Play

2024 Upcoming Shows

Happy New Year!

With a new year comes a new set of productions within the local area, so we thought we’d share details of some of the productions which will be coming to the local area in 2024 that we are most excited about.

With a few productions, particularly those at ATG Theatres, the touring productions are on in both Liverpool and Manchester at different times of the year. This means we’re able to look at what dates work best for us, or to see productions multiple times. We’ll list the dates under each of the venues a tour is visiting, but we may only see them at one of the venues listed. We’ve also tried to group the venues based on the city they’re in, starting in Liverpool and moving eastwards to Manchester.

The Book of Will

★★★★★

As part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, Shakespeare North Playhouse are staging Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will.

Telling the tale of how the First Folio came to be, and how so many of Shakespeare’s plays only survive due to the efforts of those who knew him best, The Book of Will is a fantastic co-production with Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and Octagon Theatre Bolton.

The Book of Will takes the audience on the journey of The King’s Men and their realisation that as each of them dies so to do the real words of Shakespeare, and with each passing the mis-remembered words and modified versions become the truth. As each version moves further away from how Shakespeare would have intended, The King’s Men decide to gather The Bard’s works in order to publish them in a folio. There’s just one problem; the majority of the works haven’t been written down. Those that are written down largely exist as individual scripts for actors and cover purely their lines and cues. The King’s Men must band together to try and find complete works that they can publish.

Noises Off

★★★★☆

A play within a play performed across three acts, Michael Frayn’s Noises Off is the original “goes wrong” play. Following the on and off stage antics of a touring theatre company as they perform ‘Nothing On’, Frayn’s work is timeless and this latest touring production directed by Lindsay Posner is brilliantly bad.

The show begins with the cast of ‘Nothing On’ completing a final rehearsal before opening night. The cast are woefully underprepared; Dotty (Liza Goddard) is constantly getting lines wrong and misplacing sardines, Frederick (Simon Coates) keeps finding plot holes, and Brooke (Lisa Ambalavanar) is not only extremely inexperienced but has an uncanny ability to lose contact lenses. This first act gives the audience the opportunity to see half of ‘Nothing On’, before act two details a completely disastrous matinee performance of the show. The entire second act takes place backstage as jealous lovers and cast tensions bubble over into the performance. Finally, the third act shows the catastrophic final performance where those members of the cast who haven’t completely given up attempt to ad-lib their way through the show with varying degrees of success.

I,Daniel Blake

★★★★★

If you have never been in a theatre where the end of the show is met by massive amounts of tears by the audience and a standing ovation for a phenomenal cast, then you probably haven’t been to watch I, Daniel Blake.

Based on the Ken Loach directed film, this stage production has been adapted by Dave Johns who starred in the original film as the titular character, and is a co-production between tiny dragon Productions andEnglish Touring Theatre, in association with Northern Stage.

The Crown Jewels

★☆☆☆☆

Based on the true story of 17th Century Irish Rebel Thomas Blood (Aiden McArdle), and his attempt to steal The Crown Jewels from King Charles II (Al Murray), a play written by the person behind Men Behaving Badly and featuring some of Britain’s most critically acclaimed comedy performers should, in theory, result in an outstanding stage show full of satire and humour. In reality, this production is the antithesis of this.