingham MISFITS The Assembly, Leamington Spa MORELAND & ARBUCKLE The Jam House, B’ham DEXYS Kasbah, Coventry

THU 26 JUN DEL CAMINO The Jam House, Birmingham ROY ORBISON AND FRIENDS Lichfield Garrick HEAVEN & EARTH O2 Academy, Birmingham MONOCLED MAN Hare & Hounds, Birmingham PANSPERMIA & LET VENGEANCE RISE O2 Academy, Birmingham NILE The Robin, Bilston BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST Artrix, Bromsgrove QUEEN ALIVE The Road-

house, Birmingham

FRI 27 JUN ONCE IN A LIFETIME: The Final Tour Featuring The Osmonds, David Essex, Showaddywaddy & Les McKeowan's Bay City Rollers, LG Arena, Birmingham AND FINALLY - PHIL COLINS TRIBUTE SHOW Lichfield Garrick SONGS OF STRUGGLE The Drum, Birmingham RAGHU DIXIT The Glee Club, Birmingham JESSIE J Cannock Chase Forest GRAPPELLI SWING Huntingdon Hall, Worcester SKABUCKS The Roadhouse, Birmingham DANCING QUEEN Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury THE RED LEMONS The Jam House, B’ham AC/DC UK The Robin, Bilston ROCK IT! Malvern Theatres HIGHTOWER O2 Academy, Birmingham SIMON SPILLETT QUARTET Symphony Hall, B’ham ONLY SHADOWS The Actress & Bishop, B’ham DEVIL RED THE REMEDY

The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton MJ TRIBUTE Fleet Street Kitchen, Birmingham BOAT TO ROW Hare & Hounds, Birmingham PAT BRESLIN Irish Centre, Birmingham GREEN HAZE Route 44, Birmingham POLICE DOG HOGAN The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury MALLEN The Flapper, Birmingham

SAT 28 JUN THE RED LEMONS The Jam House, B’ham AND FINALLY - PHIL COLLINS TRIBUTE The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury THE BEATLES WITH TOP TRIBUTE BAND THE NAKED BEATLES The Robin, Bilston PAUL WELLER Cannock Chase Forest HAT FITZ & CARA Huntingdon Hall, Worcester LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury THE RAT PACK VEGAS SPECTACULAR Malvern Theatres SWEDE DREAMZ - ABBA TRIBUTE NIGHT The Great Barr Hotel, B’ham THE BON JOVI EXPERIENCE The River Rooms, Stourbridge WARLORD UK O2 Academy, Birmingham THE MANFREDS Lichfield Garrick

Jessie J, Cannock Chase Forest

HAWK EYES The Flapper, Birmingham UNDER THE COVERS Irish Centre, Birmingham BOXCAR ALDOUS HUXLEY & ANDY OLIVERI Ort Cafe, Birmingham IVOR & LYNN'S CLASSIC ROCK DISCO Route 44, Birmingham

SUN 29 JUN STEVE HARLEY & COCKNEY REBEL Symphony Hall, Birmingham SIMPLY DYLAN Kitchen Garden Cafe, B’ham FRANKLEY GUITAR CLUB SUMMER CONCERT Artrix, Bromsgrove KENNY DANCE FEIS Irish

Centre, Birmingham BLAKE & BRAZIL Irish Centre, Birmingham

MON 30 JUN LARKIN POE Hare & Hounds, Birmingham NEW AMERICAN TROUBADOURS Henry Tudor House, Shrewsbury

Music Venues Box Office Across The Midlands Birmingham 02 ACADEMY 0121 622 8250 THE ACTRESS & BISHOP 0121 236 7426 ADRIAN BOULT HALL 0121 331 5901 THE ASYLUM 0121 233 1109 THE BARBER INSTITUTE 0121 414 7333 BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL 0121 780 3333 CBSO CENTRE 0121 780 3333 FLAPPER 0121 236 2421 THE GLEE CLUB 0871 472 0400 HARE & HOUNDS 0121 444 2081 THE INSTITUTE 0121 643 0428 IRISH CENTRE 0121 622 2314 THE JAM HOUSE 0121 200 3030 THE KITCHEN GARDEN CAFE 0121 443 4725 LG ARENA 0844 338 8000 NIA 0844 338 8000 THE RAINBOW 0121 772 8174 RED LION FOLK CLUB 0121472 4253 THE ROADHOUSE 0121 246 2273 ROUTE 44 0121 708 0108 SYMPHONY HALL 0121 780 3333 THE VICTORIA 0121 633 9439

THE YARDBIRD 0121 212 2524

Black Country CIVIC HALL, WOLVERHAMPTON 0870 320 7000 DUDLEY CONCERT HALL 01384 815577 FOREST ARTS CENTRE 0845 111 2898 NEWHAMPTON ARTS CENTRE 01902 572090 ROBIN 2, BILSTON 01902 401211 SLADE ROOMS WOLVERHAMPTON

Staffordshire FOXLOWE ARTS CENTRE, LEEK 01538 386112 LICHFIELD GUILDHALL 01543 262223 THE SUGARMILL, HANLEY STOKE-ON-TRENT 01159 454 593 TAMWORTH ASSEMBLY ROOMS 01827 709618 VICTORIA HALL, HANLEY 0870 060 6649 STAFFORD GATEHOUSE

01785 254653

0870 320 7000

Warwickshire

STOURBRIDGE TOWN HALL 01384 812812 WULFRUN HALL, WOLVERHAMPTON

THE ASSEMBLY, LEAMINGTON 01926 311311

0870 320 7000

Shropshire BIRCHMEADOW, BROSELEY 01952 882210 THE BUTTERMARKET, SHREWSBURY 01743 355055 THE EDGE ARTS CENTRE, MUCH WENLOCK 01952 728911 HENRY TUDOR HOUSE SHREWSBURY 01743 361666 THE HIVE, SHREWSBURY 01743 234970 LUDLOW ASSEMBLY ROOMS 01584 878141 THEATRE SEVERN, SHREWSBURY 01743 281281 THE PLACE, OAKENGATES, TELFORD 01952 382382 WEM TOWN HALL 01939 232299

THE KASBAH, COVENTRY 024 7655 4473 NAILCOTE HALL, BERKSWELL 02476 46 6174 STRATFORD CIVIC HALL 01789 207100 THE TIN MUSIC & ARTS, COVENTRY 0247 655 9958

Worcestershire ARTRIX, BROMSGROVE 01527 577330 HUNTINGDON HALL / SWAN THEATRE 01905 611427 MARR’S BAR, WORCESTER 01905 613336 THE RIVER ROOMS, STOURBRIDGE 01384 397177

For additional information and to find out What’s On at these venues.

Visit: www.whatsonlive.co.u k

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Classical June Region One_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:04 Page 1

Barbara Hannigan

Classical Music PREVIEWS

Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Wed 18 June

Hot on the heels of her performance as Marie in Zimmerman’s Die Soldaten, acclaimed Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan this month performs alongside the CBSO in the UK premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s Let Me Tell You. Hannigan’s much-anticipated performance features in a programme of works entitled Strauss And Shakespeare, Abrahamsen’s orchestral song cycle having been inspired by the works of the Stratford bard. Under the baton of Andris Nelsons, the evening begins with Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and culminates with Strauss’ Symphonica Domestica 44’ a no-holds-barred musical diary of a day with the Strauss family.

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group: Crowd Out Millennium Point, Birmingham, Sun 8 June

Here world-premiered in an epic-scale production, David Lang’s new piece for one thousand untrained voices is one of the largest vocal events ever to be staged in Birmingham. The work has been commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) and encompasses a wide range of public singing and vocalising - including football chanting. CBSO Chorus Director Simon Halsey - widely regarded as one of the world’s top choral conductors - leads the performance. The production visits Berlin and London following its Birmingham debut.

Welsh National Opera: Faith

Wagner’s Ring: Götterdämmerung

Birmingham Hippodrome, Weds 18 - Fri 20 June

Founded in Cardiff in 1943, Welsh National Opera (WNO) is committed to producing highly accessible work for its audiences, whether they be opera-going regulars or people attending for the very first time. Here presenting three works from its summer season, the company explores the subject of faith, and the way in which music and religion are brought together.

Schoenberg’s rarely performed Moses Und Aron opens the Hippodrome season. Standing as one of the most powerful political statements of the twentieth century, the three-act opera is a response to the composer’s reflections, both on the existence of God and his own musical and religious identity.

A piece from the opposite end of the operatic spectrum follows when the company presents Nabucco. One of Verdi’s earliest hits, the work is often referred to as ‘the operatic equivalent of a 1950s biblical Hollywood epic’. It includes a rousing score featuring The Chorus Of The Hebrew Slaves.

WNO ends its latest Hippodrome season with a double-bill, bringing together Debussy’s La Chute de la Maison - based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher - and the world stage premiere of Gordon Getty’s Usher House.

22 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Sat 21 June

Dante Quartet Avoncroft Museum, Bromsgrove, Wed 25 June

Held in high regard for their imaginative programming, the Dante Quartet are resident at King’s College, Cambridge. They’re also the team behind the esteemed Dante Summer Festival, which takes place in the Tamar Valley every July.

Comprising Yuko Inoue (viola), Richard Jenkinson (cello), and Krysia Osostowicz and Oscar Perks (violins), the quartet this month return to the Midlands for the Bromsgrove Festival, where they’ll perform Haydn’s Quartet Op 33 No 1 and Schubert’s Quartettsatz.

Opera North’s four-year traversal of Wagner’s Ring Cycle here comes to a conclusion with the composer’s awe-inspiring final opera. Sung in German with English surtitles, Götterdämmerung finds Siegfried falling amongst enemies, Brünnhilde’s love being betrayed and the gods themselves confronting the end of a world.

Alwyn Mellor, who garnered great critical acclaim for her 2012 portrayal of Sieglinde in Opera North’s Die Walküre, sings the role of Brünnhilde. She’s joined by Estonian tenor Mati Turi as Siegfried and Swedish bass Mats Almgren as Hagen.

Classical June Region One_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:04 Page 2

Classical LISTINGS For full listing information on classical concerts, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk THE SACCONI QUARTET With Freddy Kempf (piano). Programme includes Elgar's Piano Quintet & Schubert's Piano Quintet in A Major 'The Trout', Sun 1 June, Malvern Theatres EDWARD DUSINBERRE & CHARLES OWEN Programme to include works by Brahms, Bach, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, Sun 1 June, Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa LUNCHTIME ORGAN CONCERT WITH ROGER OWENS The programme will include works by Gershwin, Mozart and Addinsell, Mon 2 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham SINFONIETTA CONCERT Featuring music from James Oldham, Fang Fang, Richard Stenton, Luke Deane, Andy Ingamells and Ryan Probert, Mon 2 June, Birmingham Conservatoire LUNCHTIME ORGAN CONCERT WITH NIGEL ALLCOAT Mon 2 June, Coventry Cathedral Of Ruins BRAHMSIAD Tues 3 June, Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham CBSO SUMMER SERENADE Featuring Laurence Jackson (violin/director) & Christopher Yates (viola). Programme includes works by Grieg, Mozart, Dvorak & Tchaikovsky, Thurs 5 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE Thurs 5 June, Birmingham Conservatoire BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE ORGAN DEPARTMENT IN CONCERT Fri 6 June, St Swithun’s Church, Worcester CBSO HEROES AND SUPERHEROES Featuring Richard Kaufman (conductor) and music from Superman, Dance with Wolves, 633 Squadron, Saving Private Ryan, The Sea Hawk, SpiderMan, Silverado and many more, Fri 6 June, Symphony Hal, Birmingham THE TREORCHY MALE VOICE CHOIR Sat 7 June, Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa CARLTON MALE VOICE CHOIR Sat 7 June, Huntingdon Hall, Worcester SYMPHONY SOUNDS Presented by The Salvation Army and featuring The International Staff Band and International Staff Songsters, Sat 7 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham

BACH ORGAN RECITAL Sun 8 June, St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury CHORAL EVENSONG TO COMMEMORATE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY Sun 8 June, St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury LUNCHTIME ORGAN CONCERT WITH JONATHAN ALLSOPP Mon 9 June, Coventry Cathedral Of Ruins LUCY CHANG Tues 10 June, Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham COMPOSERS’ PLATFORM Tues 10 June, Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire BACH ORGAN RECITAL Tues 10 June, St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury CBSO THOMAS ADES: NEW HORIZONS Featuring Thomas Ades (conductor) and Nicolas Hodges (piano). Programme includes works

by Ravel, Barry, Coll and Ades, Wed 11 June, Symphony Hall CBSO SCHOOL’S CONCERTS: CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS Devised specially for students at Key Stage 2. Featuring Michael Seal (conductor) and Nikky Smedley (presenter), Thurs12 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham THE NAVARRO STRING QUARTET Programme featuring works by Mozart & Beethoven, Thurs 12 June, Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire THE PRIMROSE PIANO QUINTET Programme includes works by; JS Bach, Bridge, Francaix & Schumann, Fri 13 June, Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire THE HEPPLEWHITE TRIO Programme includes works by Bridge & Dvorak, Fri 13 June, Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire RUISI STRING QUARTET Programme includes works by Mozart, Haydn & Debussy, Fri 13 June, Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO Fri 13 - Sun 15 June, Barber Institute, Birmingham THE SCHUBERT ENSEMBLE OF LONDON Sat 14 June, Adrian Boult, Birmingham THE CBSO PLAY THE ADRIAN BOULT HALL Programme includes works

by Grieg, Pehkonen, Elgar & Strauss, Sun 15 June, Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham BPO CONCERT Featuring Elgar’s cello concerto and King Arthur Suite, Vaughan Williams’ overture The Wasps and

Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus, Sun 15 June, Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham BACH ORGAN RECITAL Sun 15 June, St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury D-DAY AFTERNOON CONCERT Featuring the Glebe Symphonic Winds, Sun 15 June, RAF Museum, Cosford, Nr Wolverhampton LUNCHTIME ORGAN CONCERT: THOMAS TROTTER Mon 16 June, Birmingham Town Hall LUNCHTIME ORGAN CONCERT WITH FLORIAN ZSCHUKE Mon 16 June, Coventry Cathedral Of Ruins CBSO STRAUSS AND SHAKESPEARE Featuring Andris Nelsons (conductor) and Barbara Hannigan (soprano).

Programme includes works by Mendelssohn, Abrahamsen and Strauss, Wed 18 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham MOSES AND ARON Welsh National Opera present Sergio Morabito and Jossi Wiesler's highly charged production, Wed 18 June, Birmingham Hippodrome ORGAN RECITAL: VINCENT GRAPPY Wed 18 June, St Chad’s Cathedral, Shrewsbury BEORMA VOCAL QUARTET Programme of English music spanning four centuries, Wed 18 June, Avoncroft Museum, Bromsgrove CBSO BEETHOVEN’S EMPEROR CONCERTO Featuring Andris Nelsons (conductor) and Paul Lewis (piano). Programme includes works

by Beethoven and Strauss, Thurs 19 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham ASTARIA STRING QUARTET Programme features works by Haydn, Schumann, Janacek & Smetana, Thurs 19 June, Grafton Manor Chapel, Bromsgrove THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER Welsh National Opera bring Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre tale to the operatic stage, Fri 20 June, Birmingham Hippodrome BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY SINGERS AND UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S CHOIR Fri 20 June, Barber Institute, Birmingham BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: SYMPHONY OF DREAMS Fri 20 June, Town Hall, Birmingham WAGNER’S RING: GOTTERDAMMERUNG Performed by the Orchestra and Chorus Of Opera North and Huddersfield Choral Society. Performance sung in German with English surtitles, Sat 21 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham THE RAF COSFORD MILITARY WIVES CHOIR Sat

21 June, The Abbey, Shrewsbury SHREWSBURY CANTATA CHOIR Featuring vocalists Victoria Adams, Rosie Walker, luno Connolly, Robert Tilson & Daniel Wyman with accompaniment by musicians from the Birmingham Conservatoire. Programme features works by Handel, Brahms, Gabrieli, Bruckner & Stravinsky, Sun 22 June, Holy Trinity Church, Meole Brace, Shrewsbury THE PEOPLE’S ORCHESTRA Featuring a selection of film greats, including Schindler's List, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, plus many more... Sun 22 June, Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham CHARLES BURNEY BICENTENNIAL MEMORIAL CONCERT Sun 22 June, Maidment Hall, Shrewsbury School LUNCHTIME ORGAN CONCERT WITH MARTYN RAWLES Mon 23 June, Coventry Cathedral of Ruins SUMMER PROM CONCERT Presented by Prince Henry's High School, Tues 24 June, Evesham Arts Centre, Worcester THE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN OPERA COMPANY Tues 24 - Sat 28 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre

DANTE QUARTET Programme includes works

by Haydn & Schubert, Wed 25 June, Artrix, Bromsgrove CBSO MOZART’S C MINOR MASS Featuring Andris Nelsons (conductor), Sarah-Jane Brandon (soprano), Lisa Milne (soprano), Ben Johnson (tenor), Vuyani Mlinde (bass) and John Tattersdill (double bass), Thurs 26 & Sat 28 June, Symphony Hall, Birmingham WESTCOMBE BRASS Programme includes works

by Bach, Handel, Bar

tok, Berlin & Sherwin, Fri 27 June, St Mary the Virgin Church, Ullenhall, Nr Henley in Arden, Warwickshire JUNIOR CONSERVATOIRE: SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Sat 28 June, Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham ACADEMIA MUSICA CHOIR Sat 28 June, Great Malvern Priory, Worcester THOMAS TROTTER: SUMMER REQUESTS Mon 30 June, Birmingham Town Hall NIGEL KENNEDY Mon 30 June - Weds 2 July, Malvern Theatres

Classical Box Office ADRIAN BOULT HALL, BIRMINGHAM 0121 331 5901

HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, OSWESTRY 01691 654832 / 652810

BARBER INSTITUTE, BIRMINGHAM 0121 414 7333

MAIDMENT HALL, SHREWSBURY SCHOOL 01743 280810 MALVERN THEATRE 01684 892277

BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE 0121 331 5901/2 BIRMINGHAM & MIDLAND INSTITUTE 0121 236 3591

ST CHAD’S CHURCH, SHREWSBURY 01743 365478

BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL 0121 780 3333

ST LAURENCE’S CHURCH, LUDLOW 01584 872073

BRAMALL CONCERT HALL, BIRMINGHAM 0121 414 3344

SYMPHONY HALL, BIRMINGHAM 0121 780 3333

CBSO CENTRE, BIRMINGHAM 0121 780 333

VICTORIA HALL, STOKE-ON-TRENT 0870 060 6649

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Comedy June Region One_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:06 Page 1

Comedy The Improlympians

Comedy Box Office

mac, Birmingham, Fri 13 June & Fri 11 July

If you like your comedy seriously ‘off the cuff’, The Improlympians are the act for you.

Regulars at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the talented troupe of lighthearted, family-friendly performers never present the same show twice, with their act on any given night depending entirely on suggestions made by the audience.

As you’d expect, their comedy is bold and adventurous, their wit razor-sharp. How else would they manage to present a show based on, for example, the tale of a mother bear who travels to India on a bus in order to seek vengeance on a talking zimmer frame?...

ARTRIX, BROMSGROVE 01527 577330 BEDWORTH CIVIC HALL 02476 376707 BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL 0121 780 3333 THE DRUM, BIRMINGHAM 0121 333 2444 DUDLEY CONCERT HALL 01384 815 577 GLEE CLUB, BIRMINGHAM 0871 4720400 HIGHLIGHT, BIRMINGHAM, 0844 844 0044 HUNTINGDON HALL, WORCESTER, 01905 611427 FOXLOWE ARTS CENTRE, LEEK, STAFFS 01538 386112

Made In Britain Special The Drum, Birmingham, Fri 6 June

Made In Britain Special shows at The Drum as part of the Bass Festival 2014. Suitable for audience members aged eighteen and above, the evening sees funnyman Don Curtis Walker headline a programme that also features gags aplenty from fellow rib-tickler Lateef Lovejoy.

Soul music comes from promising RCA Records talent Jamie Joseph and the honeyvoiced Kezia.

Pete Firman The Glee Club, Birmingham, Thurs 12 - Sat 14 June

Pete Firman's been described as 'funnier than most comedians and more magical than Dumbledore on a good day' - which, as reviews go, isn't a bad one. Combining comedy and magic to excellent effect, this Middlesboroughborn funnyman wears ill-fitting suits like they’re going out of fashion and is perfectly happy hammering a nail into his face in the name of comedy.

His gags are delivered at breakneck speed and he’s got a bagful of tricks designed to leave his audiences openmouthed in disbelief.

This Birmingham date is followed later in the year by a national tour.

24 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Dawn French Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent, Fri 13 June; New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham Weds 18 - Fri 20 June

One of the UK’s foremost and best-loved comedians, Dawn French is this month visiting the Midlands as part of her first ever solo tour.

The Vicar Of Dibley star stops off in the region with a show entitled 30 Million Minutes - roughly the amount of time, according to Dawn’s calculations, that she’s been alive.

"I'm sick with excitement about this solo tour,” says Dawn. “I’m enjoying the fact that I can't categorise exactly what it is, but it's somewhere between a monologue, a play, and an autobiographical slideshow with a few funnies thrown in.”

Dawn’s previously toured with her longtime comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, and has also trodden the boards as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2003, she starred at the Apollo Shaftsbury in Geraldine Aron’s one-woman play, My Brilliant Divorce.

Marlon Davis Players Bar, Birmingham, Sat 14 June

Described by Chortle as a fella with 'an impish grin, boyish enthusiasm and an effortlessly open, confident style', Marlon Davis uses his upbringing in urban Britain as the inspiration for his act, tackling social issues with skillful characterisations.

Winner of FHM’s Search For A Stand-Up competition, Marlon has also been finalist in both the Laughing Horse and So You Think You're Funny? new act competitions.

KITCHEN GARDEN CAFE, BIRMINGHAM 0121 443 4725 LG ARENA, BIRMINGHAM 0844 338 8000 LUDLOW ASSEMBLY ROOMS 01584 878141 MAC, BIRMINGHAM 0121 446 3232 NEW ALEXANDRA THEATRE, BIRMINGHAM 0844 871 3011 PALACE THEATRE, REDDITCH 01527 65203 THE PUBLIC, WEST BROMWICH 0121 533 7161 DRUMMONDS BAR, WORCESTER 01905 28190 RICOH ARENA, COVENTRY 0844 873 6565 THE ROSES THEATRE TEWKESBURY 01684 295074 ROYAL SPA CENTRE, LEAMINGTON SPA 01926 334418 STAFFORD GATEHOUSE THEATRE 01785 254653 SOLIHULL ARTS COMPLEX 0121 704 6962 THE SLADE ROOMS, WOLVERHAMPTON 0870 320 7000 THE GEORGE HOTEL, BURSLEM, STAFFS 07763301081 TAMWORTH ASSEMBLY ROOMS 01827 709618 THEATRE SEVERN, SHREWSBURY 01743 281281 VICTORIA HALL, HANLEY, STOKE-ON-TRENT 0844 871 7649 WARWICK ARTS CENTRE 02476 524524 WEST BROMWICH TOWN HALL 0121 596 4429 WULFRUN HALL, WOLVERHAMPTON 0870 320 7000

Comedy June Region One_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:06 Page 2

Comedy LISTINGS For full listing information on comedy gigs including times and dates visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO Sun 1 June, Drummonds Bar, Worcester LEE EVANS - WORK IN PROGRESS Sun 1 June, Oakengates Theatre, Telford MILES JUPP Tues 3 June, Birmingham Town Hall ABANDOMAN Weds 4 June, Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton THE NOISE NEXT DOOR Thurs 5 June, Artrix, Bromsgrove RETURN OF THE GRUMPY OLD WOMEN Thurs 5 June, Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa MATT RICHARDSON Thurs 5 June, Solihull Arts Complex KUM-N-AVALOFF COMEDY NIGHT Thurs 5 June, Stourbridge Town Hall IAN COPPINGER, JOJO SMITH & CHRIS TURNER Thurs 5 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham VIKKI STONE, DAVID TRENT Thurs 5 June, mac, Birmingham CUT THE CHAT Thurs 5 June, The Glee Club,

Birmingham IAN COPPINGER, JOJO SMITH, CHRIS TURNER & ROB HUGHES Fri 6 June, The Glee Club, B’ham CARL DONNELLY Fri 6 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham CURTIS WALKER, LATEEF LOVEJOY & JOHN SIMMIT Fri 6 June, The Drum, Birmingham TOPPING AND BUTCH, MAFF BROWN, CAREY MARX & MATT RUDGE Fri 6 - Sat 7 June, Highlight Comedy Club, Birmingham JAMES ACASTER, JOJO SMITH, IAN COPPINGER & CHRIS TURNER Sat 7 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham DOUGIE DUNLOP, PHILL ELLIS DAN EVANS & TONY COWARDS Sat 7 June, Coventry Showcase BOBBY MAIR, NICK DODDY, SIMON BLIGH & KAREN BAYLEY Sat 7 June, Players Bar, Birmingham ROUGH WORKS New material from the Midlands' finest comics, Sun 8 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham

OPEN MIC COMEDY HOSTED BY LOUDEEMY SOUP Mon 9 June, The Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham ANDREW O'NEIL, ALAN MOORE Tues 10 June, Rose Villa Tavern, Birmingham MERCEDES BENSON, JULIE JEPSON, JEN BRISTER & MAUREEN YOUNGER Weds 11 June, Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham JETHRO Thurs 12 June, Evesham Arts Centre PETE FIRMAN, ANDY ROBINSON & DAVE FULTON Thurs 12 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham JAMES ACASTER & ROB DEERING Thurs 12 June mac, Birmingham JASON MANFORD Fri 13 June, Civic Hall, Wolverhampton DAWN FRENCH Fri 13 June, Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent BRENDON BURNS & JOHN HASTINGS Fri 13 June Station Pub, Sutton Coldfield JEFF INNOCENT, JEREMY O'DONNELL, DAN NIGHTINGALE & NATHAN CATON Fri 13 June, Highlight Comedy Club, Birmingham THE IMPROLYMPIANS Fri 13 June, mac, B’ham PETE FIRMAN, DAVE JOHNS, DAVE FULTON & JEN BRISTER Fri 13 - Sat

14 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham JEFF INNOCENT, JEREMY O'DONNELL, DAN NIGHTINGALE & ROMESH RANGANATHAN Sat 14 June, Highlight Comedy Club, Birmingham WES ZAHARUK, JONATHAN ELSTON, MICHAEL FABBRI & DANNY DEEGAN Sat 14 June, Coventry Showcase MARLON DAVIS, STEVE SHANYASKI, JOHN MOLONEY & JOJO SMITH Sat 14 June, Players Bar, Birmingham ARIES SPEARS Sun 15 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham BEN NORRIS Sun 15 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury NATON CATON WITH FOIL, ARMS AND HOG, DAMIAN CLARK Sun 15 June, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry TOADALLY FREE COMEDY! Mon 16 June, The Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham BARNSTORMERS COMEDY NIGHT Tues 17 June, Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa DAWN FRENCH Weds 18 - Fri 20 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham NORMAN LOVETT Thurs 19 June, Huntingdon Hall, Worcester

JOHN FOTHERGILL, ANDY ROBINSON, TIFFANY STEVENSON & COMEDY CAROUSEL Thurs 19 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham LORETTA MAINE, GAVIN WEBSTER Thurs 19 June, mac, Birmingham IAN MOORE, BARRY CASTAGNOLA, DAVID WARD & STUART MITCHELL Fri 20 - Sat 21 June, Highlight Comedy Club, B’ham JOHN FOTHERGILL, PETE JOHANSSON, BRENDAN DEMPSEY & TIFFANY STEVENSON Fri 20 - Sat 21 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham ANDY WHITE Sat 21 June, mac, Birmingham DANA ALEXANDER, RYAN MCDONNELL, LUKE BENSON & ADAM ROWE Sat 21 June, Coventry Showcase BENNY BOOT, SOFIE HAGEN, ANDY ASKINS & ANDRE VINCENT Sat 21 June, Players Bar, Birmingham JOHN BISHOP Weds 25 June, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry JASON MANFORD Weds 25 June, Crewe Lyceum GAVIN WEBSTER, ANGELA BARNES & JOHN HASTINGS Thurs 26 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham MILES JUPP Thurs 26 June, Warwick Arts

Centre, Coventry DANNY BUCKLER, MARTIN MOR Thurs 26 June, mac, Birmingham JOHN BISHOP - WORK IN PROGRESS Thurs 26 June, Huntingdon Hall, Worcester GAVIN WEBSTER, ANGELA BARNES, JOHN HASTINGS & MATHEW HEARD Fri 28 June, The Glee Club, Birmingham DANNY BUCKLER, MATT HOBS, NEIL MCFARLANE, PAUL DUNCAN MCGARRITY & PHILIP SIMON Fri 27 June, National Brewery Centre, Burton Upon Trent PAUL & ANDREW NIGHTINGALE, RICHARD PULSFORD, BISHA K ALI, JON PEARSON, ALEX HYLTON & MATTHEW BAYLIS Fri 27 June, Evesham Arts Centre GAVIN WEBSTER, ANGELA BARNES & JOHN HASTINGS Sat 28 June The Glee Club, B’ham JIM SMALLMAN, SCOTT BENNETT, GARETH BERLINER & SOFIE HAGEN Sat 28 June, Coventry Showcase PRINCE ABDI, VIKKI STONE, STEVE HARRIS & JOHNNY CANDON Sat 28 June, Players Bar, Birmingham THE LAUGHING SOLE COMEDY CLUB FOR KIDS Sun 29 June, mac, Birmingham

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Theatre

Woman In Mind

The REP, Birmingham, Fri 13 - Sat 28 June

Mention Alan Ayckbourn and a list of brilliant observational comedies springs readily to mind, including classics such as Season’s Greetings, The Norman Conquests and Absurd Person Singular.

Although not as famous as the aforementioned offerings, Woman In Mind certainly deserves to keep company with them in terms of its quality, and is widely regarded as one of the playwright’s most affect-

ing works. Premiered in 1985 and marking Ayckbourn’s first use of first-person narrative and a subjective viewpoint, it tells the story of vicar’s wife Susan, whose best way of escaping the challenges of her real-life family is to create a fantasy one. But when her two worlds begin to overlap, it soon becomes evident that Susan is beginning to unravel...

The Rape Of Lucrece The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Mon 23 June - Fri 4 July

The Rape of Lucrece is a brilliant, brutal narrative poem giving an account of the terrible crime of rape and its dreadful consequences for victim and perpetrator. As ever, Shakespeare goes beyond the obvious, following the ramifications of the crime wherever they take him, and in so doing shining a light on a level of human behaviour that encompasses both the bestial and the beautiful. This particular version of Shakespeare’s famous work is described as ‘an hypnotic evening of song and storytelling’, and stars internationally acclaimed singer Camille O'Sullivan.

Propeller Theatre New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Tues 3 - Sat 7 June

Mask work, animation, and both classic and modern film and music have all influenced the work of the Worcestershire-based Propeller Theatre, a talented all-male ensemble who seek to find ‘a more engaging way of expressing Shakespeare’. Having toured extensively across the globe and bagged numerous awards for their highenergy endeavours, the company is this month visiting Birmingham with a double-bill of Shakespeare comedies - A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Comedy Of Errors. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 27

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Theatre PREVIEWS Fame The Musical Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Mon 2 - Sat 7 June

The original mega-hit film and its spin-off TV series are now both so old that their oncenimble dancers might soon be reaching for zimmer frames! By contrast, Fame The Musical continues to get up a sweat on a regular basis. And as high-octane, choreographedto-the-rafters stage musicals go, it hits the Midlands this month with a reputation second to none. Set in New York’s legendary High School For The Performing Arts, the show focuses on the highs and lows of the students who’re desperately seeking success, and offers a dazzling evening of foot-tapping music and breathtaking dance.

Re-envisioned songs include Let’s Play A Love Scene and the title track itself.

Annie Get Your Gun Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June; New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Tues 1 - Sat 5 July; Malvern Theatre, Mon 28 July - Sat 2 August

Jason Donovan returns to the Midlands this month to star in this major new version of the Tony Award-winning musical. Donovan, who’s previously appeared in the region in stage productions of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, The Rocky Horror Show and Sweeney Todd, plays the sharpshooting Frank Butler, appearing alongside Emma Williams as Annie Oakley and Norman Pace as Buffalo Bill. The show was written by Irving Berlin in 1946 and includes such famous numbers as There’s No Business Like Show Business and Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.

“I've been very lucky in having some great roles to get my teeth into in the past,” says Jason, “but now having the chance to star in the UK premiere production of this award-winning version of such a classic musical is very exciting. I'm very much looking forward to performing such brilliant songs and appearing alongside a truly great cast, as we bring the Wild West to theatres across the country.”

20th Century Boy: The Musical Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Mon 30 June - Sat 5 July

Marc Bolan was one of glam rock's most iconic superstars until his life was tragically ended in a car crash in the autumn of 1977.

This high-energy musical, exploding onto the stage to coincide with the thirty-seventh anniversary of the T-Rex singer's demise, is impressively packed with the band’s classic 1970s hits, including Ride A White Swan, Metal Guru, Get It On, I Love To Boogie, Children Of The Revolution and, of course, 20th Century Boy.

the life he thinks he needs to follow,” Geoff continues, “the man ends up becoming cripplingly insecure. He would like to talk to the person who abused him, but he’s too scared. He’d like to talk to the people who love him, but he’s too fragile. He’d like to talk to God, but he’s too angry. So he talks to a tape recorder instead, and professes his shame, his guilt, his anger and his rage.”

A one-man performance starring Nigel Francis, Fragile has been co-directGeoff Thompson ed by Thompson.

Blackadder

Paiseyan Di Hera Pheri

Morecambe

The Drum, Birmingham, Sat 28 June

Fragile Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham, Thurs 5 - Sat 7 June

“Fragile is about a man who has an abuse outed upon him when he’s twelve,” explains the play’s BAFTA award-winning writer Geoff Thompson, “and that abuse sends his life at a right-angle.”

Coventry-born playwright Geoff premiered Fragile to rave reviews at the city’s Belgrade Theatre in 2012, and admits that the play is semi-autobiographical. “Instead of following

When the spirit of a dead father takes a trip around the home in which he’d once lived, he doesn’t much like what he finds.

Rather than mourning him, his children have descended into greed and bitterness, and think only of the money which will soon be coming their way. Faced with such an upsetting reality, what’s a ghost to do but take action to change the content of his Will from beyond the grave...

This comic portrayal of the darker side of humanity is performed in Punjabi.

Artrix, Bromsgrove, Tues 24 - Sat 28 June

South Birmingham-based semi-professional theatrical group All & Sundry is the company behind this stage version of the hit Rowan Atkinson television comedy. The production reworks three popular episodes from the Richard Curtis and Ben Elton-penned 1989 series, which was set in the trenches during the First World War... All & Sundry is this year also presenting a theatrical version of another Richard Curtis television hit, The Vicar Of Dibley, as well as a new production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men.

The Roses, Tewkesbury, Fri 13 June

Hailed for lovingly and thoughtfully bringing a little of Eric and Ernie’s sunshine to the London West End stage, this is a one-man show exploring the life and times of John Eric Bartholomew - better known, of course, as the comedian Eric Morecambe.

Bob Golding’s the man charged with the sizable task of portraying one of Britain’s best-known and most-loved funnymen, and it’s a challenge which he meets head on. Indeed, there are moments when he so effectively captures the spirit of Eric that audience members of a certain age may feel like they’ve actually been transported back to the 1970s, the decade most closely associated with the legend that is Morecambe and Wise.

www.whatsonlive.co.uk 29

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A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

TWELFTH NIGHT

8th June OAKENGATES THEATRE Telford, Shropshire, TF2 6EP 01952 382382

9th July BLUE COAT SCHOOL Tupsley, Hereford HR1 1UU 01432 347506

13th July AVONCROFT MUSEUM Bromsgrove, Worcs, B60 4JR 01332 258328 31st July WHITBOURNE HALL Worcestershire, WR6 5SE 0774 703 1701 1st August MARY ARDEN’S FARM Wilmcote, Nr Stafford CV37 9UN 01332 258328

12th July MAC (ARENA) Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH 0121 446 3232 1st August MARY ARDEN’S FARM Wilmcote, Nr Stafford CV37 9UN 01332 258328

www.oddsocks.co.uk info@oddsocks.co.uk 01332 258328 30 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

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Theatre PREVIEWS Under Milk Wood The REP, Birmingham, Mon 2 - Sat 7 June

Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood started out as a 1954 radio drama, later being adapted for both stage and film. Widely considered to be a work of real genius, it provides its audience with the opportunity to share in the lives of a host of eccentric characters, all of whom reside in the small Welsh fishing village of Llareggub (the village name is ‘bugger all’ written backwards). This new production, directed by Terry Hands, has been well received by theatre critics, and is touring to mark the centenary of Thomas’ birth in 1914 and the sixtieth anniversary of the play’s British premiere.

Happy Days Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June

Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain Birmingham Town Hall, Weds 11 - Sun 15 June

If you love the Horrible Histories series - and why the heck wouldn’t you?! - then Barmy Britain is a show well worth catching.

Alongside providing answers to such searching questions as ‘what would happen if a Viking moved in next door?’ and ‘would you stand and deliver to dastardly Dick Turpin?’, the show also invites its audience to escape the clutches of Burke and Hare, move to the groove with the partying Queen Victoria and prepare to do battle in the First World War. In short, and as its publicity says, it’s ‘a truly horrible history of Britain - with all the nasty bits left in!’.

The Duchess Of Malfi Old Rep Theatre, Birmingham, Thurs 26 - Sat 28 June

This is a Birmingham School of Acting version of John Webster’s Jacobean masterpiece. An example of English renaissance drama at its finest, The Duchess Of Malfi starts as a romance but ends as a tragedy, along the way touching upon a wide range of themes, including the status of women and the misuse of power. When a recently

Television viewers of a certain age will well remember Happy Days, the legendary US sitcom about Milwaukee-based family the Cunninghams, set in the rock’n’roll days of the 1950s. The show scored a massive hit with 1970s and ’80s telly-watchers, in the process making a star of Henry Winkler, the actor who immortalised the character of the self-styled King of Cool, Arthur ‘The Fonz’ Fonzarelli. This brand new musical promises to reacquaint fans of the TV series with all their favourite characters, including Potsie, Ralph Malph, Joanie, Chachi and Pinky Tuscadero, the latter being played on this occasion by former Sugababes and Atomic Kitten star Heidi Range. widowed duchess marries a lowly steward and bears him three children, her two corrupt brothers decide to exact a terrible revenge...

A Taste Of Honey Malvern Theatre, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June

Shelagh Delaney was only eighteen when she wrote A Taste Of Honey. In so doing, she not only gave notice that a bright new talent had arrived on the scene but also established herself as a major player in the cultural movement that became known as ‘kitchen sink realism’. The movement was at its height during the late-1950s and early-1960s, and saw playwrights such as Delaney and, equally famously, John Osborne, exploring social and political issues by focusing on the domestic situations of the working-classes.

At the centre of Delaney’s play is the character of seventeen-year-old Jo, whose attempts to break free from the shackles of her manhunting mother lead her into the arms of a black sailor, by whom she becomes pregnant. A touching tale of a young girl’s journey into adulthood in 1950s Salford, A Taste Of Honey here stars Shameless and Waterloo Road favourite Rebecca Ryan, and is helmed by Hull Truck Theatre’s new Artistic Director Mark Babych.

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead mac - Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, Thurs 5 - Sat 7 June

This thought-provoking revival has enjoyed plenty of critical acclaim since opening last summer, with actors Sibusiso Mamba and Tonderai Munyevu garnering great praise for their terrific performances. Helmed by Genesis Future Directors Award-winner Matthew Xia, the play is set in apartheid-era South

Africa, and was written in 1972 by white South African playwright Athol Fugard and black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshon.

Sizwe Banzi’s looking for work, but his passbook has expired and deportation seems inevitable. So when he stumbles across a dead body with a passbook, Sizwe has a choice to make - either to accept the fact that he can’t get work to support his family, or to pretend that he’s met with a tragic end and instead adopt the identity of the dead man... Eclipse Theatre and the Young Vic are the organisations behind this Tony-nominated exploration of life under a brutal regime.

3 Summers Library of Birmingham, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June

A national tour follows for this production after it’s become the first full-scale musical to be staged in the Library of Birmingham’s Studio Theatre, that is. Set in the psychedelic ’60s, the show follows the efforts of four young girls seeking fame and fortune. When Pen, Maz, Heff and Princess rent rooms from the reclusive Freddie Savage, they soon realise they’ve found themselves a ‘mother hen’... Boasting a live band and backing singers, 3 Summers features sixteen Swinging ’60s-inspired original numbers. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 31

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JUNE 2014

BROMSGROVE’S THEATRE, CINEMA, LIVE MUSIC AND COMEDY VENUE Wednesday 4th June

Thursday 5th June

THEA GILMORE

THE NOISE NEXT DOOR

IN SUPPORT OF HER NEW ALBUM REGARDLESS

Tues 17th – Sat 21st June

CRAZY FOR YOU POPULAR GERSHWIN MUSICAL FROM BROMSGROVE OPERATIC

MIND-BLOWING IMPROV ANARCHY

Saturday 21st June

WOODEN HORSE FANTASTIC MIX OF COUNTRY BLUES & AMERICANA

HIGHLIGHTS Friday 6th June

VOODOO ROOM FANTASTIC TRIBUTE TO JIMI HENDRIX & CREAM

Tues 24th – Sat 28th June

BLACK ADDER GOES FORTH ALL & SUNDRY RE-WORKING OF THE COMEDY CLASSIC

FORTHCOMING CINEMA: Calvary (15) // Tracks (12A) // We Are The Best (15) // The Love Punch (12A) The new Artrix brochure is available to download on www.artrix.co.uk

For bookings & full details log onto www.artrix.co.uk or phone 01527 577330 Artrix, Slideslow Drive, Bromsgrove B60 1PQ

32 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Free parking on-site

Theatre June region one_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:10 Page 8

Theatre LISTINGS For full listing information on theatre productions, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk From

SUN 1 JUNE SEPTEMBER IN THE RAIN Lichfield Garrick Rep Company present John Godber's semi-autobiographical play which is loosely based on the lives of his own parents, until Thurs 5 June, Lichfield Garrick KHANDAN (FAMILY) Birmingham Repertory Theatre in association with The Royal Court presents Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's tale of extended family life, until Sat 7 June, The REP, B’ham CRAZY FOR YOU The Crescent Theatre present the story of Bobby Childs, a well-to-do 1930s playboy whose dream in life is to dance, until Sat 7 June, Crescent Theatre, Birmingham INHERIT THE WIND Jerome Lawrence & Robert E Lee's American drama, inspired by real-life events, until Sat 14 June, New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-underLyme HENRY IV PART’S I & II RSC Associate Artist Antony Sher returns to the Company to play the infamous comic knight Falstaff, until Sat 6 Sept, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon THE ROARING GIRL Jo Davies directs Lisa Dillon as the dynamic, cross-dressing heroine in a new version of Thomas Middleton & Thomas Dekker's Jacobean comedy, until Tues 30 Sept, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM Polly Findlay makes her RSC debut, directing this darkly comic thriller which focuses on a husband, wife and lover who find themselves locked within a deadly game, until Thurs 2 Oct, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon PEPPA PIG'S BIG SPLASH All-singing, all-dancing adventure for children, Sun 1 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre JUNGLE BOOK Indigo Moon Theatre bring Rudyard Kipling's story to life, Sun 1 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury KING LEAR: NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE Acclaimed actor Simon Beale takes the lead role in this National Theatre production of Shakespeare's bloody tale,

Mon 2 June, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry THE MOUSETRAP Touring production of Agatha Christie's famous thriller, Mon 2 - Sat 7 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury UNDER MILK WOOD A new production of Dylan Thomas' work of genius, Mon 2 - Sat 7 June, The REP, B’ham FAME - THE MUSICAL Presented by Bill Kenwright, Mon 2 - Sat 7 June, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry FOXFINDER Dawn King's tense play, set in a future where the state controls the land, Mon 2 - Sat 7 June, Highbury Theatre Centre, Sutton Coldfield THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Propeller Theatre present Shakespeare’s most farcical play, Tues 3 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham THE ENERGY SHOW Science Museum Live take to the road with an explosive family theatre show for curious minds, Tues 3 June, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry LADIES IN RETIREMENT Set in the 1880s and based on a famous murder that took place in a remote country house, Tues 3 - Fri 6 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK Presented by Sutton Coldfield Musical Theatre Company, Tues 3 - Sat 7 June, Lichfield Garrick MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG Presented by Artz Productions, Tues 3 - Sat 7 June, Stoke Repertory Theatre A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Propeller Theatre present Shakespeare’s magical play, where love and illusion collide, Weds 4 - Thurs 5 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham ALICE BY HEART A new rock-musical take on Alice In Wonderland, from the writers who took Spring Awakening: The Musical to the London stage in 2009, Weds 4 - Sat 7 June, Stafford Gatehouse Theatre TONIGHT AT 8.30 Noel Coward's collection of nine one-act plays, performed together - three per night - for the first time in the UK since Coward starred in them in 1936, Weds 4 - Sat 7 June, Malvern Theatres THE DREAMBOYS ‘The UK’s top male glamour show’, Thurs 5 June, Regent Theatre, Stokeon-Trent

ARTHUR SMITH Thurs 5 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury RETURN OF THE GRUMPY OLD WOMEN: FIFTY SHADES OF BEIGE Thurs 5 June, Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD Eclipse Theatre & Young Vic present Athol Fugard’s award-winning play, Thurs 5 - Sat 7 June, mac - Midlands Arts Centre, B’ham THE TAMING OF THE SHREW RumDoxy Theatre presents its innovative interpretation of Shakespeare’s tale of mistaken identity and unrequited love, Thurs 5 - Sat 7 June, Crescent Theatre, B’ham FRAGILE Geoff Thompson’s semi-autobiographical drama which charts a broken man’s journey through abuse to reconciliation and redemption, Thurs 5 Sat 7 June, Old Joint Stock Theatre, B’ham THE MIKADO Presented

by Blue Orange Arts, Thurs 5 - Sat 14 June, The Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham THE DREAMBOYS ’The UK’s top male glamour show’, Fri 6 June, Crewe Lyceum THE RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN SONGBOOK Fri 6 June, Prince Of Wales Centre, Cannock SING-A-LONG-A GREASE A brand new sing-along version of the classic film starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, Fri 6 June, Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa LEVEL UP WITH ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU AND KARIM KAMAR Evening of spoken word in performance, Fri 6 June, The REP, Birmingham TANGIBLE THINGS A new play by Matt Beames which explores a man's desire for a physical achievement in an increasingly electronic age, Fri 6 - Sat 7 June, Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Propeller Theatre present Shakespeare’s most farcical play, Fri 6 - Sat 7 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham STAR QUALITY The Billesley Players present Noel Coward’s behind-the-scenes look at a theatre company putting on a new West End production, Fri 6 Sat 7 June, Old Rep, Birmingham THE CHUCKLE BROTHERS IN A 2014 SPACE ODDITY A new show promising fun for all the family, Sat 7 June, Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent TWELFTH NIGHT York Shakespeare Project present a fast, fun & folky approach to the bard’s comic masterpiece, Sat 7 June, The Dell, Stratford-upon-

Avon THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TAT MAN David Calcutt’s one-man show features tales of travelling folk, blacksmiths, devils and talking horses, Sat 7 June, Walsall Museum A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Propeller Theatre present Shakespeare’s magical play, where love and illusion collide, Sat 7 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Rain Or Shine Theatre present Shakespeare's famous work, Sun 8 June, Witley Court, Worcestershire IMMORTAL CHI Fusion of jaw-dropping Chinese Martial Arts, multimedia images and an original musical score incorporating the Chinese Girl Drummers, Sun 8 June, Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent PARKING AROUND Rogueplay present highly physical theatre with a strong but simple narrative, Sun 8 June, Small Heath Park, Birmingham THE WINTER’S TALE Staffordshire University’s Drama & Theatre Arts graduates present an outdoor production of Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, Sun 8 June, The Dell, Stratfordupon-Avon

From

MON 9 JUN STAY Geese Theatre Company present a challenging insight into one man's cycle of abuse, Mon 9 June, The REP, Birmingham O WHAT A LOVELY WAR Presented by Nonentitties, Mon 9 - Sat 14 June, The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster THE MOUSETRAP Touring production of Agatha Christie's famous thriller, Mon 9 - Sat 14 June, Crewe Lyceum ALL SHOOK UP South Staffordshire College Performing Arts Department present a performance inspired by and featuring the songs of Elvis Presley against a new twist on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Tues 10 - Weds 11 June, Lichfield Garrick HAPPY DAYS Tues 10 Sat 14 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre SOUTH PACIFIC Adaptation of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS Presented by Queensbridge Musical Theatre Society, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June, Solihull Arts Complex SHE STOOPS TO CON-

QUER Creative Cow present Oliver Goldsmith's comedy, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June, Malvern Theatres ANYTHING GOES Amateur production presented

by Bourneville Musical Theatre Company, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June, Crescent Theatre, B’ham ANNIE GET YOUR GUN Major new production of the Tony Award-winning version of Irving Berlin's classic musical, Tues 10 - Sat 14 June, Regent Theatre, Stokeon-Trent THE TEMPEST A Birmingham Ormiston Academy Acting Pathway production, Weds 11 June, The Old Rep, Birmingham RUNAWAY BOY Thirty young people, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, retell the classic story of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Weds 11 June, Royal Spa Centre, Leamington Spa FINDING JOY A comic, anarchic, touching and heroic full mask adventure from Worcesterbased theatre company Vamos, Weds 11 Thurs 12 June, The Swan Theatre, Worcester PETER PAN AND THE LOST BOYS Heartbreak Productions present an innovative adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic children’s tale, Weds 11 Thurs 12 June, Jephson Gardens, Leamington Spa LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS Amateur production presented by Shrewsbury College Performing Arts, Weds 11 - Thurs 12 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury GREASE Amateur production grom Get Your Wigle On, Weds 11 Sat 14 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury PESTS Clean Break, Royal Court Theatre and Royal Exchange Theatre present a searing new play from Vivienne Franzmann, Weds 11 - Sat 14 June, The REP, Birmingham THE VALLEY OF ASTONISHMENT Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord present the UK premiere of Peter Brook and MarieHélène Estienne's kaleidoscopic journey into the wonders of the human brain, Weds 11 Sat 14 June, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry HORRIBLE HISTORIES: BARMY BRITAIN Presented by Birmingham Stage Company, Weds 11 - Sun 15 June, Birmingham Town Hall THE WORLD'S WORST SERIAL KILLER SHOW Note that this show contains original crime scene and victim's photographs, many of a graphic and explicit nature, which some

people may find disturbing, Thurs 12 June, The Place, Oakengates Theatre, Telford A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Presented by Ormiston Academy Acting Pathway, Thurs 12 June, Old Rep, B’ham ANYTHING GOES Amateur production of Cole Porter's comedy musical presented by Nuneaton Pantomime and Revue Society, Thurs 12 - Sat 14 June, Bedworth Civic Hall AVENUE Q Amateur production presented by the Old Joint Stock Musical Theatre Company, Thurs 12 - Sun 22 June, Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham MACBETH The Festival Players Theatre Company present Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, Fri 13 June, St John’s Church, Bromsgrove ROMEO & JULIET Presented by Ormiston Academy Acting Pathway, Fri 13 June, Old Rep, Birmingham THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Rain Or Shine Productions present an outdoor production of Shakespeare famous work, Fri 13 June, Wightwick Hall, Wolverhampton WOMAN IN MIND Alan Ayckbourn's poignant play about a woman slowly unravelling, Fri 13 - Sat 28 June, The REP, Birmingham THE SOOTY SHOW A brand new family show featuring Sooty and his friends... Sat 14 June, Stafford Gatehouse Theatre SING-A-LONG-A DIRTY DANCING Brand new singalong screening of the classic film starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, Sat 14 June, Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury MACBETH The Handlebards bring their innovative style to Shakespeare’s tale of ambition, magic and murder, Sat 14 June, The Dell, Stratford-upon-Avon PARKING AROUND Rogueplay present highly physical theatre with a strong but simple narrative, played out through circus acts, dance and physical theatre sequences, Sat 14 June, Eastside Park, Birmingham PETER PAN AND THE LOST BOYS Heartbreak Productions present an innovative adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic children’s tale, Sat 14 June, Birmingham Lord Mayor’s Show, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham MONDAY’S CHILD Tutti Frutti & York Theatre Royal tell a simple poetic story of the unique bond between a grandmother and child, Sat 14 June, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry

For full theatre listings in the West Midlands, visit, www.whatsonlive.co.uk 33

Theatre June region one_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:10 Page 9

VISIT OU WEBSITE R T VIEW MO O RE SHOWS!

Box Office 01743 281 281 Book Online www.theatresevern.co.uk

Frankwell Quay, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY3 8FT

MONDAY 2 - SATURDAY 7 JUNE

SUNDAY 15 JUNE

BEN NORRIS MR AMBIGUOUSNESS After a fantastic time supporting Ed Byrne on his national tour Ben Norris is hitting the road on his own

"A wonderful disgrace of a human being" Daniel Kitson

MONDAY 16 - FRIDAY 20 JUNE Comedy Theatre Company present

CLASSIC ITV COMEDY

From the producers of the stage versions of Victoria Wood's dinnerladies and Birds of a Feather.

SATURDAY 21 JUNE

THE BILLY FURY YEARS 2014 commemorates over 30 years since the untimely passing of Billy Fury. However it is reassuring to know that his name and music is far from forgotten. THE BILLY FURY YEARS is quite simply 'The Ultimate Billy Fury show to ever hit the stage'.

SATURDAY 28 JUNE A TRIBUTE TO THE MUSIC OF

Michael Ball love changes everything Join Michael Courtney and his live band in this spectacular salute to the music of Michael Ball, brought to you by one of the UK’s finest singers.

34 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Theatre June region one_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:10 Page 10

Theatre LISTINGS For full listing information on theatre productions, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk HALFWAY TO PARADISE THE BILLY FURY STORY Sat 14 June, Prince Of Wales Centre, Cannock THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE European Arts present a dramatisation of the libel and criminal trials of Oscar Wilde, Sat 14 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury MACBETH The Festival Players Theatre Company present Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, Sat 14 June, mac-Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham TREASURE ISLAND Rain Or Shine Productions present an outdoor version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s buccaneering adventure, Sat 14 June, Kinlet Hall, Bewdley, Worcester RAINBOW OF DREAMS Charity event showcasing the wealth of talent on offer from Worcestershire's youth, Sat 14 - Sun 15 June, The Swan Theatre, Worcester THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA Federico Garcia Lorca's Spanish drama, Sat 14 - Sat 21 June, Crescent Theatre, Birmingham AS YOU LIKE IT Shakespeare's popular comedy starring John Challis stars as Jaques while Eric Potts features as Touchstone, Sat 14 Sun 22 June, Ludlow, South Shropshire MIDSUMMER MISCHIEF A festival of exciting new plays, performed in a purpose-built temporary studio on the current Courtyard Theatre stage, Sat 14 June - Sat 12 July, The Courtyard, Stratford-upon-Avon THE SOOTY SHOW Sun 15 June, Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent JACK AND THE BEANSTALK Lyngo Theatre present a giant of a show, adapted & performed by Patrick Lynch, Sun 15 June, Stafford Gatehouse Theatre OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM Presented by People's Theatre Company, Sun 15 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS A National Theatre Live screening of Alan Ayckbourn’s riotous exposure of entrepreneurial greed, Sun 15 June, Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury PARKING AROUND Rogueplay present highly physical theatre with a strong but simple narrative, played out through circus acts, dance and physical the-

atre sequences, Sun 15 June, Walkers Heath Park, Birmingham THE COMEDY OF ERRORS The Handelbards present an innovative take on Shakespeare’s classic, Sun 15 June, The Dell, Stratford-uponAvon JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR Amateur production by The Musical Theatre Production Company, Sun 15 June, The Place, Oakengates Theatre, Telford PENN & TELLER An evening of classic magic tricks and niche comedy from the American duo, Sun 15 - Mon 16 June, New Alexandra Theatre, B’ham

Week Commencing

MON 16 JUN IMMORTAL CHI Fusion of jaw-dropping Chinese Martial Arts, multimedia images and an original musical score incorporating the Chinese Girl Drummers, Mon 16 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre RISING DAMP The Comedy Theatre Company present a stage adaptation of Eric Chappell's acclaimed ’70s sitcom, Mon 16 - Fri 20 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury ARTHUR & GEORGE Adapted by David Edgar from the novel

by Julian Barnes, Mon 16 - Sat 21 June, Hall Green Little Theatre, Birmingham THE TAMING OF THE SHREW Shropshire Drama Company present Shakespeare’s timeless story of love, surprise and betrayal, Mon 16 - Sat 21 June, Church Green, Much Wenlock, South Shropshire THE LADYBOYS OF BANGKOK Tues 17 June, Lichfield Garrick ACCRINGTON PALS Stoke Repertory Players present an amateur production of Peter Whelan's 1982 play, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June, Stoke Repertory Theatre 3 SUMMERS The world premiere of Euan Rose’s musical, set in the psychedelic ’60s, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June, Studio Theatre, Library of Birmingham SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER An amateur production of Oliver Goldsmith's popular comedy, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June, Highbury Theatre Centre, Sutton Coldfield

DESIGN FOR MURDER Psychological drama culminating in a tense, chilling climax with a bitter twist, Tues 17 Sat 21 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre CRAZY FOR YOU Amateur production presented

by Bromsgrove Operatic Society, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June, Artrix, Bromsgrove A TASTE OF HONEY Hull Truck Theatre present Shelagh Delaney's touching tale of a young girl's journey into adulthood. Rebecca Ryan (Shameless & Waterloo Road) star, Tues 17 - Sat 21 June, Malvern Theatres MOSES AND ARON Welsh National Opera present Sergio Morabito and Jossi Wiesler's highly charged production, Weds 18 June, Birmingham Hippodrome A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Presented by Oddsocks, Weds 18 June, The Place, Oakengates Theatre, Telford THE EPIC ADVENTURE OF NHAMO Tiata Fahodzi in association with Watford Palace Theatre present Denton Chikura's madcap farce which turns storytelling on its head, Weds 18 Sat 21 June, The REP, Birmingham THE BRIGHT AND BOLD DESIGN A production about art versus politics, presented in association with The Agency, Weds 18 - Sat 21 June, Old Rep, Birmingham CARRIE'S WAR Apollo Theatre Company present a brand new staging of Nina Bawden's classic novel, Thurs 19 - Fri 20 June, Lichfield Garrick THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER Welsh National Opera bring Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre tale to the operatic stage, Fri 20 June, Birmingham Hippodrome WILDE WITHOUT THE BOY A dramatisation of De Profundis, Oscar Wilde’s letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, written from his prison cell in Reading jail, Fri 20 June, Stafford Gatehouse Theatre BRY0NY KIMMINGS: CREDIBLE LIKEABLE SUPERSTAR ROLE MODEL A tale of hopeless protection, blind fury, nineyear-old brains and taking on the world with your family, Fri 20 June, mac - Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS Fri 20 June - Sat 5 July, New Vic Theatre, Newcastleunder-Lyme THE SOOTY SHOW Sat 21 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham AN AUDIENCE WITH DES

O'CONNOR Sat 21 June, Lichfield Garrick THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR Greater Fool present an outdoor production of Shakespeare’s farcical comedy, Sat 21 June, The Dell, Stratford-uponAvon FROM RAGS TO RICHES The RJ Academy of Singing & Dramatic Arts presents an evening of entertainment based around the theme of rich and poor, Sat 21 June, Bedworth Civic Hall GANDINI JUGGLING: SMASHED Fusion of circus and theatre inspired by the work of Pina Bausch, Sat 21 June, mac - Midlands Arts Centre, B’ham

Week Commencing

MON 23 JUN SALLY MORGAN Mon 23 Tues 24 June, Lichfield Garrick BUDDY - THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY Awardwinning musical, Mon 23 - Sat 28 June, Birmingham Hippodrome THE RAPE OF LUCRECE Mon 23 June - Fri 4 July, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon PETER PAN AND THE LOST BOYS Heartbreak Productions present an innovative adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic children’s tale, Tues 24 June, Castle Bromwich Hotel, Solihull THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE Presented by The Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company, Tues 24 - Weds 25 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre MACBETH Heartbreak Productions present an outdoor version of Shakespeare's bloodiest play, Tues 24 Weds 25 June, Jephson Gardens, Leamington Spa SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER An amateur production of Oliver Goldsmith's popular comedy, Tues 24 - Sat 28 June, Highbury Theatre Centre, Sutton Coldfield BLACKADDER All & Sundry present a stage version of the popular British sitcom, set during the Great War of 1914 - 1918, Tues 24 Sat 28 June, Artrix, Bromsgrove BLOFELD AND BAXTER: MEMORIES OF TEST MATCH SPECIAL Weds 25 June, mac - Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham AN IMPROVISED MURDER Presented by Foghorn Improv, Thurs 26 June, Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham MACBETH Shakespeare's Globe screening of Shakespeare's bloodiest play, Thurs 26 June, Malvern Theatres THE ONLY WAY IS DOWN-

TON Luke Kempner's parody of the muchloved period drama, Thurs 26 June, Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury IOLANTHE Presented by the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company, Thurs 26 - Fri 27 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre CRAZY FOR YOU Amateur production presented by the Coventry Musical Theatre Society, Thurs 26 - Sat 28 June, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry THE DUCHESS OF MALFI Thurs 26 - Sat 28 June, Old Rep, Birmingham MACBETH Heartbreak Productions present an outdoor version of Shakespeare's bloodiest play, Fri 27 June, Hartelbury Castle, Kidderminster PETER PAN AND THE LOST BOYS Heartbreak Productions present an innovative adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic children’s tale, Fri 27 June, Merrie Lion, Fenny Compton, Warwickshire BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Amateur production presented by Reach Musical Theatre School, Fri 27 - Sat 28 June, Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton THE SUPERHEROES A new piece of playful work fusing storytelling, song, music, dance, physical theatre and animation, Fri 27 - Sat 28 June, mac - Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Open-air performance presented by Billie Shakespeare Travelling Co, Fri 27 - Sat 28 June, St Andrews Church Gardens, Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire THE MIKADO Presented by the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company, Sat 28 June, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre PEEP! Language Alive present theatre for children that revolves around Uncle's Story Shop, a place full of exciting objects which he uses to make storybags for his customers, Sat 28 June, The REP, Birmingham DETENTION! Stage 2 Performing Arts Academy present a classroom drama featuring classic songs, Sat 28 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury BEHIND THE BLINDS Serrated Edge present a new show for persons aged fourteen-plus which weaves together lyrically witty and sophisticated songs to reveal what goes on behind the blinds on an ordinary-looking suburban street, Sat 28 June, Artrix, Bromsgrove PAISEYAN DI HERA PHERI Sat 28 June, The Drum,

Birmingham JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH Company Theatre School present Roald Dahl’s fruity tale, Sat 28 June, The Crescent Theatre, B‘ham INTO THE WOODS Musical weaving together the plots from several fairytales, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, The Place, Oakengates Theatre, Telford ROMEO AND JULIET Birdiedoes present an outdoor production of ‘the greatest love story ever told’, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, The Dell, Stratford-upon-Avon PETER PAN AND THE LOST BOYS Heartbreak Productions present an innovative adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic children’s tale, Sat 28 Sun 29 June, Norman Chamberlain Playing Fields, Shard End, Birmingham AT WAR WITH LOVE Oxford Actors Company present a selection of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, set against a backdrop of World War One, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, The Dell, Stratford-upon-Avon MACBETH Heartbreak Productions present an outdoor version of Shakespeare's bloodiest play, Sun 29 June, Shugborough Historic Working Estate, Stafford WE SALUTE YOU Music and laughter to celebrate Armed Forces Day, Sun 29 June, Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury CIRCLES Rachel Delahay's vivid and powerful new play explores violent relationships, love, trust and friendship, Sun 29 June, Artrix, Bromsgrove AS YOU LIKE IT Stafford Festival Shakespeare presents an outdoor production of one of Shakespeare's most popular musical comedies, Sun 29 June - Sat 12 July, Stafford Castle

Week Commencing

MON 30 JUN 20TH CENTURY BOY - THE MUSICAL Musical based on the life of Marc Bolan, with Warren Sollars leading the cast, Mon 30 June - Sat 5 July, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre BLACK COFFEE Mon 30 June - Sat 5 July, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury ANOTHER COUNTRY A Chichester Festival production of Julian Mitchell's thought-provoking drama, which follows a company of public schoolboys through a summer term in the early-1930s, Mon 30 June - Sat 5 July, Malvern Theatres

For full theatre listings in the West Midlands, visit, www.whatsonlive.co.uk 35

Theatre June region one_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:10 Page 11

Theatre REVIEWS Below are reviews of theatre productions we checked out last month. For further theatre reviews, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Lord Of The Flies Birmingham Hippodrome

There comes with the work of Matthew Bourne a great expectation of extravagance and challenge and a belief that any sign of classical ballet will be replaced with something completely unexpected.

Bourne’s latest work, an adaptation of William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, is partnered with the choreographer’s sister company, Re:Bourne, and is touring as part of a community-led project that aims to increase the popularity of dance among boys. And the show certainly does that, inspiring youngsters not only to dance but to do so in a professional dancing environment.

There’s no doubt that the community boys featured in Lord Of The Flies play equally as large a part as the professionals - the show is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the chosen twenty-two.

The production itself is exactly what you’d expect from Bourne. The boys are not lost on an island but in an abandoned theatre; in this case, the Birmingham Hippodrome. The set is striking, offering the boys plenty of opportunity to climb, swing and run. Multiple entrances and exits are revealed throughout the course of the production.

The piece starts on a high, utilising choreographed movement rather than dance to introduce the youngsters; the leaders, the bullies and the less confrontational. As the interval approaches, large choreographed sequences involving drumming and chanting convey the fact that things are starting to get out of hand.

The second act steps up the violence and mob-like behaviour, both of which are evident in Golding’s story. The boys turn on each other and blood is shed. Finally, the large metal shutter opens and they leave one by one.

Ballet technique shines through Bourne’s choreography - although by comparison with what one might expect, there’s a lack of dancing in the production. That said, Bourne’s attempt to foster a connection between boys and dance should be applauded. In so doing, the experience he has given the young men appearing in this show is priceless. Jamie Ryan ■ ■ ■

Protein Dance: Border Tales DanceXchange, The Patrick Centre, Birmingham

Lucu Silvestrini’s Protein Dance Company here presented a glimpse of twenty-first century multicultural Britain, in the process addressing issues such as immigration and racism. The story was mainly told through the eyes of Stuart, a man caught up in stereotypes and hampered by a lack of knowledge about the world around him.

Significantly, the show was performed in the round. This meant that audience members were facing one another, so could observe each other’s reactions to what was being said on stage, plenty of which made for uncomfortable listening given the contentious nature of the subject matter. If a performer said something that was racist yet funny, should you laugh? Should you smile? And what would the audience members sitting opposite conclude about you if you did? Talk about feeling self-concious with regard to one’s reactions!

Comprising mainly spoken text, the narrative was supported by Silvestrini’s wonderful choreography, featuring beautiful solos, complex duets and plenty of group work. Jamie Ryan ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ 36 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Rock Of Ages New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham

After a very successful two-year run in the West End, Rock Of Ages is now out on its first UK tour, and last month stopped off in Birmingham.

Set in a run-down bar called the Bourbon Room in a mid-to-late-1990s Los Angeles, the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl story unfolds against a rocking soundtrack that includes REO Speedwagon, Bon Jovi and Slade.

Drew, played by Noel Sullivan (formerly of pop group Hear’Say), works at the Bourbon Room. He writes rock songs, dreams of fame and fortune - but mostly spends his time putting out the rubbish. Farm girl Sherrie, played by Cordelia Farnworth, arrives in the city and, with Drew’s assistance, gets a job at the bar. But the course of true love never runs smooth, and life becomes really complicated for Drew and Sherrie when drug-fuelled rock god Stacee Jaxx, played by Ben Richards, returns to play at the bar when it’s threatened with closure...

The music throughout the show is extremely loud, as befits a rocking world. Cordelia’s voice is lost on the big tracks but beautiful when singing More Than Words, and there are some great vocals from both Noel and Ben. The production is very tongue-incheek, with some of the performances self-conscious to the point of bordering on hammy. It’s a show that craves audience participation, but which sometimes seems more of a rock concert than a musical.

Genuinely funny moments are provided by Stephen Rahman-Hughes, who plays show narrator Lonny, and Daniel Fletcher as Dennis Dupree, the rock-hippie proprietor of the

Theatre Box Office Birmingham ALEXANDRA THEATRE 0844 871 3011 BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME 0844 338 5000 BIRMINGHAM REP 0121 236 4455 THE BLUE ORANGE THEATRE 0121 212 2643 CRESCENT THEATRE 0121 643 5858 DOVEHOUSE THEATRE 0121 706 7139 THE DRUM 0121 333 2444 HALL GREEN LITTLE THEATRE 0121 707 1874 MAC 0121 446 3232 MIXING BOWL THEATRE 0121 224 7545 OLD JOINT STOCK THEATRE 0121 200 0946 OLD REP 0121 245 4455 SOLIHULL ARTS COMPLEX 0121 704 6962

Black Country ARENA THEATRE WOLVERHAMPTON 01902 321321 BLOXWICH THEATRE 01922 653183 DUDLEY CONCERT HALL 01384 812812 FOREST ARTS CENTRE, WALSALL 01922 654555

GRAND THEATRE, 01902 429212 NEWHAMPTON ARTS CENTRE 01902 572090 OLDBURY REP, OLDBURY 0121 552 2761

Shropshire THE BELFREY, WELLINGTON 01952 222277 THE EDGE, MUCH WENLOCK 01952 728911 THE HIVE, SHREWSBURY 01743 234970 LUDLOW ASSEMBLY ROOMS 01584 878141 THE PLACE, OAKENGATES, TELFORD 01952 382382 THEATRE SEVERN, SHREWSBURY 01743 281281 WEM TOWN HALL 01939 232299

Staffordshire LICHFIELD GARRICK 01543 412121 NEW VIC 01782 717962 PRINCE OF WALES CENTRE, CANNOCK 01543 578762 REGENT THEATRE, STOKE 0870 060 6649 RUGELEY ROSE THEATRE 01889 584036 STAFFORD GATEHOUSE 01785 254653 STOKE REPERTORY THEATRE 01782 209784

Warwickshire BEDWORTH CIVIC HALL 024 7637 6707 BELGRADE THEATRE, COVENTRY 024 7655 3055 BRIDGE HOUSE THEATRE, WARWICK 01926 776438 THE DREAM FACTORY 01926 419555 ROYAL SHAKESPEARE THEATRE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON 0844 800 1110 ROYAL SPA CENTRE LEAMINGTON 01926 334418 WARWICK ARTS CENTRE, COVENTRY 02476 524524

Worcestershire ARTRIX ARTS CENTRE, BROMSGROVE 01527 577330 THE HIVE 01905 822866 HUNTINGDON HALL, WORCESTER 01905 611427 MALVERN THEATRE 01684 892277 NORBURY THEATRE, DROITWICH 01905 770154 PALACE THEATRE REDDITCH 01527 65203 ROSE THEATRE, 01562 743745 SWAN THEATRE, WORCESTER 01905 611427

Theatre June region one_Layout 1 23/05/2014 13:10 Page 12

Theatre WEST END

WEST END LISTINGS: MUSICALS

Jeeves role for John Gordon Sinclair Olivier Award-winning actor John Gordon Sinclair, best known from the 1981 film Gregory’s Girl, is to take over the role of dutiful valet Jeeves in Sean Foley’s Perfect Nonsense. Sinclair will join the cast at the end of June, along with James Lance (Smack The Pony, Teachers, I’m Alan Partridge), who’ll play the bumbling Bertie Wooster. Previous actors to have enjoyed great acclaim in the award-winning comedy include Stephen Mangan, Matthew Macfadyn and, more recently, Robert Webb and Mark Heap.

Perfect Nonsense is currently booking at Duke of York’s Theatre until 20 September, after which it embarks on a UK tour.

BILLY ELLIOT – THE MUSICAL Victoria Palace Theatre, booking until 16 May 2015 BODYGUARD Adelphi Theatre, booking until 30 Aug 2014 BOOK OF MORMON Prince Of Wales Theatre, booking until 30 Aug 2014 CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY THE MUSICAL Drury Lane Royal, booking until 30 May 2015 COMMITMENTS Victoria Palace Theatre, booking until 19 Apr 2015 DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS Savoy Theatre, booking until 29 Nov 2014 JERSEY BOYS Piccadilly Theatre, booking until 15 Feb 2015 LES MISÉRABLES Queen's Theatre, booking until 25 Apr 2015 LION KING Lyceum Theatre, booking until 28 Sept 2014 MADE IN DAGENHAM -THE MUSICAL Adelphi Theatre, 9 Oct 2014 - 28 Mar 2015 MAMMA MIA! Novello Theatre, booking until 25 Apr 2015

MATILDA THE MUSICAL Cambridge Theatre, booking until 24 May 2015 MEMPHIS THE MUSICAL Shaftesbury Theatre, 9 Oct 2014 - 28 Mar 2015 MISS SAIGON Prince Edward Theatre,now booking until 25 Oct 2014 ONCE Phoenix Theatre, booking until 4 July 2015 PAJAMA GAME Shaftesbury Theatre, now booking until 13 Sep 2014 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Her Majesty's Theatre, booking until 25 Apr 2015 PORGY AND BESS Open Air Theatre, Regents Park, 17 Jul 23 Aug 2014 STOMP Ambassadors Theatre, booking until 21 Dec 2014 THRILLER LIVE Lyric Theatre, booking until 19 Apr 2015 WICKED Apollo Victoria Theatre, booking until 25 Apr 2015

DRAMA 1984 Playhouse Theatre, booking until 19 Jul 2014 ANTONY & CLEOPATRA Shakespeare’s Globe

Theatre, booking until 24 Aug 2014 BAKERSFIELD MISTDuchess Theatre, booking until 30 Aug 2014 BRING UP THE BODIES Aldwych Theatre, booking until 6 Sept 2014 DOCTOR SCROGGY’S WAR Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 12 Sept - 10 Oct 2014 FATAL ATTRACTION Haymarket Theatre Royal, booking until 21 Jun 2014 GHOST STORIES Arts Theatre, booking until 17 Aug 2014 GOLEM Young Vic Theatre, booking until 17 Jan 2015 HANDBAGGED Vaudeville Theatre, 3 Apr - 2 Aug 2014 KING LEAR Olivier National Theatre, booking until 28 May 2014 OTHER DESERT CITIES Old Vic Theatre, booking until 24 May 2014

COMEDY 39 STEPS Criterion Theatre, booking until 18 Oct 2014 CONFESSIONS OF GORDON BROWN Ambassadors Theatre, booking until 30 July 2014 RELATIVE VALUES Harold Pinter Theatre, booking until 21 jun 2014 TWELFTH KNIGHT RE-IMAGINED Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, 21 Jun - 12 July 2014

Gina McKee in Shakespeare’s history play Gina McKee is to join Martin Freeman in the much-anticipated production of Richard III when it opens at Trafalgar Studios next month. Best known for her roles in Notting Hill and Our Friends In The North, McKee will play Queen Elizabeth opposite Freeman’s Duke of Gloucester in Shakespeare’s bloodthirsty history play. The production’s director, Jamie Lloyd, is widely regarded as one of the UK’s hottest talents. Lighting design for the show is by Charles Balfour, set design by the award-winning Soutra Gilmour.

Richard III shows at Trafalgar Studios Theatre from 1 July to 27 September.

Extended booking for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Jerry Mitchell’s musical adaptation of the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has extended its booking period until March 2015.

The all-star production features Robert Lindsay in the lead, as sophisticated conman Lawrence Jameson, and comedian/actor Rufus Hound as the larger-than-life Freddy Benson. Based on the book by Jeffrey Lane, the story follows the escapades of Jameson and Benson as they pursue the affections of millionaire soap heiress Christine Colgate, played by Katherine Kingsley. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 37

Dance June_Layout 1 23/05/2014 17:28 Page 1

Dance

Flash Mob Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Thurs 19 June; New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Fri 27 June

Flash Mob is the latest celebrity-driven dance show to grace venues across the UK. Described as celebrating ‘the various emotions that dance can bring to an audience’, the show promises to provide an exhilarating night out for all ages, with performances in Latin, locking, Celtic, contemporary, jazz and jump-jive all taking their place on the evening’s agenda. Headlined by Kevin Clifton (Strictly Come Dancing), the production features performances from World Street Dance champions Flawless (pictured), the Olivier-nominated Tommy Franzen (from BBC’s So You Think You Can Dance), contemporary duo Alleviate, and Irish fusion duo Brosena (from Sky One’s Got To Dance).

Birmingham Royal Ballet Birmingham Hippodrome, Wed 11 - Sun 15 June

Frederick Ashton’s ever-popular La Fille mal gardée, a choreographed exploration of rural life, forms one half of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Hippodrome offering this month. A firm family favourite, the simple and engaging story tells of Lise and her mother’s attempts to find her a wealthy suitor.

Described by the Daily Telegraph as being ‘as finely wrought an English comedy as My Fair Lady or The Importance Of Being Earnest’, Ashton’s 1960s creation is here programmed alongside a triple-bill of his earlier works. Darkness And Light (4 to 7 June) comprises: Les Rendezvous Ashton’s first major ballet for the thenVic-Wells Ballet; Dante Sonata - a simple and poignant piece created at the height of World War One; and Facade a work of wit based on Edith Sitwell’s nonsensical poetry.

38 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Sonia Sabri Company: Labyrinth Glasshouse Arts Centre, Stourbridge, Fri 6 June

A work of opposites, Labyrinth is a collaboration between dance artists Sonia Sabri and Ash Mukherjee. Originally inspired by Woody Allen’s Death Knocks - a one-act play which formed part of Woody’s famous stand-up routine - Labyrinth fuses Kathak and Bharatanatyam dance styles through solos and duets which take the audience on a journey between the classical and contemporary worlds.

Live music, performed by Sarvar Sabri (SSC Musical Director), Shoma Dey and Dan Nicholls, accompanies the performance.

Dance June_Layout 1 23/05/2014 17:28 Page 2

Dance LISTINGS For full listing information on dance, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk DARKNESS AND LIGHT Birmingham Royal Ballet presents three early works from the founder choreographer of the Royal Ballet Companies - master of the art form, Frederick Ashton, Wed 4 - Sat 7 June, Birmingham Hippodrome KARLA SHACKLOCK DANCE COMPANY Double-bill of works including The Buttercup - a powerful story about hope - and The Crutch, an intense

piece exploring the relationship between two beings, Wed 4 June, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury A MAGICAL EVENING OF DANCE From Tewkesbury School & Amy Bastin Dance, Thurs 5 June, The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury SONIA SABRI COMPANY: LABYRINTH Renowned Indian classical dancer & choreographer Ash Mukherjee performs with the Sonia Sabri

Beauty And The Beast - Ballet Cymru, Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury

Company in a work which fuses elements of Indian & British culture, music, words & movement vocabulary, Fri 6 June, The Glasshouse Arts Centre, Stourbridge DANCE TO THE MOON Showcase of work from Happy Steps Dancers, raising funds for Acorns Children's Hospice, Fri 6 - Sun 8 June, The Swan Theatre Worcester STREET DANCE TELFORD Sun 8 June, The Place, Oakengates Theatre, Telford LA FILLE MAL GARDEE Birmingham Royal Ballet presents Frederick Ashton's choreographed exploration of rural bliss, Wed 11 Sun 15 June, Birmingham Hippodrome BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Ballet Cymru present a sparkling and refreshing ballet based on the eternal fairytale, Thurs 12 June, The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury AN EVENING WITH STARS FROM STRICTLY COME DANCING Starring Pasha Kovalev & Katya Virshilas, Sat 14 June, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry RED CROSS DANCE: MAKE YOUR MOVE COMPETITION The UK’s largest charity dance

competition, Sun 15 June, mac - Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham CONSTELLATIONS Dance, puppetry and digital visuals are brought together in this choreographed performance suitable for children and their families, Tues 17 June, The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury JALEO FLAMENCO Andalusian dance, song and guitar, Wed 18 June, Lichfield Garrick FLASH MOB Dance worlds collide in this new show, presenting a fusion of different dance genres, Thurs 19 June, Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Ballet Cymru present a sparkling and refreshing ballet based on the eternal fairytale, Wed 25 June, New Vic Theatre, Newcastleunder-Lyme AN EVENING WITH STARS FROM STRICTLY COME DANCING Starring Pasha Kovalev & Katya Virshilas, Fri 27 June, Prince Of Wales Centre, Cannock FLASH MOB Dance worlds collide in this new show, featuring a fusion of different dance genres, Fri 27 June, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham

Jaleo Flamenco, Lichfield Garrick

Dance Box Office ARENA THEATRE, WOLVERHAMPTON 01902 321321 ARTRIX, BROMSGROVE 01527 577330 BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME 0844 338 5000 DOVEHOUSE THEATRE 0121 706 7139 LICHFIELD GARRICK 01543 412121 LUDLOW ASSEMBLY ROOMS, SHROPSHIRE 01584 873229 MAC, BIRMINGHAM 0121 446 3232

NEW ALEXANDRA THEATRE, BIRMINGHAM 0121 230 9082 ROYAL SPA CENTRE, LEAMINGTON SPA 01926 334418 SOLIHULL ARTS COMPLEX 0121 704 6962 STAFFORD GATEHOUSE THEATRE 01785 254653 THEATRE SEVERN, SHREWSBURY 01743 281281 WARWICK ARTS CENTRE, COVENTRY 02476 524524

For full dance listings, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk 39

Film June_Layout 1 23/05/2014 17:25 Page 1

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Film

TO WATCH THE LATEST MOVIE TRAILERS, VISIT: www.whatsonlive.co.uk

m Fro

20 FRI NE JU

Jersey Boys CERT 15 (134mins)

TOP 5

Starring John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lamenda, Vincent Piazza, Christopher Walken Directed by Clint Eastwood (USA)

Before The Beatles, the most popular rock band of all time was The Four Seasons. With number one hits like Sherry, Big Boys Don’t Cry, Walk Like a Man and Rag Doll, the group racked up sales of an estimated one hundred million records worldwide. The Broadway musical that chronicled their amazing career went on to win four Tony awards and, in London, ensnared the Olivier for best new musical. Now Clint Eastwood, at a sprightly eighty-four years of age, has brought the musical to the big screen. Eastwood, while best known for Westerns and .44 Magnums, is a musical aficionado, having composed the scores for eight of his own films and originally intended to be a musician and not an actor (he still loves playing the piano). So, this could be a match made in Heaven.

FILM BOX OFFICE

1 Godzilla (12a) 2 Bad Neighbors (15) Amazing 3 The Spider-Man 2 (12a) Two Faces 4 The Of January (12a) 5 The Other Woman (12a)

From

THU 19 JUNE

The Fault In Our Stars CERT 12a (126mins) Starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe Directed by Josh Boone (USA)

Josh Boone made his directorial debut with last year’s sassy and touching Stuck In Love, so let’s hope this is as good. Based on John Green’s critically acclaimed novel of 2012, it tells the story of a witty, unconventional young man and woman who fall in love at a cancer support group. The buzz is building, helped by the film’s audience-friendly soundtrack, with acts like Ed Sheeran, Birdy and Jake Bugg on board. Filmed in Pittsburgh and Amsterdam.

Godzilla

www.whatsonlive.co.uk 41

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Film NEW RELEASES Released from Fri 6 June

Grace Of Monaco CERT PG (103mins) Starring Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, Frank Langella, Parker Posey, Milo Ventimiglia, Derek Jacobi, Paz Vega, Robert Lindsay Directed by Olivier Dahan (USA/Monaco/France/Belgium/Italy)

Olivier Dahan’s biopic (slated at Cannes) deals with the marital crisis of the former Grace Kelly, who went from Hollywood royalty to bona fide European sovereignty. Tim Roth, a fine actor, seems an odd choice to play Prince Rainier III, but then Dahan did help to earn Marion Cotillard an Oscar for playing Edith Piaf (in La Vie En Rose).

Fro

FRI m JUN13 E

22 Jump Street CERT tbc

Belle CERT 12a (104mins)

Starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Dave Franco, Nick Offerman Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (USA)

Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Matthew Goode, Emily Watson Directed by Amma Asante (UK)

21 Jump Street, the film of the 1987-1991 TV series, was crass, crude and hugely successful.

To be fair, Hill and Tatum worked up an engaging chemistry and this time they pair up as coproducers. The twist now is that the overgrown kids-cum-cops are put on a mission to infiltrate college.

Expect a cameo from Brad Pitt.

Based on true events, this is the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle (Mbatha-Raw), a former slave who is brought up by her great uncle. What is surprising is that Dido is mixed race and her uncle was the 1st Earl of Mansfield, William Murray (Wilkinson).

Consequently, Dido is raised as an aristocrat. Mbatha-Raw herself was born in Oxford and made her film debut opposite Tom Hanks in Larry Crowne (2011).

For full film listings, showings and booking links

visit: whatsonlive.co.uk

View the latest trailers on line 42 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Film June_Layout 1 23/05/2014 17:25 Page 4

Fruitvale Station CERT 15 (85mins) Starring Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray Directed by Ryan Coogler (USA)

Oscar Julius Grant III is not presented as an honest man. In fact, he’s a fairly typical product of his environment: an ex-con, petty drug dealer, doting father and loving son, a streetwise African-American brother from Oakland, California, who is finding it hard to hold down a job. As played by Michael B Jordan, he’s also quite a charismatic character with an engaging smile - if an occasionally incendiary temper.

You just don’t dis his mother or his girlfriend…

Although based on a true incident that occurred in the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2009, Fruitvale Station is actually a fairly leisurely docudrama, a slice-of-life piece focusing on a certain corner of America today. What makes the film so compelling, though, is Jordan’s performance and the authentic voice of its debutant director, Ryan Coogler. Coogler has managed to pinpoint the dynamic of his subject matter with an honesty and integrity that draws the viewer into his world, making its outcome all the more affecting.

From

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Oculus CERT 15 (103mins) Starring Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane, Katee Sackhoff Directed by Mike Flanagan (USA)

Released from Fri 13 June

Karen Gillan - Amy Pond in Doctor Who makes her American film debut in this slice of supernatural horror. She plays Kaylie Russell, whose brother is convicted of murdering their own father. But Kaylie suspects the killer was something entirely less human… These things happen.

A Perfect Plan CERT tbc Starring Diane Kruger, Dany Boon, Alice Pol, Robert Plagnol Directed by Pascal Chaumeil (France)

Isabelle’s family has a very unusual curse: the first marriage of every female ends in divorce.

So, although Isabelle (Kruger) adores her boyfriend, Pierre, she decides to sidestep the jinx by marrying a complete stranger first… This is the sort of French romcom that looks as if it were made to produce a Hollywood remake.

Watch this space.

Devil’s Knot CERT 15 (114 mins) Starring Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Dane DeHaan, Mireille Enos, Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas, Alessandro Nivola Directed by Atom Egoyan (USA)

Based on the book by Mara Leveritt, this is the true story of three eight-year-old boys who went missing in 1993 in West Memphis. In the event, the boys’ naked bodies were found horrifically beaten and sexually mutilated. Colin Firth plays the private investigator on the case.

The Young And Prodigious T.S. Spivet CERT tbc Starring Kyle Catlett, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, Callum Keith Rennie, Niamh Wilson Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France/Canada)

With the films Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, Amélie and Micmacs, Jean-Pierre Jeunet has proved to be one of the most inventive of modern filmmakers. Here, he journeys to Montana to tell the story of a tenyear-old cartographer who sets across country to receive a prize at the Smithsonian Institute for his discovery of a perpetual motion machine. Expect vivid characters and lashings of charm. In 3D.

Released from Fri 20 June

Chinese Puzzle CERT 15 (117mins) Starring Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Cécile De France, Kelly Reilly, Sandrine Holt Directed by Cédric Klapisch (France)

The Food Guide To Love CERT tbc Starring Richard Coyle, Leonor Watling, Lorcan Cranitch, Bronagh Gallagher Directed by Dominic Harari and Teresa de Pelegri (Spain/Ireland/France)

The cinema is littered with great films about food, not least Babette's Feast, Ratatouille and Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman. This romantic comedy about a food critic (Coyle) who uses his recipes to win the hearts (and bodies) of women, looks like a cordon bleu addition to the genre. Filmed in Dublin.

When the mother of his two children moves from Paris to New York, Xavier Rousseau (Duris) can’t bear to be away from them. So he moves to New York, too. What’s not to like?

Duris is arguably the most charismatic actor working in France today, and Mlles Tautou, De France and Reilly are not to be sniffed at either. This completes the romantic trilogy that started with Pot Luck (2002) and Russian Dolls (2005).

The Art Of The Steal CERT 15 (86mins) Starring Kurt Russell, Jay Baruchel, Katheryn Winnick, Chris Diamantopoulos, Terence Stamp, Matt Dillon Directed by Jonathan Sobol (Canada)

We’re back in the world of art heists, and Kurt Russell plays an art thief called Crunch Calhoun (no, seriously). After seven years in prison he rounds up his old gang for one last heist. Is it just us, or does this sound wildly familiar? www.whatsonlive.co.uk 43

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3 Days To Kill CERT 12a (117mins) Starring Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Richard Sammel Directed by McG (USA/France)

As CIA agent Ethan Renner, Kevin Costner is running out of time. But before he dies, he wants to re-connect with his daughter (Steinfeld) from whom he is estranged. Then Renner is offered an experimental drug by a CIA assassin (Heard), which would help to extend his life - albeit at a cost… Amber Heard, incidentally, is engaged to Johnny Depp in real life.

Released from Fri 27 June

Chef CERT 15 (114mins) Starring Jon Favreau, Sofía Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Downey Jr Directed by Jon Favreau (USA)

More humour and food this month (see the 13 June release The Food Guide To Love), this time from Jon Favreau. Before Favreau went on to direct Elf, Iron Man and Cowboys & Aliens, he made the small, wryly amusing and character-driven Made (2001). He now returns to this more intimate scenario with this story of a disgraced chef (Favreau himself) who starts up his own business running an eatery on wheels.

From

FRI 27 JUNE own mind as to the rationale of Camille’s internment. An austere and minimalist piece, it is likely to alienate the casual viewer, but its currents run deep.

Third Person CERT tbc Camille Claudel 1915 CERT tbc Starring Juliette Binoche, Jean-Luc Vincent, Robert Leroy, Marion Keller Directed by Bruno Dumont (France)

To this day, there is considerable ambiguity surrounding the mental health of the celebrated sculptor Camille Claudel. Still best known for being the student and lover of Rodin, Camille was sectioned by her brother, the poet Paul Claudel, in 1913. A year later she was transferred to the Montdevergues Asylum in the South of France. The French filmmaker Bruno Dumont specialises in ambiguity, allowing his landscapes and the faces of his actors to provide any narrative insight. His coup here is to cast Juliette Binoche, an actress who not only has a wonderful face but a ferocious intelligence. In contrast to the other inmates, her Camille is a model of composure, a cultured woman naturally disturbed by her incarceration - and by the outbursts of her fellow inmates. As such, Dumont’s film is an uncomfortable tragedy that allows the audience to make up its

Starring Liam Neeson, Mila Kunis, Adrien Brody, Olivia Wilde, James Franco, Maria Bello, Kim Basinger Directed by Paul Haggis (UK/USA/Germany/Belgium)

Paul Haggis, who wrote and directed the Oscar-winning Crash (2004), is good at the multi-narrative. Here, he interweaves three love stories set in Paris, New York and Rome.

Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie CERT tbc

Starring Brendan O'Carroll, Eilish O'Carroll, Nick Nevern, Paddy Houlihan Directed by Ben Kellett (Ireland/UK)

Since the phenomenal success of The Inbetweeners Movie, there’s nothing to stop the flood of smutty TV series to the big screen. This one is a spin-off of Mrs Brown’s Boys, in which the Irish writer and comedian Brendan O'Carroll played Agnes Brown, based on his own books and radio show.

Here, Mrs Brown’s fruit & veg stall is threatened by developers, so she enlists the help of a troupe of blind Ninja assassins and a barrister with Tourette’s Syndrome.

Incidentally, O’Carroll’s Agnes Brown [sic] was previously played on screen by Anjelica Huston. You couldn’t make it up.

Cold In July CERT tbc Starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, Don Johnson, Vinessa Shaw, Nick Damici Directed by Jim Mickle (USA)

With actors like Sam Shepard and Don Johnson on board, you sort of know what to expect. Set in East Texas in the 1980s, Jim Mickle’s crime drama - based on the novel by Joe R Lansdale - is the story of a man blighted by an accidental killing.

Michael C Hall plays the latter, an actor forever associated with the role of the serial killer Dexter Morgan on TV. But now he may not be quite so cold-blooded… www.whatsonlive.co.uk 45

Film June_Layout 1 23/05/2014 17:25 Page 7

Film A-Z LISTINGS All films are currently on general release unless otherwise stated. For full listing information, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk 12 Years A Slave 15 Based on the autobiography of Soloman Northup, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender star.

Showing at Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, Staffs, Tues 10 June, Hereford Courtyard Theatre, Sun 15 June

Beyond The Edge PG Docudrama charting Edmund Hilary's historical ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. Combining reconstructions, found footage, photographs and interviews. Stars Chad Moffitt, Sonam Sherpa, John Wraight, John Hurt.

Showing at The Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton, Mon 2 Weds 4 June

Blue Is The Warmest Colour 18 At fifteen years old, Adele doesn't question it: girls go out with boys. Her life is changed forever when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair who will allow her to discover desire; to assert herself as a woman and as an adult.

Stars Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Showing at The Edge Arts Centre, Much Wenlock, Mon 2 June

Centre, Much Wenlock, Mon 9 June

Calvary 15 Brendan Gleeson plays a priest - a good one, to boot - who is constantly disappointed by the small-mindedness of his flock. He’s then threatened during a routine confession and finds that he must combat a very real evil head-on. Also stars Chris O’Dowd.

Showing at Artrix, Bromsgrove, until Sun 1 June; Old Market Hall, Shrewsbury, Mon 2 Thurs 5 June; Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Fri 6 & Mon 9 June; Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Fri 6 Mon 9 June; Hereford Courtyard Theatre, Tues 10 - Weds 11 June; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Sun 22 June

WATCH THE FILM T A TRAILERS o.uk

The Book Thief 12a A young girl sent to live with a foster family in World War Two Germany learns to read, with encouragement from Max, a Jewish refugee who they’re hiding under the stairs. Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Sun 1 & Weds 11 June

The Butler 12a Loosely based on real events, The Butler in question works at the White House, and it’s through his eyes that we see many of the major historical episodes of the twentieth century.

Showing at The Edge Arts

e.c

v whatsonli Divergent 12a

A futuristic Chicago in which the populace are divided into five distinct classes of personality, or ‘virtues’. But Beatrice 'Tris' Prior is a ‘divergent’, which means she’s without an official virtue which makes her very dangerous. But why, she wonders? Stars Shailene Woodley. Showing at Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, until Thurs 1 June

The Double 15 Based on the novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double stars Jesse Eisenberg as a man gradually driven nuts when he

CINEMA Box Office Birmingham CINEWORLD Broad St, B’ham 0871 200 2000 CINEWORLD Solihull 0871 200 2000 ELECTRIC, B’ham 0121 643 7879 EMPIRE 0871 471 4714 MILLENNIUM POINT 0121 202 2222 MAC 0121 446 3232 ODEON 0871 224 4007 REEL Quinton 0121 421 5316

SHOWCASE 0871 220 1000 VUE CINEMA Star City 08712 240 240

Black Country CINEWORLD W’HAMPTON 0871 200 2000 LIGHT HOUSE MEDIA CENTRE, W’HAMPTON 01902 716055 ODEON MERRY HILL, DUDLEY 0871 22 44007 SHOWCASE, DUDLEY 0871 220 1000

46 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

realises that his life has been taken over by his double. Showing at Hereford Courtyard Theatre, Fri 13 - Tues 17 June; Old Market Hall, Shrewsbury, Fri 13 - Tues 19 June

East Of Eden PG Cal is continuously at war with his brother Aron, with whom he competes for his father’s affection.

Things come to a head when Cal not only falls for his brother’s girlfriend but also finds out the truth about his and Aron’s estranged mother. Stars James Dean, Raymond Massey. Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Weds 18 - Thurs 19 June Eat Drink Man Woman PG Mr Chu is a widower and a master Chinese chef.

Each Sunday he makes a glorious banquet for his three daughters, to which each daughter brings ‘announcements’ as they negotiate the transition from the ‘father knows best’ tradition to a new tradition which encompasses old values in new forms. Directed by Ang Lee. Showing at The Hive, Shrewsbury, Fri 27 June

Fading Gigolo 15 A comedy drama about a couple of friends who set up a gigolo business to help the lonely women of New York.

Stars Woody Allen, John Turturro. Showing at The Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton, until Thurs 5 June; Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Fri 20 - Sun 22 & Weds 25 June

A Farewell To Arms PG A tale of the love between ambulance driver Lt Henry and Nurse Catherine Barkley during World War One. The action takes place in Italy, the two falling in love during the war and stopping at nothing to be together.

Stars Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes. Showing at Malvern Theatres, Thurs 5 June; Warwick Arts Centre, Fri 6 & Sun 8 June

Frank 15 Frank is the lead singer of a band called Soronprfbs [sic], who wears a large papier-mâché mask, not only when he performs, FOREST ARTS CENTRE, WALSALL 01922 645 555

Shropshire CINEWORLD, SHREWSBURY 0871 200 2000 THE EDGE ARTS CENTRE, MUCH WENLOCK 01952 728 911 FESTIVAL DRAYTON CENTRE, MARKET DRAYTON 01630 654 444 THE HIVE, SHREWSBURY 01743 234 970 LUDLOW ASSEMBLY ROOMS 01584 878 141 MAJESTIC, BRIDGNORTH 01746 761815

but when he sleeps and showers, too. Jon Burroughs is the wannabe musician who joins the band when they move to Ireland to cut an album.

Stars Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson.

Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Mon 9 Thurs 12 June

Frozen PG Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, in which the kingdom of Arendelle is turned into an eternal winter by the Princess Elsa.

Showing at Hereford Courtyard Theatre, until Sun 1 June

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes U Two singers, best friends Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw, travel to Paris, pursued by a private detective hired by Lorelei’s fiancé’s disapproving father to keep an eye on her, a rich, enamoured old man and many other doting admirers. Stars Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe.

Showing at The Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton, Sun 8 June

Half A Yellow Sun 15 The film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Orange Prizewinning novel, set during the Nigerian-Biafran War of 1967-1970. Stars Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Showing at Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Tues 3 - Weds 4 June; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Weds 4 - Sun 8 June

Ilo Ilo 12a A Philippino nanny arrives in Singapore from Ilo Ilo to look after Jiale, a spoilt and difficult ten-year-old boy. The boy tries his best to get rid of her, but she patiently perseveres, and a touching bond develops between them. But how will his mother react? And meanwhile, what exactly is his father up to? Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Mon 2 - Thurs 5 June; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Mon 23 June; Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Mon 23 & Weds 25 June Inside Llewyn Davis 15 Set in Greenwich Village, New York, in 1961, and ODEON TELFORD 0871 224 4007 OMH SHREWSBURY 01743 281281 WEM TOWN HALL 01939 232299

Staffordshire CINEWORLD, BURTON-UPONTRENT 0871 200 2000 THE STAFFORD CINEMA, STAFFORD 0207 438 9580 FOXLOWE ARTS CENTRE, LEEK 01538 386 112 STOKE FILM THEATRE, 01782 411188

loosely based on the memoir of folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Oscar Isaac stars. Directed by the Coen brothers.

Showing at Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, Staffs, Tues 24 June

The Invisible Woman 12a The film focuses on Dickens’ extra-marital relationship with Ellen ‘Nelly’ Ternan.

Ralph Fiennes & Felicity Jones star. Showing at Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, Staffs, Tues 10 June

Jimmy’s Hall 12a Barry Ward plays the reallife political activist Jimmy Gralton, who becomes the only Irishman ever to be deported from Ireland.

This is the story of the dance hall he built. Also stars Simone Kirby.

Showing at Old Market Hall, Shrewsbury, Mon 6 Sun 12 June; Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Mon 13 Sun 19 June

Julie And Julia 12 A culinary legend provides a frustrated office worker with a new recipe for life.

This is the true story of how Julia Child's adventures and cookbook inspired fledgling writer Julie Powell to whip up five hundred-and-twentyfour recipes in three hundred-and sixty-five days, introducing a new generation to the magic of French cooking. Stars Amy Adams, Meryl Streep. Showing at The Hive, Shrewsbury, Sat 28 June

The Love Punch 15 The Love Punch is the story of two divorcees.

Reunited at a wedding, the ex-couple decide to team up to retrieve the retirement money stolen from them. Stars Pierce Brosnan, Emma Thompson. Showing at Hereford Courtyard Theatre, until Fri 6 June; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Mon 9 - Weds 11 June; Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Thurs 12 - Fri 13 June; Old Market Hall, Shrewsbury, Fri 13 - Thurs 19 June The Lunchbox PG Middle-class housewife Ila is trying once again to add some spice to her marriage, this time through ODEON TAMWORTH 0871 224 4007

Warwickshire ODEON COVENTRY 0871 224 4007 ODEON NUNEATON 0871 224 4007 SHOWCASE, COVENTRY 0871 220 1000 VUE, LEAMINGTON SPA 08712 240 240 PICTURE HOUSE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON 0871 902 5741 WARWICK ARTS CENTRE COVENTRY 02476 524524

her cooking. She hopes that this new recipe will arouse some kind of reaction from her neglectful husband. She prepares a special lunchbox to be delivered to him at work.

But, unbeknownst to her, it’s mistakenly delivered to another office worker.

Stars Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur. Showing at Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Mon 2 June; Stoke Film Theatre, Tues 3 June; Wem Town Hall, North Shropshire, Weds 4 Thurs 5 June; Hereford Courtyard Theatre, Weds 25 - Fri 27 June

Mon Oncle U Monsieur Hulot visits his sister and her family.

Confused by their futuristic and automated world, M Hulot finds a kindred spirit in his ten-year-old nephew, Gerard. Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Sat 7 June

Muppets Most Wanted U This time the gang are on tour in Europe (London, Berlin, Madrid) and find themselves involved in an international crime racket headed by Kermit’s double. Stars Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell. Showing at Malvern Theatres, until Sun 1 June

Noah 12a Russell Crowe stars as Noah, rounding up a formidable menagerie of species to rescue them from the flood. Showing at Hereford Courtyard Theatre, Sat 17 - Weds 21 May; Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Sat 24 - Mon 26 May; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, until Tues 3 June The Other Woman 12a It’s hard to imagine any man double-dealing Cameron Diaz, but this is the case in this revenge comedy. Once Amber (Diaz) realises that her boyfriend is actually married, she teams up with his wife to plot suitable retribution. Also stars Leslie Mann. Showing at Hereford Courtyard Theatre, Tues 21 - Fri 27 Jun

Philomena 12a Dame Judi Dench plays Philomena Lee, an elderly woman who decides to

Worcestershire ARTRIX, BROMSGROVE 01527 577330 MALVERN THEATRE 0845 287 2146 THE NORBURY THEATRE, DROITWICH SPA 08444 777 1000 WAREHOUSE, KIDDERMINSTER 01562 747773 VUE, WORCESTER 0871 224 0240 THE ROSE’S THEATRE, TEWKESBURY 01684 295 074

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search for the son taken from her when she was just a teenager. Also stars Steve Coogan. Showing at Forest Arts Centre, Walsall, Thurs 19 June

Pioneer 15 A conspiracy thriller set in the world of deep sea diving at the beginning of the Norwegian oil boom.

Petter is a veteran deep sea diver; it’s dangerous work, but following a tragic accident, Petter finds himself in far more dangerous territory - as a whistleblower in a situation where the stakes are very high…

Stars Aksel Hennie.

Showing at mac, Birmingham, Mon 9 Thurs 12 June; Ludlow Arts Centre, Thurs 19 - Fri 20 June; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Mon 30 June Pulp tbc A documentary following the Sheffield rock group Pulp on the day of their homecoming gig at the MotorPoint Arena on December 8, 2012.

Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Sat 7 June The Railway Man 15 Based on the autobiography of Eric Lomax who, as a POW for the Japanese, helped build the ThaiBurma Railway. Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman star.

Showing at The Edge Arts Centre, Much Wenlock, Mon 16 June

The Sea 12a The story of Max, recently widowed and struggling with grief. He revisits the remote Irish seaside village where he spent his childhood summers, and finds himself engulfed in memories, both of his recent loss, and of the long-ago summer of 1955 when he was twelve years old. Stars Bonnie Wright, Ciarán Hinds. Showing at Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Tues 17 - Weds 18 June; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Thurs 19 June The Shawshank Redemption 15 Andy Dufresne is convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover, and sent to Shawshank Prison to serve two consecutive life sentences. While inside, he befriends fellow lifer Red, and together they battle to survive the evils of prison life, under the watchful eyes of corrupt prison warden Norton. Stars Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman. Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Weds 25 - Thurs 26 June

Sunshine On Leith PG Inspired by the album of the same name by The Proclaimers, Sunshine On Leith went from vinyl to CD to stage musical. The film version follows the

story of two soldiers returning from Afghanistan who have to adjust to civilian life in Edinburgh. Showing at Forest Arts Centre, Walsall, Fri 6 June

Tracks 12a Director John Curran brings to the screen the 1980 memoir by Robyn Davidson, which chronicles her 1,700-mile trek across the Australian Outback with just a dog, four camels and the National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan.

Stars Mia Wasikowska.

Showing at Stoke Film Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Fri 6 - Sat 7 June; Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Sat 14 & Mon 16 June; Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, Fri 20 - Tues 24 June Transcendence 12a Not content to be a brilliant scientist, Dr Will Caster downloads his mind onto a computer. It’s not ethical and there are people out to stop him.

Meanwhile, Dr Caster is gaining unprecedented power… Stars Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman.

Showing at Hereford Courtyard Theatre, until Tues 3 June The Two Faces Of January 12a The ubiquitous Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) is back in this

thriller based on the novel

by Patricia Highsmith. He plays Rydal, a tour guide who shows an American couple around the Acropolis of Athens. But Rydal is not all he seems and neither, for that matter, is his new friend Chester MacFarland... Also stars Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst. Showing at The Light House Media Centre, Wolverhampton, until Thurs 5 June; Malvern Theatre, until Thurs 5 June; Electric Cinema, Birmingham, until Thurs 5 June; Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, until Thurs 5th June; Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Thurs 26 Mon 30 June

Under The Skin U This science fiction thriller stars Scarlett Johansson as an alien who preys on hitchhikers in Scotland.

Showing at Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Mon 2 June Venus In Fur 15 Having adapted Leopold von Sacher- Masoch’s ode to sadomasochism, Venus In Furs, playwright Thomas is struggling to find an actress for the role of Vanda. When a boisterous fortysomething called Vanda waltzes into the theatre, Thomas has no choice but to audition her.

As they read through the script, what follows is a bat-

tle of wits which is in turns seductive and unnerving.

Directed by Roman Polanski. Showing at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Fri 20 - Thurs 26 June

Volver 15 A Pedro Almodovar film about three generations of women and how they deal with death and the rich culture that surrounds it in the region of La Mancha. Stars Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura. Showing at The Hive, Shrewsbury, Fri 6 June We Are The Best 15 Three thirteen-year-old girls roam the streets: brave and tough, strong and weak, confused and weird. Taking care of themselves way too early, they find joy in starting a punk band without any instruments, even though everybody says that punk is dead. Stars Liv LeMoyne, Mads Korsgaard, Mira Grosin. Showing at Stoke Film Theatre, Stokeon-Trent, Thurs 5 June; Ludlow Assembly Rooms, South Shropshire, Tues 10 - Weds 11 June The Wind Rises PG Hayao Miyazaki is one of the leading talents in animation today, having won

countless awards and even an Oscar (for his peerless 2001 fantasy Spirited Away). Here, he’s adapted his own manga comic, a fictionalised biography of the aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi. Showing at Electric Cinema, Birmingham, until Thurs 5 June; Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Fri 13 Sun 15 June

The Wolf Of Wall Street 18 Over its three-hour running time, there’s so much bad behaviour, so much profanity, so much cocaine, and so many hookers and parties that it’s like The Hangover that swallowed Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio stars. Showing at The Edge Arts Centre, Much Wenlock, Mon 23 June

The Yes Men 15 The story follows Andy and Mike and their tasteless parody of the WTO website. Some site visitors don't notice it’s a fake and send speaking invitations. Mike and Andy play along and soon find themselves attending functions as WTO representatives. Showing at Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, Staffs, Weds 4 June

For full listings visit:

www.whatsonlive.co.uk

DVD NEW RELEASES The Rocket 12a

Cuban Fury 15

The Rocket explores the displacement of a rural Lao community as a new dam is constructed. The central character is Ahlo, a tenyear-old boy believed to bring bad luck wherever he goes. Nonetheless, Ahlo is filled with a sense of adventure and mischief.

Released 2 June

Bruce is a loser who’s got a crush on his beautiful boss, Julia. Then he discovers she has a secret passion: salsa. And many, many years ago, Bruce was something of a child prodigy of the Latin dance… Stars Nick Frost, Rashida Jones.

Released 9 June

Last Vegas 12a Three sixtysomething friends take a break from their day-to-day lives to throw a bachelor party in Las Vegas for their last remaining single pal.

Stars Robert De Niro.

Released 12 May

Lone Survivor 15 Adapted from Marcus Luttrell's book of the same name, this is the true story of four SEAL soldiers who, in 2005, attempt to capture and/or kill the Taliban leader Ahmad Shahd. Starring Mark Wahlberg.

Released 9 June

The Monuments Men

Robocop 12a Here, the law-enforcing cyborg is played by the Swedish-American actor Joel Kinnaman, who starred in the American remake of the cult Danish TV series The Killing. Let the killing commence…

Released 9 June

12a Based on the book by Robert M Edsel, this is the true story of a group of art historians and curators who’re conscripted to infiltrate Nazi Germany in order to track down invaluable works of art by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo, amongst others. Stars George Clooney.

Released 16 June

Exhibition 15 Tom Hiddleston is becoming this year’s James Franco (as a constant pres-

ence on our screens).

Here, he plays an estate agent, but the central characters are an artistic couple whose lifestyle is threatened when their London home is put up for sale.

Also stars Liam Gillick.

Released 23 June

Her 15

Non-Stop 12a

As it happens, ‘Her’ (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) is invisible both to us and our protagonist, Theo Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix). In the not-too-distant future, Theo, who is going through a divorce, downloads a voice-activated operating system.

Choosing a female identity for his new programme, Theo finds himself becoming totally reliant on ‘Her’, both practically and emotionally.

Released 23 June

Liam Neeson is back as an air marshal who’s sent a text announcing that a passenger will die every twenty minutes unless $150million is transferred to a secret bank account.

Released 30 June

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Festivals Lunar Festival Umberslade Estate, Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire, Fri 6 - Sun 8 June

After a successful debut in 2013, Lunar returns to Umberslade Estate for the second time. Set in the spiritual home of Nick Drake and based on sister festival Moseley Folk, this three-day event prides itself on creating a relaxed, family-friendly atmosphere. A variety of dance and craft workshops can be enjoyed throughout each day, as well as a kids’ climbing wall and a separate family camping area.

Musically, the line-up boasts a strong collection of alternative rock, indie and folk bands - British Sea Power (headliners), Tim Burgess, Lanterns On The Lake and Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, to name but a few. The arrival of evening finds the festival offering more of a clubbing environment, with the main bar becoming the centre stage for household DJs to keep Lunar alive into the early hours.

Call me unique

Holi One Colour Festival

BASS14 Festival Various Birmingham venues, Sun 1 - Sat 14 June

The Rainbow Arena, Digbeth, Birmingham, Sat 28 June

‘Made In Britain’ provides the theme for BASS14, two weeks of celebrations which highlight the quality of Black arts, music and entertainment in the Midlands.

Award-winning record producer Curtis Lynch kicks off the festival with his challenge to produce the BASS14 theme tune in a twelve-hour period and using only local talent.

Curtis’ aim is to go live on air with his Made In Britain theme song by 8pm. Fingers crossed!

BASS14 programming includes: The Bass Informs sessions, providing a platform for young artists to learn from some of the biggest names in the industry (2 June); a screening of ’80s movie Babylon, followed by a Q&A session with Aswad frontman Brinsley Forde (4 June); an evening of laughter from Drum regulars and two of Britain’s ‘finest’ comedians, Curtis Walker and John Simmitt (6 June); and visual art with a difference, when Birmingham-based artist Sweaty Eskimo is tasked with creating a largescale painting in just seven hours at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (10 June).

Musical contributions to the festival come courtesy of Grime Unplugged.

Demonstrating the versatility and range of the music and artists, BASS14 is also going acoustic with some of the biggest artists in the genre, including Ghetts, Blizzard and Eyez... For full details of all festival events, visit, www.bass14.co.uk

This over-eighteens event is said to be inspired by the original Indian Holi fest - but rather than promoting religious aspects, it’s instead promoting the ideas of togetherness and the colour of everyday life. Every hour, on the hour, natural, non-toxic, coloured powder will be thrown in celebration.

International DJs including Florian Kunicke, Richard Grey, Eddy Karmona and Mauro Pierotti present throughout the day, ensuring the arches of Digbeth are filled not only with brightly coloured powder but also the sounds of house, electro, funk, hip-hop, breaks and plenty more.

Food and drink are available to purchase on site.

Attendees are encouraged to wear white clothing.

Ludlow Arts Festival Ludlow Caste, Ludlow Square, Shropshire Sat 28 June - Sun 6 July

Having been running now for over fifty years, Ludlow Arts has arguably earned itself a reputation as one of Shropshire’s most prestigious events.

This year’s festival, as always, features an impressive line-up of drama, comedy, music and family entertainment.

Eleven-piece contemporary folk ensemble Bellowhead headline on 5 July, with ’70s legends David Essex, Showaddywaddy and The Bay City Rollers taking their place in the outdoor concert line-up on the 6th. Multi-award-winning comedian Milton Jones and master ventriloquist Paul Zerdin also appear (2 July), with family favourite The Sooty Show kicking things off on the festival’s penultimate day (5 July).

Aerosmith

Download Festival Donington Park, Castle Donington, Derby, Fri 13 - Sun 15 June

Bellowhead

Seen as the spiritual home of rock, Donington Park has played host to this major festival for more than ten years. Organised by Live Nation, Download regularly attracts the creme de la creme of rock, heavy metal and punk, with more than one hundred-andforty acts this year scheduled to appear across three days and five stages.

American rock takes top billing, with Avenged Sevenfold headlining the main stage on the Friday. Linkin Park take centre-stage on the Saturday, while Aerosmith close the festival on the Sunday. Fall Out Boy, Status Quo, Alter Bridge, Trivium, The Pretty Reckless, The Offspring and Twisted Sister also feature in an impressive line-up. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 49

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Festivals Listings For full listing information on festivals, including dates and line-up, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk

JUNE BASS FESTIVAL Featuring Ghetts, Harleigh Blu, Brinsley Forde & Call Me Unique, Sun 1st - Sat 14 June, various venues around Birmingham ENGLISH HAYDN FESTIVAL Featuring The Chiaroscuro String Quartet, The Salomon String Quartet, The Barbican Piano Trio, The English Hayden Orchestra, Tues 3 - Sun 8 June, Various locations around Bridgnorth SOUTHWELL FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Feast Of Fiddles, The Kennedys, The Henry Girls & The Poozies, Thurs 5 - Sun 8 June, The Workhouse, Nottinghamshire WELFEST ON THE MEADOW Featuring Medicine Head, SO2F, Jazz Morley & Wes Finch, Sat 7 June, Synder Meadow, Stratford Upon Avon DETONATE FESTIVAL Featuring Bonobo, David Rodigan, LTJ Bukem & Bad Company, Sat 7 June, Nottingham Racecourse NO TOMORROW FESTIVAL Featuring London Grammar, Sam Smith, Clean Bandit, Duke Dumont, Sat 7 June, Wollaton Park, Nottingham MUCH WENLOCK FESTIVAL Featuring Ceilidh & Male Voice Choir, Sat 7 - Sat 21 June, Various locations around Much Wenlock

DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL Featuring Linkin Park, Aerosmith, Avenged Sevenfold & Killswitch Engaged, Fri 13 - Sun 15 June, Donington Park, Derby FOLK ON THE PARK Featuring Jinski, Jonathan Day Trio, Keith Donnelly & Sunjay Brayne, Fri 13 Sun 15 June, Lower Lacon Caravan Park, Shropshire GREGYNOG FESTIVAL Featuring BBC National Orchestra Wales, The Nash Ensemble, Flemish Radio Choir & Alamire, Fri 13 - Sun 29 June, Powys LEAMINGTON PEACE FESTIVAL Featuring Amapola Latin Band, Babal, Becky Syson & Ben River, Sat 14 - Sun 15 June, Pump Room Gardens, Leamington Spa LUDLOW FRINGE FESTIVAL Packed programme of genre-crossing events, including performances from Remi Harris & the Gypsy Jazz Project, Martin & Eliza Carthy, comedians Andrew Lawrence & Carl Donnelly & an ElectroSwing DJ Music Night, Sat 14 June Sun 6 July, various locations around Ludlow, South Shropshire LINTON MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring Walter Trout, Vintage Trouble, Geno Washington, Pat McManus, Fri 20 - Sun 22 June, The Alma Inn, Hertfordshire LAINFEST Featuring Young Kato, I Am I Love, The Other Tribe, Jaws, Fri 20 - Sun 22 June, Gopsall Hall Farm, Leicestershire

Roots Manuva- Nozstock, Bromyard

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FOXTON LOCKS FESTIVAL Featuring Stevie Jones Band, Halfcut Theater, John Fryer & Daz Lynch, Sat 21 - Sun 22 June, Foxton Locks, Leicestershire KINETON MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring Bad Janet, Battered Soul, Nik Lowe, Klasside, Sat 21 June, Kineton Sports and Social Club, Warwickshire EXILE MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring Blue Wallpaper Incorporated, The Cats Charis, Rita Payne, The Lucky Stikes, Fri 27 - Sun 29 June, Sabine Hay, Derbyshire HOLI ONE FESTIVAL BIRMINGHAM Featuring Piloy, Hard Rock Sofa, Goodluck, Florian Kunicke, Sat 28 June, The Rainbow Venues, Digbeth, Birmingham LUDLOW ARTS FESTIVAL Featuring music from Bellowhead, David Essex, The Bay City Rollers & Showaddywaddy.

Comedy from Facinating Aida, Milton Jones & Paul Zerdin, Sat 28 June - Sun 6 July, Ludlow Castle, South Shropshire

JULY LICHFIELD FESTIVAL 2014 line-up includes; Brodsky, Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita, Benjamin Baker & Aquarelle String Quartet , Fri 4 Sat 13 July, Various venues around Lichfield NATIONAL FOREST FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Steeleye Span, Shoolenifty, The Mighty Doonans, The Shee, Fri 4 - Sun 6 July, Conkers, Leicestershire GODIVA FESTIVAL Featuring Happy Mondays, Funeral For A Friend, We Are Scientists & Buzzcocks, Fri 4 - Sun 6 July, Memorial Park,

Coventry WIRELESS FESTIVAL Featuring Kayne West, Outkast, Bruno Mars, Drake, Fri 4 - Sun 6 July, Perry Park, Birmingham BLUES AT THE FOLD Featuring Steve Morrison, MumboJumbo, Wily Bo Walker and the Mescal Canyon Troubadours & The Blues Duo featuring Tommy Allen and Johnny Hewit, Sat 5 July, The Fold, Worcester 2000TRESS FESTIVAL Featuring Frightened Rabbit, The Bronx, Kids In Glass Houses, Blood Red Shoes, Thurs 10 Sat 12 July, Upcote Farm, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire NAPTON FESTIVAL Featuring Grace Solero, Voodoo Vegas, Nina Baker & The Fallows, Fri 11 - Sat 12 July, Napton Village Hall Grounds, Warwickshire MOSTLY JAZZ, FUNK & SOUL FESTIVAL Featuring Mavis Staples, Earth Wind & Fire Experience featuring Al McKay, Fun Lovin’ Criminals & Omar Souleyman, Fri 11 - Sun 13 July, Moseley Park, B’ham BROMSGROVE FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Dougie Mclean, Richard Digance, Anthony John Clarke & Mike Silver, Fri 11 - Sun 13 July, The Bowling Green, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire WORKHOUSE FESTIVAL Featuring Ash Mandrake, Bleedin Noses, Soul Preachers & The Misty Blue Trio, Fri 11 - Mon 14 July, Llanfyllin, Powys BIRMINGHAM FEST 2014 line-up to be announced, Fri 11 Sun 27 July, Various locations throughout Birmingham NOISILY FESTIVAL Featuring Max Cooper, Slam, Gaudi & Symphonix, Fri 11 Sun 13 May, Coney Woods, Leicestershire THE ROCK AND BIKE FEST Featuring White Coast Rebels, Chase The Ace, Snakecharmer & Evil Scarecrow, Thurs 17 Sun 20 July, Carnfield Hall, Derby BIRMINGHAM INTERNATIONAL JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL 2014 line-up to be announced, Fri 18 - Sun 27 July, Various locations throughout Birmingham L FEST Featuring Erin McKeown, Never The Bride, D’lys, Jenny Lockyer & Sounds Of Sirens, Fri 18 - Mon 21 June, Uttoxeter Racecourse, Staffordshire HOLE IN THE WALL Blind Lemon, The Bookends, Mummy Mia! & The Quo AKA Four Rossis, Fri 18 - Sun 20 July,

Hopton Court, Kidderminster ALIVE AT DELAPRE PARK Featuring Simple Minds, Boyzone, Bananarama & Rick Astley, Fri 18 - Sun 20 July, Delapre Park, Northamptonshire SPLENDOUR Featuring Tom Odell, Happy Mondays, Boomtown Rats & Reverend And The Makers, Sat 19 July, Wollaton Park, Nottingham FOLK BY THE OAK Featuring Seth Lakeman, Kathryn Tickell & The Side, Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker, Sun 20 July, various venues around Nottingham SIMMER DOWN FESTIVAL Featuring Steel Pulse, Apache Indian, Reggae Revolution & Musical Youth, Sun 20 July, Handsworth Park, Birmingham ROCK AND BLUES OLD SCHOOL WEEKENDER Featuring Toseland, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Pig Iron & Slaveout, Thurs 24 - Sat 26 July, Coney Grey Showground, Derbyshire WARWICK FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Habadekuk, John Tams and Barry Coope, Gordie MacKeeman and his Rhythm Boys & Breabach, Thurs 24 Sun 27 July, various venues around Warwickshire GLOBAL GATHERING Featuring Prodigy, Chase & Status, David Guetta & Knife Party, Fri 25 - Sat 26 July, Long Marston Airfield, Stratford upon Avon DEERSTOCK Featuring This Wicked Tongue, Cadets, Parasite, Bongolistic Intent, Fri 25 - Sun 27 July, Newton, Nottingham SINGING STICKS FESTIVAL Featuring Los Monkeys Musica, Inta Africa, Dub Didge & Super Roo, Fri 25 - Sun 27 July, The Overstone Scout Camp, Northamptonshire INDIETRACKS MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring Gruff Rhys, Allo Darlin’, Dean Wareham & Spearmint, Fri 25 - Sun 27 July, Butterley Station, Derbyshire BAREFOOT FESTIVAL Featuring SuperEvolver, DC Fontana & Laurel Canyons, Fri 25 - Mon 28 July, Prestwold Hall, Leicestershire LEICESTER MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring Professor Green, Tinie Tempah, Kool & The Gang, Labrinth, Fri 25 - Sat 26 July, Welford Road Stadium, Leicestershire CAMBRIDGE FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor, Newton Faulkner & Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Thurs 31 - Sun 3 Aug, Cherry

Hinton Hall Ground, Cambridge

AUGUST Y-NOT Featuring Dizzee Rascal, White Lies, Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls & The Fratellis, Fri 1 Aug - Sun 3 Aug, Mouldrige Lane, Derbyshire CARFEST NORTH Featuring Jools Holland, Seasick Steve, Erasure & Eliza Doolittle, Fri 1 - Sun 3 Aug, Oulton Park Race Circuit, Cheshire NOZSTOCK Featuring Roots Manuva, The Heavy, The Skints & Molotov Jukebox, Fri 1 - Sun 3 Aug, The Farm, Bromyard, Worcestershire LOUNGE ON THE FARM Featuring Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Peter Hook and the Light, DJ Yoda & Courtney Pine, Sat 2 May, Merton Farm, Barkby, Nr Leciester BULLDOG BASH Featuring Dirty DC, Aynt Skynyrd, The Kommitments, Half Deaf Clatch, Thurs 7 Sun 10 Aug, Shakespeare County Raceway, Stratford Upon Avon BLOODSTOCK OPEN AIR Featuring Megadeth, Down, Emperor & Carcass, Thurs 7 - Sun 10 Aug, Catton Park, Derbyshire STRAWBERRY FIELDS FESTIVAL Featuring Reverend And The Makers, Steve Lawler, The Rifles & Catfish and the Bottlemen, Fri 8 Sun 10 Aug, Cattow Farm, Leicester FARMER PHIL’S FESTIVAL Featuring The Orb, The Blockheads, Ferocious Dog & The Delray Rockets, Fri 8 - Sun 10 Aug, Gatten Farm, Shrewsbury JUNCTION 16 Featuring Katherine Jenkins, Fri 8 - Sun 10 Aug, Betley Court Farm, Crewe, Cheshire LAKEFEST Featuring The Bad Shepherds, Buzzcocks, Shed Seven, Lightning Seeds, Fri 8 - Sun 10 Aug, Croft Farm Waterpark, Tewkesbury RUGBY MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring Dead Frequency, White Men Can’t Funk, Soul Rhymaz & Paper Street, Sat 9 Aug, Whitehall Recreational Grounds, Rugby, Warwickshire THE GREEN MAN FESTIVAL Featuring Beirut, First Aid Kit, Neutral Milk Hotel & The Waterboys, Mon 11 Sun 17 Aug, Glanusk Park, Powys V FESTIVAL Featuring Justin Timberlake, The Killers, Ed Sheeran & Paolo Nutini, Sat 16 Sun 17 Aug, Weston Park, Staffordshire

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Festivals Listings For full listing information on festivals, including dates and line-up, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk ALT-FEST Featuring The Cult, Gary Numan, Cradle Of Filth & Arch Enemy, Fri 15 - Sun 17 Aug, Boughton House, Northamptonshire THE JUST SO FESTIVAL Featuring Gabby Young and Other Animals, Perhaps Contraption, Mr Wilson’s Second Liners & Kidnap Alice, Fri 15 - Sun 17 Aug, Rode Hall Parkland, Cheshire PERSHORE JAZZ FESTIVAL Featuring Adrian Cox Quartet, Alan Barnes, Bohem Ragtime Jazz Band, Midland Youth Jazz Orchestra & Craig Milverton, Fri 15 - Sun 17 Aug, Pershore College, Worcestershire THE MOIRA FURNACE FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Blackbeard’s Tea Party, Other Roads, Lucy Ward, Something Nasty In The Woodshed, Fri 15 - Sun 17 Aug, Moira Furnace Museum and Monument Site, Derbyshire BAKEWELL MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring Chas

Hodge’s Band, John Coghlan’s Quo, Lucy Ward & George Borowski, Fri 15 - Sun 17 Aug, The Showground, Derbyshire LICHFIELD FAKE FESTIVAL Featuring Supreme Queen, Oasish & Coldplace, Sat 16 Aug, Beacon Park, Lichfield, Staffordshire SHAMBALA FESTIVAL Featuring Mulatu Astatke, Collie Buddz, Public Service Broadcasting, Cumbria All Stars, By The Rivers & Babyhead, Thur 21 Sun 24, Secret location in The Midlands CREAMFIELDS Featuring Avicii, Deadmau5, Fatboy Slim & Above and Beyond, Fri 22 Sun 24 Aug, Daresbury, Cheshire THE SUMMER RETREAT 2014 line-up to be announced, Sat 23 Sun 24 Aug, The Overstone, Northamptonshire BEERMAGEDDON Featuring Lawnmower Deth, Skreamer, The Starry Wisdom Cult &

Kambrium, Fri 22 - Sun 24 Aug, Stoke Prior Country Club, Bromsgrove SHREWSURY FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Bellowhead, Seth Lakeman, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, The Dhol Foundation & Lau, Fri 22 - Mon 25 Aug, West Midland Showground, Shrewsbury MOSELEY FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Johnny Marr, The Waterboys, Richard Thompson & Lau, Fri 29 - Sun 31 Aug, Moseley Park, Birmingham WORCESTER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2014 line-up to be announced, Fri 29 Sun 31, Various locations around Worcester OFF THE TRACKS SUMMER FESTIVAL Featuring The Orb, Ozric Tentacles & Treacherous Orchestra, Fri 29 - Sun 31 Aug, Donington Park Farmhouse, Derbyshire REWIND FESTIVAL Featuring Billy Ocean, Boomtown Rats, Holly Johnson & Hall and Oates, Fri 29 - Sun 31 Aug, Capesthorne Hall, Cheshire FUSION FESTIVAL Featuring Jessie J, Pitbull, Lawson & Dizzee Rascal, Sat 30 Sun 31 Aug, Cofton Park, Birmingham

Tinie Tempah - Shrewsbury Fields Forever, Shrewsbury

SEPTEMBER FESTIVAL NO.6 Featuring Pet Shop Boys, Beck, London Grammar, Bonobo & Martha and the Vandellas, Fri 5 Sun 7 Sept, Portmeirion, North Wales ONBOARD THE CRAFT FESTIVAL Featuring PreMad, Moulettes, Leatheratm Harvey Bainbridge & Flutatious, Fri 5 - Sat 6 Sept, Stoke Prior Country Club, Bromsgrove WHITWELL FESTIVAL OF MUSIC Featuring Doctor and the Medics, James Warner Prophecies, Dirtbox Disco & I Set The Sea On Fire, Fri 5 -

Sun 7 Sept, Community Centre, Whitwell, Derbyshire STOURBRIDGE FOLK FESTIVAL 2014 line-up to be announced, Fri 5 - Sun 7 Sept, Red House Glass Cone, Stourbridge ZOO PROJECT Featuring Groove Armada, Mr Scruff, Ten Walls & Ben UFO, Fri 12 - Sun 14 Sept, Donington Park, Derbyshire SHREWSBURY FIELDS FOREVER FESTIVAL Featuring Tinie Tempah, Shed Seven and more to be announced, Fri 12 Sun 14 Sept, West Midland Showground, Shrewsbury ROCK AND METAL CIRCUS FESTIVAL Featuring Voodoo Six, Exit State,

Gehtika & Triaxis, Fri 12 - Sun 14 Sept, Sywell Aerodome, Northamptonshire BROMYARD FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring Oysterband, Vin Garbutt, The Old Dance School & Whapweasel, Fri 12 - Sun 14 Sept, Various locations around Bromyard SNODFEST 2014 line-up to be announced, Sat 13 Sept, The Park, Worcestershire

OCTOBER DERBY FOLK FESTIVAL Featuring David Gibb, Elly Lucas & Cardboard Fox, Fri 3 - Sun 5 Oct, Assembly Rooms, Market Place, Derby

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Visual Arts Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works Library of Birmingham, until Sun 17 August

One of the most influential figures to emerge from the new wave of British independent photography in the 1970s, Daniel Meadows is best known for his landmark Free Photographic Omnibus project.

The project saw Meadows convert a double decker bus into a darkroom and living space and head out on a ten thousand-mile odyssey across Britain, during the course of which he photographed almost one thousand people from twenty-two towns. The result was an astonishing record of urban society in the UK, with Meadows further adding to his project’s relevance by interviewing and writing about his subjects.

Alongside examples from his Omnibus project, the exhibition also features Butlins At Filey and June Street, two other renowned bodies of work

by Meadows.

The Library of Birmingham is currently in the process of acquiring Meadows’ entire photography archive.

100 Days: The Rwandan Genocide Twenty Years Later Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, until Thurs 30 April, 2015

The statistics connected to the atrocities which took place in Rwanda two decades ago make for shocking reading. During the one hundred-day conflict in 1994, precipitated by the shooting down of a plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian president, eight hundred thousand people were murdered and five hundred thousand women raped. As a result of the rapes, an estimated twenty thousand children were born.

This stark and sobering exhibition explores the origins, duration and aftermath of one of the darkest periods in Africa’s history, addressing the subject of sexual violence by examining concepts of survival, bravery, acceptance and empowerment.

The display makes use of photographic, digital and installation works from a selection of international contemporary artists to give voice to the women who lived through the conflict.

Image credit: Saida in Green, 2000 by Hassan Hajjaj © the artist / Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern Photography at the V&A and the British Museum.

True To Life? New Photography From The Middle East Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Sat 7 June - Sun 2 November

The question of authenticity lies at the heart of this new exhibition by photographers from the Middle East, with viewers invited to explore the issue of what’s real, what’s staged and what’s imaginary in the photos on display. Works on show are by both established and emerging photographers, and include a selection of loaned photos from the British and Victoria & Albert museums, as well as from Birmingham’s own collection.

Commenting on the exhibition, Rebecca Bridgman, Curator of Islamic & South Asian Art at Birmingham Museums, said: “We’re delighted to be displaying this incredible collection of photography to our visitors. The exhibition showcases one of the most exciting artistic mediums emerging from the Middle East, providing an insight into the region’s rapidly-evolving social and political landscapes.”

Lasting Impressions: 20th Century Portrait Prints The Barber Institute, Birmingham, Fri 6 June - Sun 28 September

Printmaking as an artform has had a chequered past. Although once highly regarded, by the early twentieth century technological changes had severely compromised its status so much so, in fact, that it was viewed merely as a process of reproduction rather than as art.

In response to this situation, numerous artists revived the discipline’s traditional techniques, with later-twentieth century work becoming ever more experimental and unorthodox, often with dramatic results.

Featuring everything from etchings to a plasticine print, Lasting Impressions brings together works that document the renaissance of the portrait print, from the early twentieth century to the present day. Along the way, the exhibition takes a look at how artists have used different print processes to convey the personalities and circumstances of such colourful sitters as Quentin Crisp, Lucian Freud, Frank Bruno, Robert Plant - and even an entire House of Commons! www.whatsonlive.co.uk 53

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VisualArts PREVIEWS VisualArts LISTINGS Further exhibitions

Ikon Icons: Ian Emes Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, until Sun 22 June

Handsworth-born animator Ian Emes is the 1970s representative of Ikon Gallery’s Ikon Icons series, which sees the return of five key British artists from an exhibition programme starting in 1965. John Salt (1960s), Cornelia Parker (1980s), Yinka Shonibare (1990s) and Julian Opie (2000s) are the others.

The venue is displaying Emes’ 1972 masterpiece, French Windows. A visualisation of the Pink Floyd track One Of These Days, the work features animated ballet dancers moving through three dimensions that stream with architectural geometry and lattice arrangements of clocks, window frames and boxes. After its original stay in Ikon back in the 1970s, the work was screened on the BBC television programme The Old Grey Whistle Test and came to the attention of Pink Floyd. The band then invited Emes to make animated back-projections for use during concert performances of The Dark Side Of The Moon. Since that 1970s breakthrough undertaking, Emes has also worked with, amongst others, Wings, Mike Oldfield and Duran Duran.

A Viking’s Guide To Deadly Dragons Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Sat 14 June - Sat 30 August

Parents who recall their young children enjoying Wolverhampton Art Gallery’s The Tiger Who Came To Tea exhibition a couple of years back might well be interested in paying a return visit to the venue to see this latest exhibition - presented, as it is, by the very same team. A Viking's Guide To Deadly Dragons is a lighthearted and engaging exploration of the ways in which Viking history, legend and dragonlore inspired Cressida Cowell's delightful series of How To Train Your Dragon books. Cressida's hero, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, takes responsibility for guiding visitors though the exhibition, transporting sure-to-be-enchanted youngsters to a time when dragons could be spoken to in Dragonese and going to school meant learning how to be a Viking pirate.

The exhibition also sheds light on Cowell's creative process through the inclusion of her original sketches, story plans, notes and manuscripts.

Crossing The Bridge Various venues, Birmingham City Centre, Mon 23 June - Sat 23 August

Bringing sculpture by a range of RBSA artists into the public realm, Crossing The Bridge is a city centre trail that not only aims to raise the profile of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists but also to showcase sculpture as ‘an exciting art medium’. The route for the trail is from Birmingham Cathedral (St. Philip’s), down Church Street, across the footbridge, up Ludgate Hill, through St Paul’s Square to the RBSA Gallery in Brook Street.

54 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

For full listing information on Visual Art exhibitions, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk NADIA KISSELEVA: DOCUMENT Featuring a series of portraits of people imprisoned during the Stalinist era in the former Soviet Union, until Sun 1 June, mac, Birmingham MANDELA27 Exhibition which looks at the cultural changes that took place in Europe and South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment on Robben Island, until Sun 1 June, The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry BARBARIANS: THE AGE OF IRON Showcasing new research, artefacts and prehistoric skeletons which tell the story of Worcestershire over two thousand years ago, until Sat 7 Jun, Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum CHROMA COLLECTIVE Exhibition featuring works from four contemporary jewellers with a shared goal of raising awareness of the craft within Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, until Sat 7 June, Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham NEXT WAVE EXHIBITION Works by emerging artists at the RBSA, until Sat 7 June, RBSA Gallery, Birmingham TIM SHAW: RA BLACK SMOKE RISING The first solo exhibition from Belfast-born sculptor Tim Shaw, who grapples with contemporary and political realities whilst evoking the mythical and metaphysical, until Sun 8 Jun, mac Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham MIDLAND PAINTING GROUP EXHIBITION until Sun 8 June, Haden Hill House, Cradley Heath BUILDING BRIDGES A collection of work which focuses on the architectural transition into the present of the industrialised city centre of the past, until Sun 8 June, Artrix, Bromsgrove BILL DRUMMOND: THE 25 PAINTINGS Unique exhibition marking the beginning of a ten-year journey which, starting off beneath Spaghetti Junction, will see Drummond tour twelve cities across the world, until Sat 14 June, Eastside Projects, Birmingham CHINESE LIVES IN BIRMINGHAM A display which demonstrates the origins and rich culture of

Birmingham's diverse Chinese community, until Sun 18 June, The Barber Institute, Birmingham A BIG BANG: THE ORIGINS OF POP ART COLLECTION The first in a two-part display exploring some of the biggest names in the Pop Art industry, until Sat 21 June, Wolverhampton Art Gallery MUSIC, ART AND BEER An exhibition of new visual works by five local artists, until Sat 21 June, Wolverhampton Art Gallery ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR Hayward Touring Exhibition curated by Jeremy Deller, until Sat 21 June, The Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry RICHARD LONG: PRINTS 1970 - 2013 Exhibition which brings together all of the artist’s prints, made over a forty-year period, until Sun 22 June, The New Art Gallery, Walsall MICHAEL FRANCOIS Sculpture, film, paintings, prints and photography are brought together in this, the most comprehensive exhibition to date of work by Belgium artist Michel Francois, until Sun 22 June, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham ROMANTIC RUINS Featuring paintings from the museum’s collection, until Sat 28 June, Dudley Museum & Art Gallery FOR THE RECORD Exploring themes of preservation and recording in the work of female artists, until Sun 29 June, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 50 YEARS ON: THE CENTRE OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES Featuring the work of eminent artists including Trevor Appleson and David Batchelor, until Sun 29 June, mac, Birmingham 40 YEARS OF WOMEN ARTISTS The strong female characters in the Garman Epstein family and their circle of friends are captured in this exhibition of works from the gallery's permanent collection, until Sun 29 Jun, The New Art Gallery, Walsall SKYLIGHT LANDSCAPE BY PAUL NASH & DAVID PRENTICE until Sat 5 July, Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum STAFFORDSHIRE OPEN ART Annual showcase

for the region’s artistic talent, until Sun 6 July, Shire Hall Gallery, Stafford

tenth anniversary, until Sun 31 Aug, Compton Verney Gallery, Warwickshire

RICHARD LONG: SPRING CIRCLE, 1992 until Wed 9 July, The New Art Gallery, Walsall

YOU - THE 12TH PLINTH Stand on the empty 12th plinth, strike a pose and create a living sculpture by becoming an artist’s model, inspiring a composition for a new sculpture, until Sun 31 Aug, Compton Verney, Warwickshire

ARTISTS’ STUDIO: SARAH TAYLOR SILVERWOOD Exhibition from Birmingham-based artist Sarah Taylor Silverwood, whose practice is grounded in drawing, narrative and landscape, until Sun 20 July, New Art Gallery, Walsall LARISSA SANSOUR Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour presents an iconic take on the political situation in Israel and Palestine, until Sat 26 July, Wolverhampton Art Gallery VAL PITCHFORD: ADVENTURES IN PAINT Large collection of paintings featuring both landscape & still life subject matter, until Thurs 31 July, Artifex Gallery, Sutton Coldfield WE WORKED AT THE PORCELAIN Photographic exhibition focusing on some of Royal Worcester’s many craftsmen and women, until Fri 1 Aug, The Museum of Royal Worcester A TRIO OF ARTISTS An exhibition featuring the work of artists Anne Hackett, Chris Tarplee and Claire Sherwin, until Sun 3 Aug, Red House Glass Cone, Stourbridge HOME AWAY FROM HOME Photographs, artefacts and oral history come together in this exhibition, which captures the experiences of women migrating from Mirpur to Birmingham in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, until Sun 3 Aug, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery SUMMER SHOWCASE Featuring textiles, ceramics, homewares and delicate paper jewellery, until Sat 16 Aug, Bilston Craft Gallery A FIRST CLASS WATERING PLACE: 200 YEARS OF THE ROYAL PUMP ROOMS Celebrating the bicentenary of the Royal Pump Rooms, until Mon 25 Aug, Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa 400 YEARS OF THE SELFIE Exploring how the modern portrait developed in England, from the Elizabethans to photographs taken by Martin Parr in Sandwell in 2010, until Sat 30 Aug, Wednesbury Museum & Art Gallery MOORE RODIN Works from two major players in the world of modern sculpture feature in this exhibition in celebration of Compton Verney’s

MADE AT MAC - CERAMICS Led by tutors Sue Dyer and Wendy Tournay, the exhibition puts a spotlight on ceramics and is set to inspire audiences and students alike, until Sun 31 Aug, mac, Birmingham ROMAN EMPIRE: POWER & PEOPLE The largest ever UK exhibition of Roman artefacts on loan from the British Museum, until Sun 31 Aug, The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry IN STITCHES: A CELEBRATION OF RSC COSTUME until Mon 1 Sep, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon COME CREATE Exhibition to inspire visitors to explore and demonstrate their creativity through displays, hands-on interactives and fun activities, until Sun 7 Sept, Thinktank, Birmingham EIGHT CENTURIES OF HISTORY Exhibition looking at the life and times of the Earls of Dudley, who lived at Himley Hall, until Sun 7 Sept, Himley Hall & Park, Dudley CERAMIC EMPIRE: THE TRADE IN STAFFORDSHIRE POTTERY Exhibition exploring the supply and representation of the Empire in Staffordshire pottery which coincides with MP Tristram Hunt’s new book on the cities of the Empire, until Sun 7 Sept, The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent 40 YEARS OF WATCHING PAINT DRY Featuring the work of fine artist, cartoonist and comedy writer Geoff Tristram, until Sun 7 Sept, Himley Park & Hall, Dudley SECRET GARDEN CRAFT EXHIBITION Collection of jewellery, textiles and ceramics exploring fairytales and narratives, until Sat 13 Sep, RBSA Gallery, Birmingham MARVELLOUS MACHINES: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ROWLAND EMETT The largest ever display of Emett’s work, telling the story of the innovator’s life in Birmingham, until Sun 21 Sept, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery IS THIS A DAGGER? AN

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VisualArts LISTINGS For full listing information on Visual Art exhibitions, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk EXPLORATION OF RSC PROPS New exhibition from Bristol-based Stand & Stare Collective which explores the secrets behind twelve props from the RSC's fascinating prop store, until Sun 21 Sep, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon TOM, FRANK AND MAY Original material, uniforms, handling activities and a short film which demonstrates the role played by the Merry family during World War One, until Sun 2 Nov, Blakesley Hall, Birmingham SYMMETRY IN SCULPTURE Focusing on the recent work of one of the UK’s most exciting British Asian artists, Zarah Hussain, until Sun 2 Nov, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery BACK TO FRONT: 40 PERMANENT COLLECTION GEMS Exhibition which celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the gallery’s Garman Ryan collection, until Sat 16 Nov, New Art Gallery,

Walsall FAITH AND FORTUNE Exhibition exploring the early histories of two of the world’s great religions, until Sun 30 Nov, The Barber Institute, Birmingham THE JEWELLERY QUARTER DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR Exhibition of artefacts, images and oral histories relating to the recruitment of soldiers from the Jewellery Quarter, until Sun 14 Dec, Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham TRACED Permanent exhibition tracing the success of art & design in Wolverhampton, and bringing together works by local artists from the museum’s collection, until Wed 31 Dec, Wolverhampton Art Gallery CRAFTSENSE Featuring over one hundred of the world-renowned Bilston enamels, until Wed 31 Dec, Bilston Craft Gallery SENSING SCULPTURE Featuring new sculp-

tures alongside old favourites, until Wed 31 Dec, Wolverhampton Art Gallery JENNY RYRIE: WHITE WATER, WHITE LIGHT A display of abstract paintings in water-based media that respond to the natural and mystical energies of the sea and coastline, Mon 2 June Sat 26 July, RBSA Gallery, Birmingham WALSALL’S GREAT WAR Exhibition marking the centenary of WWI and the impact of the Home Front on Walsall, Tues 3 June - Sat 29 Nov, Walsall Local History Centre COVENTRY OPEN 2014 Sat 7 - Sun 15 June, Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT Works on paper from the Barber’s collection, Fri 13 June - Sun 26 Oct, The Barber Institute, Birmingham CONVERSATIONS A display which spans four centuries of printmaking and features works by Rembrandt, Goya, Cezanne & Picasso, Fri 13 June - Sun 5 Oct, The Barber Institute, Birmingham THE GREAT WAR COMMEMORATIVE EXHIBITION Exhibition by the Cheshire Artist Network, Sun 15 June - Fri 18

July, RAF Museum, Cosford SENSATIONAL CLAY ‘Fun and thought-provoking exhibition for all the family’, Mon 16 June Sat 1 Nov, Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum

RICHARD MCLLWRAITH: ABSTRACT PAINTINGS 2012-14 Wed 18 June Sun 13 July, Artrix, Bromsgrove THE BEST IS NOT TOO GOOD FOR YOU Showcase of Pop Art and ceramics, Sat 28 June - Sat 30 Aug,

Rugby Museum & Art Gallery PHOENIX: THE STORY OF THE BRITISH HEAT RESISTING GLASS COMPANY Showcase of works celebrating Bilston-based Phoenix company, Sat 28 June - Sat 30 Aug, Bilston Craft Gallery

Museums & Art Galleries Birmingham ARTIFEX Sutton Coldfield 0121 323 3776 BARBER INSTITUTE 0121 414 7333 BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM & ART GALLERY 0121 303 2834 CASTLE GALLERIES 0121 248 8484 GRAND UNION 0121 643 9079 IKON GALLERY 0121 248 0708 NUMBER NINE THE GALLERY 0121 643 9099 RBSA GALLERY 0121 2364353 STRYX GALLERY, DIGBETH stryxarts@gmail.com THREE WHITE WALLS GALLERY 0121 200 3328

Black Country BANTOCK HOUSE WOLVERHAMPTON 01902 552195 BILSTON CRAFT GALLERY 01902 552507

BROADFIELD HOUSE GLASS MUSEUM, DUDLEY 01384 812745 DUDLEY MUSEUM & ART GALLERY 01384 815575 LIGHT HOUSE MEDIA CENTRE WOLVERHAMPTON 01902 716055 THE NEW ART GALLERY WALSALL 01922 654400 RED HOUSE GLASS CONE 01384 812750 WOLVERHAMPTON ART GALLERY 01902 552055

Shropshire BEAR STEPS GALLERY, SHREWSBURY 01743 344994 SHREWSBURY MUSEUM & ART GALLERY 01743 258885 TWENTY TWENTY GALLERY, MUCH WENLOCK 01952 727952 THE WILLOW GALLERY, OSWESTRY 01691 657575

Staffordshire NEWCASTLE BOROUGH MUSEUM & ART GALLERY 01782 232323 THE POTTERIES MUSEUM & ART GALLERY, STOKE-ONTRENT 01782 232323 SHIRE HALL GALLERY STAFFORD 01785 278345 STAFFORDSHIRE MUSEUM, SHUGBOROUGH 01889 881388

Warwickshire COMPTON VERNEY GALLERY 01926 645500 HERBERT ART GALLERY COVENTRY 02476 832386 MEAD GALLERY WARWICK 02476 524524 ROYAL PUMP ROOMS 01926 742700 RUGBY MUSEUM & ART GALLERY 01788 533201

Worcestershire WORCESTER CITY ART GALLERY 01905 25371

Visit whatsonlive.co.uk for venue website details

For more visual arts listings, visit, www.whatsonlive.co.uk 55

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Events

Ana Ivanovic

Aegon Classic Edgbaston Priory, Birmingham, Mon 9 - Sun 15 June One of the top Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) events in the world, the Aegon Classic brings together some of the best female players in the game to compete ahead of Wimbledon. A major event on the Midlands sporting calendar, the Classic features both players at the top of their game and some of the sport’s rising stars.

Serbia’s former world number one, Jelena Jankovic, is the latest A-lis-

ter confirmed to play, joining a line-up that already includes fellow Serbian Ana Ivanovic, Germany’s Sabine Lisicki and Slovakia’s Daniela Hantuchova. Two up-and-coming US players, Sloane Stephens and Eugenie Bouchard, also feature in what’s being described by organisers as ‘the most exciting line-up the tournament has ever seen’.

BBC Good Food Show NEC, Birmingham, Thurs 12 - Sun 15 June

Brimming with inspiration, tips and advice on how to create the perfect summer menu, the BBC Good Food Show returns to the NEC to provide a food experience 'like no other'.

In addition to the host of celebrities who’re on hand to share their knowledge - Mary Berry, Tom Kerridge, James Martin and Paul Hollywood included - the four-day show offers an abundance of events, demonstrations, tastings, book signings and shopping experiences for visitors to enjoy. As well as live cookery demonstrations, the Supertheatre sees Michelin-starred chefs going head to head in the Michelin Star Challenge, while new features include the Summer Kitchen hosted by Lisa Faulkner - and the BBC Good Food Kitchen, where signature dishes from the BBC Good Food collection are matched with wine options in a fine-dining setting.

Elsewhere, the show’s ultimate shopping experience features plenty of well-known brands, kitchen appliances and gadgets, a Producers’ Village and a Good Food Bakes & Cakes Village.

Tickets to the show also provide access to the BBC Gardeners’ World Live event.

Sainsbury’s British Championships Birmingham Alexander Stadium, Fri 27 - Sun 29 June

Having received a makeover for 2014, Sainsbury’s British Championships sees the country’s best athletes battling it out for the hugely prestigious title. As well as providing world-class athletics, the three-day event also boasts a real festival feel, courtesy of live music, DJs and a fairground. The championships also feature the Icon Museum - celebrating the achievements of British athletes from yesteryear; the Athletics Agility Arena, in which visitors can test their athletic skills; the Game Zone, an interactive gaming area; Glamping - offering overnight stays in luxury ‘glamping’ tents; and Sainsbury’s Try Trucks - with try trucks on site and partner MG also having a stall. Street performers, a Picnic al Fresco area, a bar area and various other types of on-site catering also feature.

To find out more or to purchase tickets, visit www.britishathletics.org.uk www.whatsonlive.co.uk 57

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Events PREVIEWS Belgrade Mela Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Sat 21 June

South Asian arts, artists and art organisations are here celebrated with a diverse programme of events and activities. The oneday, open-to-all event features yoga, workshops in Giddah and Bhangra dancing, Bollywood dancing and an opportunity to learn how to play the dhol. An abundance of artisan crafts stalls, food stalls and activities for children also feature, as does an art exhibition exploring the journey of South Asian communities who came to Coventry in the 1940s and ’50s. In Nafees the evening, some of Coventry’s finest South Asian talent takes to the stage in the theatre’s main arena for a two-hour showcase that features special guest Nafees and dhol drummers Masterclass.

Droitwich Spa Festival Various locations, Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire, Fri 20 June - Sun 6 July

Building on the success of its 2013 debut, this year’s Droitwich Spa Festival promises another ‘fantastic’ programme of gastronomic offerings, as well as music and arts events.

The ecclectic offer ranges from a food and drink festival featuring demonstrations, stalls, entertainment and Great Junior Bake Off in the town centre (21 June). Historic tour and afternoon tea at the Chateau Impney Hotel, a Live Music Showcase and Cheese and Cider Festival (28 June), and Friar Street Festival of Culture and Music - a carnival style event featuring dance, music and much more - at the Old Cock Inn (29 June). For a full itinerary of what¹s happening throughout the seventeen-day event, visit www.droitwichspafestival.co.uk

Upton Food And Beer Festival Upton-upon-Severn, Fri 27 - Sun 29 June

Imagine being able to eat and drink your way around the Three Counties without having to travel the distance...

Well, that’s pretty much what you can do at the brand new Upton Food And Beer Festival (FAB). With plenty to tantalise the tastebuds, the three-day event features more than one hundred artisan stalls selling an abundance of mouthwatering delights.

There’s also a Master Class marquee featuring tastings and talks, an interactive cookery workshop in the Eckington School, a FAB Bake Off organised by the Women’s Institute, and a chilli-eating competition run by the Clifton Chilli Club. If the latter is up your street, then chances are you’ll also be looking for some liquid refreshment - and what better way to find it than by sampling the beer-tasting sessions and tutorials on offer from international beer judge and expert Melissa Cole.

A programme of entertainment over two stages, a tug-of-war competition, crafts, face painting and a Punch & Judy show for the kids means this debuting festival has the makings of a great family day out.

sions. The Sheep Show, meanwhile, promises to provide humorous educational entertainment with a difference, courtesy of dancing sheep! Other attractions include displays of farm machinery and classic cars, rural crafts, a shopping area, information about bee-keeping, trade stands and an abundance of children’s amusements.

World Of Park And Leisure Homes Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, Fri 6 - Sun 8 June

If you’ve ever dreamed of having your very own little bolthole to which to escape, or the freedom to travel whenever you want, World Of Park And Leisure Homes is well worth a visit. A dedicated show for park homes and holiday lifestyle, the three-day event features the latest models and designs from most of the UK’s major manufacturers, caters for a variety of budgets and is free to attend. The show also provides information on hundreds of parks across the UK and beyond.

Jousting Day Avoncroft Museum, Bromsgrove, Sat 14 - Sun 15 June

Kenilworth Show Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, Sat 7 June

Medieval entertainers the Knights Of Middle England this year provide one of the highlights at Warwickshire’s biggest one-day agricultural event. Comprising professional horsemen, stunt riders and performers, the Knights bring the historic sport of jousting into the twenty-first century with a professionally compered, action-packed show that comes complete with a ‘rocking’ soundtrack.

Other attractions at the 2014 event include a Countryside Area, featuring birds of prey displays, gun dog scurry and trials, a have-a-go clay shoot, air rifle shooting and archery ses-

All the thrills and excitement of a traditional jousting tournament will be present and correct at Bromsgrove’s award-winning Living History Museum this month. In addition to experiencing the site’s static attractions, which span seven hundred years of history, visitors can also tour the camps and meet the knights, the ladies and the soldiers, not to mention the odd miscreant or two...

The Bus Stop Over Uttoxeter Racecourse, Staffordshire, Fri 13 - Sun 15 June

An established event on the VW calendar, The Bus Stop Over offers three days of highquality entertainment both on and off the track. Resident DJs from Retro Discos/Weluv80s will be playing throughout the weekend, while live bands catering for all musical tastes feature in the site’s main hall.

Acoustic sessions in the bar area are a new addition for 2014 - and to ensure football fans don’t miss out on World Cup action, the Premier Bar will be showing the England vs Italy game on its large screen. On-track action includes the sure-to-be-fun Wacky Races, with the event also featuring plenty for youngsters to enjoy. www.whatsonlive.co.uk 59

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Events LISTINGS For full listing information on Events, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk from

SUN 1 JUNE MAY HALF-TERM FAMILY FUN until Sun 1 June, Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire WORDS, WORDS, WORDS Do you know your Shakespeare from your Shelley? Test your knowledge with the site's quizzical quotes, until Sun 1 June, Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratfordupon-Avon MASQUE MAKING Be inspired and decorate your very own theatrical Shakespearian masque to take home with you, until Sun 1 June, Nash's House & New Place, Stratford-uponAvon SPRING TO LIFE Search the walled garden and hunt for the animals that appear in Shakespeare's springtime poems, until Sun 1 June Hall's Croft, Stratford-upon-Avon LEMUR WEEK Themed talks and activities to highlight the park's conservation work to save species such as the Great Bamboo Lemur and Sifaka from extinction, until Sun 1 June Cotswold Wildlife Park FAMILY FUN DAYS Get outside, explore the gardens and estate at Baddesley and see how many of the ‘fifty things to do before you're eleven-andthree-quarters’ you can tick off your list, until Sun 1 June, Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire SWEET AND TREAT See the relaunch of the sweet-shop boiler and try your hand at traditional board and street games, until Sun 1 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley WILDLIFE TRACKER CHALLENGE A chance to tap into your inner naturalist, until Sun 1 June, Brockhampton Estate, Worcester FAMILY DROP-IN ACTIVITIES Dip your own colourful candles, play with Victorian games and toys, and colour old-fashioned pictures, until Sun 1 June, Blists Hill, Ironbridge, Shropshire Half Term Family TIME LORD FAMILY TRAIL until Sun 1 June, Broadfield House Glass Museum, Kingswinford WOOLLY WEEK Get involved with all things woolly and enjoy the farm's exciting sheepdog trials, until Sun 1

June Mary Arden House, Stratford-uponAvon STRATFORD FOOD FESTIVAL AT THE RACES until Sun 1 June Stratford Racecourse SPORTS & SALOON CAR RACES until Sun 1 June Donington Park DAIMLER AND LANCHESTER OWNERS Sun 1 June, Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire MIDLAND BONSAI SOCIETY SHOW Sun 1 June, Birmingham Botanical Gardens CLASSIC FORD SHOW Old school modding and classic-style festival with massive autojumble, club displays, blue oval traders and competitions, Sun 1 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton MG'S IN THE PARK Featuring a variety of models and historic MG motor car marque, ranging from TAs, MGAs, Midgets and MGB/Cs through to a fabulous turn-out of the newer MGF/TF convertibles and the various Z range saloons, including the ZT260s, Sun 1 June Cotswold Wildlife Park HERITAGE OPEN DAY Event organised by the Redditch Local History Society, Sun 1 June, Forge Mill Needle Museum, Redditch TOLKIEN AND TUDORS BIG BRUM OPEN-TOP BUZ TOUR Visit Sarehole Mill and Blakesley Hall, Sun 1 June, Victoria Square, Birmingham KNIGHTS' SCHOOL & JUNIOR JOUSTING Learn how to joust in the mini-tiltyard, try on real armour made especially for children, hear tales of medieval chivalry and finally take up arms as you clash swords and join in a fun and frantic medieval battle, Sun 1 June, Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Ledbury, Herefordshire BROCKHAMPTON BOWMAN ARCHERY SESSIONS Join the Brockhampton Bowmen and put your archery skills to the test. Discover various bows and find out how they were used, Sun 1 June, Brockhampton Estate, Worcester UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS: BEHIND THE SCENES TOUR Find out what goes on behind the scenes of a stately home with a unique tour which takes in some of the estate’s twenty-eight bedrooms,

Sun 1 June, Weston Park, Staffordshire AN EVENING WITH TONY STOCKWELL Tue 3 June, Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton RHYS CHATHAM IN CONVERSATION WITH ED MCKEON Ahead of the UK première of A Secret Rose For 100 Guitars, Rhys Chatham is joined by Frontiers Festival curator Ed McKeon to discuss a range of topics, from Downtown to guitars and minimalist music to rock’n’roll, Tue 3 June, Library Of Birmingham VALUATION DAY Tue 3 June, The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry LUNCHTIME TALK: ALL THAT GLISTERS Frank Sharman gives an illustrated talk about the history of steel jewellery, Tues 3 June, Bantock House Museum DISCOVER THE COLLECTION Meet the conservation team, who'll tell you about interesting items in the collection and demonstrate how they're looked after, Tue 3 June, Moseley Old Hall, Wolverhampton WARWICK WORDS SUMMER Annual festival of literature and spoken word, featuring various events across Warwick.

For full details, visit www.warwickwords.co. uk, Wed 4 - Sun 8 June, Various venues around Warwick DOWNTOWN NEW YORK JAZZ: A ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM An event forming part of the second phase of the city's Frontiers Festival and featuring discussions of beat poetry, experimental film and artist-run spaces, Thurs 5 June, Library Of Birmingham AN EVENING WITH CAROL ANN DUFFY Intimate evening of poetry and music with the National Poet Laureate, Thurs 5 June, The Hive, Worcester CHURCH STRETTON WALKING FESTIVAL Four days of walks around the beautiful South Shropshire countryside, Thurs 5 - Sun 8 June, Booking essential - visit www.churchstrettonwalkingfestival.co.uk CHAMPIONSHIP DOG SHOW Thurs 5 - Sun 8 June, Three Counties Showground, Malvern D-DAY LANDING 70TH ANNIVERSARY SERVICE Fri 6 June, National Memorial Arboretum UNDERSTANDING ART TALKS: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF CARAVAGGIO Professor Lorenzo Pericolo from the University of Warwick explores how Caravaggio’s model was perpetuated well into the 1640s, Fri 6

June Compton Verney Gallery, Warwickshire PUTTING ON THE RITZ An evening of jazz with Edward d’Arcy Hatton and Tim Motteshead, Fri 6 June, Upton House & Gardens, Warwickshire THE WOMEN CHAINMAKERS' FESTIVAL A two day event celebrating an historic strike by women chainmakers, Fri 6 - Sat 7 June, Bearmore Park, Cradley Heath THE WORLD OF PARK & LEISURE HOMES SHOW Fri 6 - Sun 8 June, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire VMCC TRAINING DAY A training day to give visitors a chance to ride veteran & vintage motorcycles in a safe 'off road' environment, with tuition from the owners, Sat 7 June, Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire ASTON MARTIN RACES Sat 7 June, Donington Park ENAMELLING DAY COURSE An opportunity for beginners or those with some experience to create at least four pieces of work using a variety of techniques, Sat 7 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley KENILWORTH SHOW Organised by the Kenilworth & District Agricultural Society.

Featuring classic cars, children’s amusements, carriage driving, rural crafts and much more, Sat 7 June, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire EVENING SCENIC SPECIALS A scenic evening ride with the added option of a traditional fish and chip supper, Sat 7 June, Severn Valley Railway, Kidderminster RUN WHAT YA BRUNG The chance to take your car or motorcycle out on the famous quarter-mile dragstrip and test its performance limits in a safe and legal environment, Sat 7 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton BEGINNERS' BOBBIN LACE-MAKING DAY COURSE Learn basic techniques of traditional bobbin lace-making, Sat 7 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley PAPERWEIGHT DAY Sat 7 June, Broadfield House Glass Museum, Stourbridge BIG BRUM OPEN TOP BUZ SIGHTSEEING TOUR Sat 7 - Sun 8 June, Victoria Square, Birmingham EXCALIBUR COMPUTER FAIR Sat 7 June, National Motorcycle Museum, Solihull MEET DANIEL MEADOWS Artist Daniel Meadows discusses his exhibition, Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic

Living Live - Uttoxeter Racecourse

Works, Sat 7 June, Library Of Birmingham THE BIG MATCH: CHEESE AND WINE International contest to find a champion cheese and wine pairing. Visitors can sample a range of specially selected wines and cheeses from around the world before voting to decide the overall winner, Sat 7 June, Library Of Birmingham THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMY SHOW The UK's largest astro show, Sat 7 - Sun 8 June, Warwickshire Exhibition Centre BROCKHAMPTON BOWMAN ARCHERY SESSIONS Join the Brockhampton Bowmen and put your archery skills to the test. Discover various bows and find out how they were used, Sat 7 Sun 8 June, Brockhampton Estate, Worcester NEWCOMEN IN STEAM The only full-sized working replica of the world's first steam engine can be seen in action, Sat 7 - Sun 8 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley MUCH WENLOCK FESTIVAL Featuring a broad ranging programme of family days, theatre and open-air music, Sat 7 Sat 21 June, Various locations around Much Wenlock, South Shropshire PERFORMANCE VAUXHALL SHOW New, old, modified, road, rally, and race Vauxhalls get together with trade, clubs and autojumble for the ultimate Vauxhall show of the summer, Sun 8 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton THE COIN AND BANKNOTE FAIR Sun 8 June, National Motorcycle Museum, Solihull RECORD FAIR Sun 8 June, National Motorcycle Museum, Solihull BANBURY RUN Featuring over six hundred veteran and vintage machines, Sun 8 June, Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire RAF COSFORD AIR SHOW

The Midlands’ premier air event, with displays from a variety of aircraft; plus, exhibits, stalls, trade stands, military demonstrations and children's entertainment, Sun 8 June, RAF Cosford, Nr Wolverhampton MORGAN SPORTS CAR RACES Sun 8 June Donington Park SUMMER SUNDAY FUN Whizz over the Valley Lawn on the castle zip wire and take part in garden games, Sun 8 June, Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Ledbury, Herefordshire OPEN FARM SUNDAY Find out what goes on at Warren Farm. Learn about the farm calendar and how the seasons blend together. Suitable for all ages, Sun 8 June Brockhampton Estate, Worcester GLASS CRAFTS - DAD'S KEY RING Sun 8 June, Broadfield House Glass Museum, Stourbridge JUNE FILM CLUB: THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED Monthly film club presented by Flatpack Film Festival, Sun 8 June, Library Of Birmingham CHARITY ABSEIL Supporting Little Hearts Matter & Edward’s Trust, Sun 8 June, Brindleyplace, Birmingham SPIRITUAL BIRMINGHAM HOLISTIC EVENT Featuring exhibitors offering a diverse range of complimentary therapies & healing, retail stands, professional readers & free talks, Sun 8 June, Quality Hotel, Birmingham 70S SUNDAY Featuring a vintage craft fair and a chance to get down to the sounds of the ’70s, Sun 8 June, Avoncroft Museum, Bromsgrove

Week Commencing

MON 9 JUN AEGON CLASSIC Mon 9 Sun 15 June, Edgbaston Priory Club, Birmingham DISCOVER THE COLLECTION Meet the conservation team,

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MEETING POINT: corner of Colmore Row & Waterloo Street, Victoria Square TOUR TIMES: 10.30am, 12.30pm & 2.30pm CONTACT:

0121 427 2555 / 07805 115 998 enquiries@birmingham-tours.co.uk AVAILABLE FOR PRIVATE HIRE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

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Events LISTINGS For full listing information on Events, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk who'll tell you about interesting items in the collection and demonstrate how they're looked after, Tue 10 June, Moseley Old Hall, Wolverhampton RIDE WITH THE RANGER Enjoy a tour of the estate in a purposebuilt trailer, Tue 10 June, Charleston Park, Warwickshire TRACTOR TOURS Enjoy a 40-minute ride around the park, Tue 10 June, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1970S AND 1980S BRITAIN Professor Ian Grosvenor, University of Birmingham, explores Daniel Meadows’ work in the context of the emergence of community photography and the radical political activism of the 1970s and ’80s, Tue 10 June, Library Of Birmingham INTERMEDIATE DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY Expand on your current knowledge of basic photography principles, including DSLR camera settings, composition, tips and techniques.

Using the Compton Verney Grounds for inspiration, local photographer Sally Crane will assist and guide you, Wed 11 June, Compton Verney Gallery, Warwickshire ETHICS IN CONSERVATION DAY COURSE Wed 11 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley BARNARDO’S BIG TODDLE Sponsored walk for toddlers, Wed 11 Thurs 12 June, Dudley Zoo & Gardens ENSEMBLE 1685 Join the singing group for an exploration of the Roman Empire exhibition, Thurs 12 June, The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry BBC GOOD FOOD SHOW SUMMER! Brimming with inspiration, tips and advice on how to create the perfect summer menu, the BBC Good Food Show returns to the NEC to provide a food experience 'like no other’, Thurs 12 - Sun 15 June, NEC, Birmingham BBC GARDENERS' WORLD LIVE Gardening experts Monty Don and Diarmuid Gavin make a welcome return to the Midlands this month to dish out tips and advice at the region’s top event for green fingered types, Thurs 12 Sun 15 June, NEC, Birmingham FOOD AND FLORA Watch the sun set over the

park, followed by a meal in the restaurant, Fri 13 June, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire BWM RALLY Featuring live bands and DJs, a custom show, Run What Ya Brung, a ride out, club camping, a jet car, funfair rides & amusements, traders, caterers and much more, all on one site.

The event for scooterists, mods, skinheads, casuals and ska fans, Fri 13 - Sun 15 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton ROYAL THREE COUNTIES SHOW Showcasing the best of the British farming world & countryside, Fri 13 - Sun 15 June, Three Counties Showground, Malvern CHOLMONDELEY PAGEANT OF POWER The UK's biggest celebration of power and speed, featuring more than one hundred-andtwenty valuable cars and bikes competing on track. Autocar Supercar Paddock and trade village with lifestyle pavillion, Fri 13 - Sun 15 June, Cholmondeley Castle, Cheshire INTERNATIONAL MODEL AIR SHOW Bringing together some of the country’s top model aircraft pilots to demonstrate their skills, Fri 13 - Sun 15 June, Weston Park, Staffordshire WEAVER'S HOUSE OPEN DAY The Weaver’s House shows visitors what life as a medieval weaver would have been like. Regular talks will be held inside the Weaver’s house, as well as spinning demonstrations, Sat 14 June, The Weaver's House, Coventry PATCHWORK CUSHION COVERS COURSE Textile artist Ruth Singer hosts an afternoon workshop where participants can make their very own cushion cover to take home, Sat 14 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley ST BASILS ANNUAL WALK Charity walk challenge, Sat 14 June, Brindleyplace, Birmingham SKETCH & STITCH WORKSHOP Sat 14 June, Ragley Hall, Alcester LORDS OF DUDLEY AND A LICENCE TO CRENELLATE Historical day school celebrating the 750th anniversary of the Battle of Lewes, Sat 14 June, Weoley Castle, Birmingham BLACKSMITH EXPERIENCE DAY A taster session

providing an introduction to the forge, the basic tools, and how to use them, Sat 14 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley STICKY SATURDAY: PAPER CRAFT Free drop-in sessions for children aged four-plus, Sat 14 June, Dudley Museum & Art Gallery MEDIEVAL DANCING Discover how medieval people entertained themselves dancing in Greyfriars’ lovely garden, Sat 14 June, Greyfriars, Worcester VIKINGS & DRAGONS FAMILY DAY Meet reallife Vikings in a funfilled family day to celebrate the opening of the museum’s latest exhibition, Sat 14 June, Wolverhampton Art Gallery ENAMELLING WORKSHOP Experiment using a sgraffito technique and liquid enamel ‘painting’ effects, before creating a final piece using your newly developed skills, Sat 14 June, Bilston Craft Gallery GLASS HAND CASTING WITH ALLISTER MALCOLM Sat 14 June, Broadfield House Glass Museum, Stourbridge CLASSIC AND VINTAGE COMMERCIAL SHOW A colourful two-day show featuring a diverse selection of classic and vintage lorries and vehicles, pre-1985, Sat 14 Sun 15 June, Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire JOUST! A traditional jousting tournament & chance to tour the camps around the site and meet the knights, ladies and soldiers, Sat 14 - Sun 15 June, Avoncroft, Bromsgrove GROUNDS WEEKEND Explore everything Compton's fabulous grounds have got to offer. Take part in some of the forest school and art and craft activities, Sat 14 - Sun 15 June, Compton Verney Gallery, Warwickshire MEDIEVAL WEEKEND Experience medieval life in the knights’ encampment! Witness the drill and arming of military men and see the medieval world come to life, Sat 14 Sun 15 June, Forge Mill Needle Museum, Redditch LUNT ROMAN FESTIVAL Sat 14 - Sun 15 June, The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry BROCKHAMPTON BOWMAN ARCHERY SESSIONS Join the Brockhampton Bowmen and put your archery skills to the test. Discover various bows and find out how they were used, Sat 14 - Sun 15 June, Brockhampton Estate, Worcester A KNIGHT’S TALE Living

History event featuring lots of interactive medieval fun, Sat 14 Sun 15 June, Forge Mill Needle Museum, Redditch BIG BRUM OPEN TOP BUZ SIGHTSEEING TOUR Sat 14 - Sun 15 June, Victoria Square, Birmingham FATHER'S DAY ACTIVITIES Free admission for dads and grandads when they visit with their family to enjoy the numerous activities on offer, Sun 15 June, Compton Verney Gallery, Warwickshire WARWICK UNIVERSITY BAND Bring a picnic and enjoy an afternoon of swing music, Sun 15 June, Upton House & Gardens, Warwickshire PRE 1940 TRIUMPH MOTOR CLUB View over 30 pre-war motor cars, Sun 15 June, Upton House & Gardens, Warwickshire ARMS AND MILITARIA FAIR Sun 15 June, National Motorcycle Museum, Solihull FATHER’S DAY Event with Elizabethan dancing.

Free tours for fathers when accompanied by one or more offspring, Sun 15 June, Harvington Hall, Kidderminster FATHER’S DAY HELITRIPS See the Follies from above in a special helicopter ride, Sun 15 June, The Follies, Hawkstone Park MEET THE HORSES Special event which demonstrates the importance of horses in everyday life over a hundred years ago, Sun 15 June, Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge, Shropshire DADS GO FREE Walk the gardens, see the working brewhouse, enjoy lunch & homemade cakes in the tearoom Every dad accompanied by another paying adult gets in for free, Sun 15 June, Shugborough Historic Working Estate, Stafford UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS: BEHIND THE SCENES TOUR Sun 15 June, Weston Park, Staffordshire FALCONRY DAY Meet spectacular birds of prey and see them take to the air in fabulous flying displays, Sun 15 June, Blakesley Hall, Birmingham CLASSIC CAR AND TRANSPORT SHOW Featuring over 1000 vintage & classic vehicles, commercial, motorcycles, autojumble/tradestands, as well as 50 car clubs and the 'piston rings' motorcycle display team. Plus all of Trentham's superb attractions. Sun 15 June, Trentham Gardens, Stoke-onTrent

BONSAI DEMONSTRATION Sun 15 June, Birmingham Botanical Gardens TRANSPORT FESTIVAL Featuring over one thousand classic, contemporary and rare cars on display, Sun 15 June, Trentham Estate, Stoke-on-Trent FATHER’S DAY: CAPTAIN GEOFFREY’S DISCOVERY DAY Featuring demonstrations from Feather Perfect Falconry, havea-go archery sessions and classic car & bike displays, Sun 15 June, Dudmaston Estate, Bridgnorth, Shropshire FATHER’S DAY LUNCH MEET THE CASTLE’S RESIDENT KNIGHT Sun 15 June, Warwick Castle

Week Commencing

MON 16 JUN WALK WITH THE GARDENER Opportunity to discover more about the estate and ask questions, Tue 17 June, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire HERBERT ILLUMINATION: HOW THE ROMANS CONQUERED THE WORLD WITH DORMICE Dominic Russell leads a talk on Roman Imperialism, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry BARNARDO’S BIG TODDLE Sponsored walk for toddlers, Tues 17 June, Dudley Zoo & Gardens WALK WITH THE GARDENER Enjoy a guided tour through the grounds, Tues 17 June, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire DRIFT WHAT YA BRUNG Chance to practise drifting in safe and legal conditions on some of the Pod's thirty acres of open tarmac, where there are beginners, intermediate and advanced tracks open at the same time each DWYB day, Wed 18 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton SIR RANULPH FIENNES: LIVING DANGEROUSLY Wed 18 June, Birmingham Town Hall DRESSING THE QUEEN See history brought to life and meet Kenilworth's authentically costumed Queen Elizabeth I. Every month, visitors will have the opportunity to watch 'Elizabeth' being dressed, from undergarments to the finishing touches, Wed 18 June, Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire NEWCOMEN IN STEAM The only full-sized working replica of the world's first steam engine can here be seen in action. Due to the unpredictable nature of the Newcomen, please check running details with the museum prior

to travelling to avoid disappointment, Thurs 19 - Sun 22 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley AN EVENING WITH CHARLIE WAITE One of the world's leading landscape photographers, Charlie Waite, here provides an insight into his world and his method, Fri 20 June, The Swan Theatre, Worcester FAWN CHECK Fri 20 June, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire SAXONS VS DANES: THE BATTLE OF WODENSFIELD Simon Hamilton and local historian Ray Fellows talk about the famous battle between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes on nearby land, and how it helped change the course of British history, Fri 20 June, Wolverhampton Art Gallery WORCESTERSHIRE LITERARY FESTIVAL Featuring spoken-word performances, seminars, workshops, poetry slams, competitions & more, Fri 20 - Sun 29 June, various locations around Worcestershire ESCORT RS TURBO 30TH ANNIVERSARY RALLY Sat 21 June, Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire NATIVE AMERICAN MYTHS Storytelling & poetry workshop with Ruth Stacey, Sat 21 June, Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum AN EVENING ON THE HOME FRONT 1940s nostalgia featuring entertainment of the day, Sat 21 June, Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge, Shropshire A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S MUSIC An evening of show and movie music, performed by Avonbank Brass Band, Sat 21 June, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire CANAL CRAFTS DAY COURSE Learn about the culture and craft traditions of the Black Country, Sat 21 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley IMPROVERS' WILLOW BASKET WEAVING Learn about the techniques and traditions of willow weaving and create a unique willow basket, Sat 21 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley BELGRADE MELA A celebration of South Asian arts featuring stalls selling traditional products, samples of Asian food, workshops and performances of classical Indian dances, all of which culminate in an evening performance of music and dance on the Belgrade's main stage Sat 21 June, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry STORYTELLING FESTIVAL

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Events LISTINGS For full listing information on Events, including times and dates, visit www.whatsonlive.co.uk Featuring story trails, live music, dance and crafts, Sat 21 June, Martineau Gardens, Birmingham ALDRIDGE FAYRE Featuring arena events, trade stalls, charity stalls, a car boot sale and much more... Sat 21 June, Anchor Meadow, Walsall ASTON HERITAGE DAY Sat 21 June, Aston Hall, Birmingham DANCE 4 MARGOT & FRIENDS A charity event aimed at raising funds and awareness for Team Margo and Delete Blood Cancer UK, Sat 21 June, The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton RUN WHAT YA BRUNG The chance to take your car or motorcycle out on the famous quarter-mile dragstrip and test its performance limits in a safe and legal environment, Sat 21 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton EXCALIBUR COMPUTER FAIR Sat 21 June, National Motorcycle Museum, Solihull NATIONAL MOTORCYCLE RACES Sat 21 - Sun 22 June, Donington Park Brockhampton BIG BRUM OPEN TOP BUZ SIGHTSEEING TOUR Sat 21 - Sun 22 June, Victoria Square, Birmingham BOWMAN ARCHERY SESSIONS Join the Brockhampton Bowmen and put your archery skills to the test. Discover various bows and find out how they were used, Sat 21 - Sun 22 June, Brockhampton Estate, Worcester OPEN DAY OF THE EARL OF DUDLEY’S MEMORIAL GARDEN Sat 21 - Sun 22 June, St Michael & All Angels Church, Himley, Dudley WEST MIDLANDS GAME AND COUNTRY FAIR Promising two actionpacked days of family fun & activities, including arena displays, demos by TV's Chris Green, a beagle show, ferret displays, BASC Gundog events, fun dog shows, children's quad bikes, a funfair & pony rides, Sat 21 Sun 22 June Shugborough Historic Working Estate, Stafford PLAYING AROUND Big Frog Productions present two plays for children aged four to nine, Sat 21 - Sun 22 June, Jinney Ring Craft Centre, Redditch LIVING LIVE 2014 The

'largest lifestyle show in Staffordshire’ Sat 21 Sun 22 June, Uttoxeter Racecourse, Stafford IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY... Chance to make a kite to take home, Sat 21 - Sun 22 June, Moseley Old Hall, Wolverhampton MIDSUMMER MADNESS Celebrate the longest day of the year, Sat 21 Sun 22, Mary Arden’s House, Stratford Upon Avon HERITAGE RALLY A noncompetitive social rally for all classic cars; starting and finishing at the Heritage Motor Centre, with a midway stop at the Cotswold Wildlife Park, Sun 22 June, Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire RETRO SHOW The multimarque event for fans of retro vehicles, both four and two wheels, Sun 22 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton PLANT HUNTERS FAIR Sun 22 June, Whittington Castle, Oswestry, North Shropshire SOS DAY A day of family fun and rescue displays from local emergency services. Get up close to the fire engines and see rescue boats, 4x4 response group vehicles and more! Sun 22 June, Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Ledbury, Herefordshire SEVERN HOSPICE DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL Sun 22 June, Pengwern Boat Club, Shrewsbury GUIDED TOUR Sun 22 June, Stokesay Court, South Shropshire BETFRED FAMILY FUN DAY Featuring appearances from Moshi Monsters Katsuma & Poppet, Sun 22 June, Worcester Racecourse GARDEN PARTY Sun 22 June, Blakesley Hall, Birmingham FAWN CHECK Sun 22 June, Charlecote Park, Warwickshire THE ORIGINS OF MIDDLEEARTH WALK Sun 22 June, Sarehole Mill, Birmingham

Week Commencing

MON 23 JUN WATCH WIMBLEDON Watch the action in Central Square, Mon 23 June, Brindleyplace, Birmingham TRACTOR TOURS Enjoy a 40-minute ride around the park, Tue 24 June, Charlecote Park,

64 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Dragonboat Festival - Brindleyplace, Birmingham

Warwickshire ROSE FESTIVAL TOURS Join head gardener Sam Tippens for a guided tour around the gardens, Wed 25 June Sun 6 July, Coughton Court, Warwickshire VALUATION DAY: FINE ARTS & ANTIQUES Fieldings Auctioneers will be on hand to value ceramics, jewellery, collectables, clocks, watches, books etc...

Thurs 26 June, Bantock House Museum, Wolverhampton PEAK PERFORMANCE TEST & TUNE DAY RWYB with maximum track time for serious enthusiasts. Car clubs, performance specialists and individuals all welcome, Fri 27 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton RILEY REGISTER - 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF LE MANS Car Club Display celebrating the 80th anniversary of Rileys' win at Le Mans, Fri 27 June, Coventry Transport Museum KIDS UNDER 5’S DAY Five hours of entertainment, including a petting zoo, funfair and storytellers, Fri 27 June, Himley Hall, Dudley COLD ENAMELLING Fri 27 June, Broadfield House Glass Museum, Stourbridge THE SAINSBURY’S BRITISH CHAMPIONSHIPS The country's best athletes battle it out for the prestigious honour of being crowned British champion, Fri 27 - Sun 29 June, Alexander Stadium, Birmingham UPTON FOOD AND BEER FESTIVAL Fri 27 - Sun 29 June, various venues Upton-uponSevern, Worcestershire MEMORIAL ABORETUM ARMED FORCES DAY Sat 28 June, RAF Cosford, Nr Wolverhampton JAGUAR SUPER SATURDAY Featuring up to fifty classic Swallow/SS/Daimler and Jaguar cars, on display on Millennium Place, Sat 28 June, Coventry Transport Museum BIG WILD NIGHT Featuring children’s crafts, wildlife spotting,

pond dipping, nature trails and much more, Sat 28 June, Brueton Park, Warwickshire ENAMELLING WORKSHOP Experiment using a sgraffito technique and liquid enamel ‘painting’ effects, before creating a final piece using your newly developed skills, Sat 28 June, Bilston Craft Gallery THE DESIGN PROCESS OF MUSEUM OF ROYAL WORCESTER Meet Harry Frost, Worcester Porcelain expert, former curator and former designer for Royal Worcester, Sat 28 June, Museum of Royal Worcester VINTAGE GARDEN PARTY Featuring live music, vintage teas, and stalls selling vintage clothing, homeware & accessories, Sat 28 June, Bantock House Museum STONE MASONRY DAY COURSE Introduction of the conservation, repair and restoration of natural stone buildings, as well as the construction of new masonry structures, and an understanding of the wide range of stone types and how they react to various conditions, Sat 28 June, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley GO COMPOSE! Composing project for fourteen-to-eighteenyear-olds, Sat 28 June, Coventry PAS - Chase Studio Centre MARVELLOUS MAMMALS Follow the clues to see if you can identify the different mammals living in the Severn Valley, Sat 28 June, Severn Valley Country Park, Alveley, Shropshire MONOPRINTING WITH LEICESTER PRINT WORKSHOP Adult workshop where participants can work with artist Kate Da’Casto, from Leicester Print Workshop, to experiment with monoprinting and create vibrant, oneoff prints, Sat 28 June, Compton Verney Gallery, Warwickshire QUEEN VICTORIA CYCLO CROSS Described as ‘Britain’s craziest bike race’, Sat 28 June,

Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge, Shropshire JEWELLERY QUARTER HERITAGE WALK Sat 28 June, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham DRAGONBOAT FESTIVAL Annual fundraising event, Sat 28 June, Brindleyplace, Birmingham CELESTIAL COMMISSATO An evening of decadence and deities, Sat 28 June, The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry SUMMER NATIONALS National Drag Racing Championships, including MSA 200mph Pro Mods, drag bikes, a jet car plus nostalgia classes, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, Santa Pod Raceway, Northampton BIG BRUM OPEN TOP BUZ SIGHTSEEING TOUR Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, Victoria Square, Birmingham FOLK & CRAFT WEEKEND Featuring have-a-go craft sessions and a performance from award-winning folk group The Roving Crows, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, Jinney Ring Craft Centre, Redditch #SHROPSHIREUNSIGNED In conjunction with Shrewsbury Food Festival, this two-night music event features local acts who’re hoping to raise their profile.

Line-up yet to be announced... Sat 28 Sun 29 June, The Buttermarket, Shrewsbury MOTORCYCLE ENDURANCE RACES Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, Donington Park MUD RUNNER OBLIVION A supreme test of fitness!

Participants will complete a gruelling sixishmile cross-country course and ten different tests of strength, endurance and co-ordination, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Ledbury, Herefordshire BROCKHAMPTON BOWMAN ARCHERY SESSIONS Join the Brockhampton Bowmen and put your archery skills to the test. Discover various

bows and find out how they were used, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, Brockhampton Estate, Worcester STEP BACK TO THE 1940S Popular event taking a lighthearted journey back to wartime Britain.

Attractions include costumed re-enactments, 1940s Blackout Fair, displays of historic civilian & military vehicles, a wartime operations room and stands featuring period memorabilia, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, Severn Valley Railway, Kidderminster SHREWSBURY FOOD FESTIVAL Featuring over two hundred food, drink & craft exhibitors, free talks & demos, live music & kids’ entertainment, Sat 28 - Sun 29 June, The Quarry Park, Shrewsbury LUDLOW ARTS FESTIVAL Fusion of theatre, music, comedy & children’s entertainment, Sat 28 June - Sun 6 July, Ludlow Castle, South Shropshire SUTTON COLDFIELD CARNIVAL Sun 29 June, Meadow Platt, Sutton Coldfield TOY COLLECTORS FAIR Sun 29 June, Three Counties Showground, Malvern BRITISH ARMED FORCES DAY A free, fun-filled family day to celebrate the Armed Forces and commemorate the centenary of the start of World War One. Children's activities, a military vehicle exhibition and a youth marching band competition all feature, Sun 29 June, Himley Hall & Park, Dudley ANTIQUE & COLLECTORS FAIR Sun 29 June, Three Counties Showground, Malvern AUSTIN DAY Celebrating local motoring heritage with vintage and classic cars from the 1900s to the 1940s, Sun 29 June, Avoncroft Museum, Bromsgrove WORCESTERSHIRE BIKE RIDE Featuring three routes, Sun 29 June, Sixways Stadium, Worcester

Eating Out June Region One _Layout 1 23/05/2014 16:27 Page 1

Eating Out Marco Pierre’s flagship not so White...

Marco Pierre White’s flagship Birmingham restaurant received a zero rating for hygiene in a recent inspection by local environmental health officers.

The restaurant, which opened in December 2011, was informed in March that its FSA rating would plummet to and remain at zero until its next programmed inspection - which could be anything up to eighteen months away. The news will come as a shock to diners, who pay around £50 per head at the swanky restaurant on the twenty-fifth floor of The Cube.

Marco Pierre White’s was not the only restaurant to be caught out, with Chaophraya on Spiceal Street and Malmaison in The Mailbox also receiving zero ratings.

Top award for Indian fine dining Birmingham’s fine dining restaurant Pushkar Cocktail Bar & Dining has beaten off stiff competition to be named the Asian Business Awards’ Midlands Restaurant Of The Year. Pushkar’s Creative Director, Rai Singh, received the award from Leicester MP Keith Vaz at a recent gala award ceremony at Edgbaston Stadium.

Rai Singh with his award

Alfresco dining on the menu A taste of summer is on offer at Birmingham’s Hotel du Vin, courtesy of a new Al Fresco menu.

Fresh, seasonal ingredients feature in a mouthwatering selection of dishes, including watermelon, feta and red onion salad, and chargrilled, corn-fed chicken with citrus and watercress salad.

Sweet-toothed diners can indulge themselves with baked vanilla cheesecake or Scottish strawberries with crème chantilly.

Summer-inspired drinks on the Hotel du Vin’s menu include Hendricks summer punch, ginger brewski and a selection of international craft and fruit beers.

Caribbean joy at Turtle Bay...

REVIEW Tucked away behind Birmingham’s New Alexandra Theatre on John Bright Street is Turtle Bay; not the Hawaiian resort, but the city’s newest Caribbean eatery.

Impossible to miss thanks to its bright exterior, it’s just as colourful inside, with the addition of some of the warmest and friendliest staff around.

Following our waitress onto the veranda, we began our Caribbean culinary adventure by perusing an overwhelming cocktail list. We were definitely off to a good start! It would’ve been a crime not to try the rum punch, so I went for the Passion Rum Punch. My companion chose a non-alcoholic Watermelon Cooler. The punch was ridiculously drinkable; the Cooler, icy

and refreshing.

We then ordered the pulled jerk pork and jerk pit prawns from the Cutters section of the menu inspired by ‘beach shacks & street hawkers’.

The hot pork with the sweet orange and spicy rocket was perfect. The prawns were fresh, plentiful and chargrilled.

Next up was the Trinidad curry chicken and Mo’ Bay chicken. The former was simply delicious; a onepot wonder of rich-yet-mild chicken curry, infused with a promise of the islands coconut, sweet potato and mango.

The Mo’ Bay was a single piece of chicken smothered in a creamy sauce to offset the jerk - and presented alongside the crispiest sweet potato fries around. Some fabulous fried plantain topped it off.

With nutty, crunchy Trini chickpeas on the side, this

was both a street food and a home-style feast.

And no feast is complete without dessert! The BBQ pineapple, with its sweet, sugary rum sauce, was just the thing to round off a spicy meal.

Buzzing with a holiday atmosphere, Turtle Bay is perfect for parties or simply to liven up an otherwise drab day. With a huge menu from which to choose and cocktails aplenty to enjoy, it offers a taste of the Caribbean that’s well worth sampling.

Alev Dervish Food: ■■■■■ Service: ■■■■■ Ambience: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Overall value ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ OVERALL ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Turtle Bay 81-91 John Bright Street Birmingham B1 1BL Tel: 0121 643 1303 www.whatsonlive.co.uk 65

Eating Out June Region One _Layout 1 23/05/2014 16:27 Page 2

Restaurant LISTINGS For full listing information on restaurants, including opening times and type of cuisine, visit: www.whatsonlive.co.uk

Birmingham AALTO RESTAURANT Hotel La Tour, Albert Street, Birmingham B5 5JT 0121 718 8000 AIR RESTAURANT LG Arena, Bickenhill Rd, 0844 338 0333 BANK 4 Brindleyplace, B1 2JB 0121 633 4466 BAR ESTILO 10-114 Wharfside St, The Mailbox, B1 1RF 0121 643 3443 BARAJEE 265 Broad Street, B1 2DS 0121 643 6699 BELLA ITALIA 102 New Street, B2 4HQ 0121 643 1548 BERLIOZ Burlington Arcade, New St, B2 4JQ 0121 633 1737 BLUE MANGO Regency Wharf, Broad St, B1 2DS 0121 633 4422 BLUE PIANO RESTAURANT AND BAR 24-26 Harborne Rd, B15 3AA 0121 454 6877 BUONISSIMO 1 Albany Rd, Harborne, B17 9JX 0121 426 2444 CAFE OPUS 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, B1 2HS 0121 248 3226 CARLUCCIO’S The Water’s Edge, Brindleyplace B1 2HP 0121 633 9262 CENTENARY BAR & BRASSERIE Broad Street, B1 2EP 0121 245 2080 CHI BAR & GRILL 61 Newhall Street, B3 3RB 0121 233 3150 CHUNG YING 16-18 Wrottersley Street, B5 4RT 0121 622 5669 CHUNG YING GARDEN 17 Thorpe St, B5 4AT 0121 666 6622 CIELO 6 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, B1 2JB 0121 632 6882 COAST TO COAST 9 Brindleyplace, Broad Street, B1 2HJ COTE The Mailbox, B1 1RX 0121 631 1587 CUCINA RUSTICA 24

Ludgate Hill, B3 1DX 0121 233 2277 DEL VILLAGGIO Unit 528, Middle Mall, The Bullring. B5 4BE 0121 643 1400 EDMUNDS 6 Brindley place, B1 2JB 0121 633 4944 FLEET STREET KITCHEN Fleet Street, Islington Gates, B3 1JH 0121 236 0100 ITIHAAS 18 Fleet St, B3 1JL 0121 212 3383 JAMIE’S ITALIAN Middle Mall, Bullring Shopping Centre, B5 4BE 0121 270 3610 JIMMY SPICES Regency Wharf, Broad St, B1 2DS 0121 643 2111 LAS IGUANAS Arcadian Centre, Hurst St, B5 4TD 0121 622 4466 LASAN 3-4 Dakota Buildings, James St, St Paul’s Square, B3 1SD 0121 212 3664 THE LOFT LOUNGE 143 Bromsgrove St, B5 6RG 0121 622 2444 THE LOST & FOUND 8 Bennetts Hill, B2 5RS 0121 643 9293 LOVES The Glasshouse, Browning St, B16 8FL 0121 454 5151 MECHU 47 - 59 Summer Row, B3 1JJ 0121 212 1661 METRO BAR & GRILL 73 Cornwall St B3 2DF 0121 200 1911 MINT Yew Tree Retail Park, Stoney Lane Yardley, B25 8YP 0121 789 8908 MOUNT FUJI The Bullring, B5 4BH 0121 633 9853 NUVO BAR 11 Brindley Place, B1 2LP 0121 631 1600 OPUS 54 Cornwall St, B3 2DE 0121 200 2323 THE ORIENTAL The Mailbox, 128-130 Wharfside St, B1 1RQ 0121 633 9988 PEACHYKEENS 1741 Coventry Road, B26 1DS 0121 764 5519 PENNY BLACKS

The Mailbox, 132-134 Wharfside St, B1 1XL 0121 632 1460 PICCOLINO 9 Brindleyplace B1 2HS 0121 634 3055 PITCHER & PIANO Brindleyplace, B1 2HP 0121 643 0214 POPPY RED Arcadian Centre, Birmingham B5 4TD 0121 687 1200 PURNELL’S 55 Cornwall St, B3 2DH 0121 212 9799 PURNELL’SBISTOR & GINGER’S BAR 11 Newhall Street, B3 3NY, 0121 2000 1588 THE RECTORY 50-54 St Paul’s Sq, B3 1QS 0121 605 1001 RED PEPPERS 117 Wharfside St, B1 1RF 0121 643 4202 SAN CARLO 4 Temple St, B2 5BN 0121 633 0251 SHIMLA PINKS 215 Broad St, B15 1AY 0121 633 0366 SIMPSONS, 20 Highfield Rd, Edgbaston B13 3DU 0121 454 3434 THE SLUG AND LETTUCE, Brindley Place, Birmingham B1 2HL 0121 633 3049 STRADA 109-111 Wharfside St, The Mailbox B1 1XL 0121 643 7279 TGI FRIDAYS 180 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, B16 9NY 0121 454 1930 THAI EDGE 7 Oozells Sq, B1 2HL 0121 643 3993 THE VAULTS Newhall Place, Newhall Hill, B1 3JH 0121 212 9837 WAGAMAMA Brindley Place, birmingham B1

Warwickshire 7 SQUARE 7 Old Square, Warwick CV34 4RA 01926 411 755 NO. 9 CHURCH STREET Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire CV37 6HB 01789 415522 AGRA PLACE 12 Abbey Green, Nuneaton, CV11 5DR 024 7635 0515 THE ALMANAK Abbey End North, Kenilworth, CV8 1QJ 01926 353 637 AUBERGINE 32 Smith St, Warwick CV34 4HS 01926 400 086 THE ALMANACK Abbey

SINGLE?

UK’s leading social events club are holding their

Summer Ball, Sat 5th July at Cottons Hotel, Manchester Road, Knutsford, Cheshire 8pm Drinks Reception, 3 Course meal & all drinks Events weekly include dining out, dinner dances, black tie balls, theatre, parties, weekends away and holidays abroad.

(01244) 677030 w/days or 548816 eve/weekends

www.thedinnerclubuk.com 66 www.whatsonlive.co.uk

£68

acco availm also able

End North, Kenilworth CV8 1QJ 01926 353637 BLUE BISTRO 21 Spon St, Coventry, CV1 3BA 024 7622 9274 BROWNS Earl St, Coventry CV1 5RU 0247 622 1100 CARLUCCIOS 13 Waterside, Stratford-Upon-Avon CV37 6BA 01789 267424 CASTLES 6 Castle Street, CV34 4QU 01926 495421 CATALAN 6 Jury St , Warwick CV34 4EW 01926 498 930 THE CHURCH STREET TOWNHOUSE 16 Church Street, Stratford-uponAvon CV37 6HB 01789 262222 COOMBE ABBEY Brinklow Road, Coventry, CV3 2AB 024 7645 0450 CROSSED KHUKRIS GURKHA 115 Abbey Street, Nuneaton, CV11 5BX 024 7634 4488 EDWARD MOON 9 Chapel Street, Stratford-uponAvon, CV37 6EP 01789 267069 EGO 29 The Square, Kenilworth, CV8 1EF 01926 864463 THE ENCORE Bridge Street Stratford upon Avon CV37 6AB 01789 269462 FINEST CATCH B’ham Rd, Henley in Arden. B95 5QR 01564 793783 FIVE RIVERS 20-22 Victoria Terrace, Leamington Spa, CV31 3AB 01926 431999 GEORGETOWN 23 Sheep St, Stratford-Upon-Avon, CV37 6EF 01789 204445 GRANTS OF SHEEP ST 2123 Sheep Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 6EF 01789 290 008 HIGH PAVEMENT BAR & DINING 3 High Street, CV34 4AP 01926 494725 HELP OUT MILL Heather Rd, Shakerstone, Nuneaton. CV13 0BT 01530 260666 INDIA RED 25 Abbey Street, Nuneaton, CV11 5BX 024 7634 2090 JIMMY SPICES 64-66 Station Rd, Solihull, B91 3RX 0121 709 2111 LE BISTRO PIERRE Swans Nest, Bridgford, Stratford upon Avon. CV37 7LT 01789 264804 MALLORY COURT Harbury Lane, Leamington Spa, CV33 9QB, 01926 330214 MATRICARDIS 97 High St, Henley in Arden. B95 5AT 01564 792735 MERCHANTS Swan Street, Warwick CV34 4BJ 01926 403833 NICOLINIS 14 The Parade, Leamington Spa, CV32 4DW 01926 421620 ONE ELM 1 Guild St, Stratford-Upon-Avon, CV37 6QZ 01789 404919 PREZZO 1-3 High St, Warwick CV34 4AP 01926 475867 RESTAURANT 23 34 Hamilton Terrace, Holly Walk Leamington Spa, CV32 4LY 01926 422422 RISTORANTE DA VINCI 50 Earlsdon Street, Coventry, CV5 6EJ 024 7671 3554 ROBBIE’S RESTAURANT 74 Smith Street, CV34 4HU

Balcony Brasserie, Selfridges, Birmingham

01926 400470 ROOFTOP RESTAURANT @ The RST, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 6BB 01789 403449 SAFFRON GOLD Market St, Westgate House, Warwick CV34 4DE 01926 402061 THE SAXON MILL Coventry Rd, Guys Cliffe, Warwick CV34 5YN 01926 492 255 SIGNATURES @ The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, CV1 1GS 02476 846762 TAILORS 22 Market Place, Warwick CV34 4SL 01926 410590 THE TREVELYAN Warwick Rd, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 ONR 01789 295252 THE VINE INN 86 - 88 West St, Warwick CV34 6AW 07873 219005 WARWICK SPICE 24 Smith Street, CV34 4HS 01926 491736 ZIZZI 85-87 Regent Square House, Parade, Leamington Spa CV 32 4NL 01926 432532

Worcestershire ANAKARI 47 The Tythings, Worcester. WR1 1JT 01905 21412 ANGEL CHEF 1 Angel St, Worcester WR1 3QT 01905 731131 ANUPAM 85 Church Street, Malvern. WR14 2AE 01684 573814 BACCHUS 44 Worcester Road, Bromsgrove B61 0TA 01527 877557 BENEDICTOS 34 Sidbury, Worcester WR1 2HZ 01905 21444 BINDLES BAR & BRASSERIE 55 Sidbury, WR1 2HU 01905 611120 BRAMBLINGS Hither Green Lane, Redditch, B98 9BE 01527 406600 BRIDGE INN Plough Road, Droitwich WR9 7NQ 01905 345874 BROWNS 24 Quay St, Worcester WR1 2JJ 01905 26263 CHADDESLEY RESTAURANT Brockencote Hall Hotel, Kidderminster DY10 4PY 01562 777876 THE CHASE INN Chase Rd, Upper Colwall, Malvern.

WR13 6DQ 01684 540276 CHESTERS 51 New St, Worcester, WR1 2DL 01905 611638

CROWN & SANDYS Main Rd, Ombersley, WR9 0EW 01905 62025 EWE AND LAMB Hanbury Road, Bromsgrove B60 4DN 01527 871 929 THE FIG TREE 99 Church Street, Gt Malvern, WR14 2AE 01684 569909 FOUR SEASONS 61 Lowesmoor, Worcester WR1 2RS 01905 27026 FUSION BRASSERIE Hawbridge, Stoulton, Worcester WR7 4RJ 01905 840647 THE INN AT STONEHALL Stonehall Common, Worcester, WR5 3QG 01905 820462 KING CHARLES II King Charles House, New St, Worcester WR1 2D 01905 22449 L’AMUSE BOUCHE 51 Graham Rd, Malvern.

WR14 2HU 01684 572427 LANGTREYS 89a High St, Bromsgrove. B61 8AQ 01527 878242 LITTLE VENICE 1 - 3 St Nicholas St, Worcester WR1 1UW 01905 726126 LOTUS HOUSE 33 Ombersley St East, Droitwich, WR9 8QX 01905 770079 MAEKONG THAI 12 Worcester Road, Bromsgrove B61 7AE 01527 578888 MASSALLA LOUNGE 35 Broad St, Worcester WR1 3NH 01905 729955 MUG HOUSE Claines Lane, Worcester WR3 7RN 01905 456649 ON THE ROCKS 44 Worcester Road, Bromsgrove, B61 7AE 01527 882412 PORTOFINO, 6 Worcester Rd, Droitwich. WR9 8AD 01905 794799 PORTWAY ITALIAN, Alcester Rd, Redditch.

B48 7HT 01564 824794 PUCCINI'S, 12 Friar St, Worcester WR12LZ 01905 27770 RAJDOOT Cutnall Green, Droitwich. WR9 0PW 01299 851000 ROSADOS’S 2 Finstall Rd, Aston Fields, Bromsgrove. B60 2DZ 01527 889948 SAFFRON BISTRO 15 New St, Worcester WR1 2DP 01905 610505

For full Restaurant listings visit: www.whatsonlive.co.uk

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For full Restaurant listings

visit: whatsonlive.co.uk

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