Despite it being a double bank holiday week, there are plenty of theatre events activity all around the UK. Here’s the cream of the crop

This article titled “What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 22nd April 2011 16.11 UTC With Easter and the royal wedding (arguably a massive piece of street theatre, but give me an elephant any day) bookending the coming week, theatrical activity is low-key and openings are few. But by the time you read this, The Passion will already be underway in Port Talbot – the last event in National theatre Wales’s first season. It’s been a wonderfully varied year of work, and if not all of it has glistened, it has nonetheless probed how a national theatre might operate and what forms theatre can take. I’m really looking forward to the announcement of the new season, which I have high hopes will be as invigorating as the first. But it’s not the only theatrical activity in Wales this week, where a revival of Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money goes out on tour, starting at Chapter Arts Center in Cardiff next week. Moving across the Severn bridge, head down to the Hall for Cornwall in Truro for Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger’s Chouf Ouchouf, which checks in next Thursday after finishing its South Bank run on Sunday. The Brewhouse in Taunton is celebrating both St George’s Day and the royal wedding with the imaginative England, My England. Up in Bristol, things are gearing up for the fabulously juicy Mayfest , but there is still time to catch Tristan Sturrock’s Frankenspine at the Old Vic studio and the excellent Propeller Comedy of Errors at the Tobacco Factory. Salisbury Playhouse offers two contrasting shows that are both well worth a look: a fabulous revival of Guys and Dolls in the main house and Martin Crimp’s teasingly enigmatic The Country in the studio. Probe’s dance-theatre piece May, written by the mighty Tim Crouch, stops off at South Hill Park in Bracknell next week. Mike Bartlett’s satirical baby-boomer comedy, Love, Love, Love, http://www.painesplough.com/current-programme/by-date/love-love-love stops off at the Nuffield Southampton next week. Brighton’s Basement will play a major role in the upcoming Brighton Festival but also opens its doors on Saturday night for one of its regular Supper Club nights, a tasty mix of performance, interventions and installations. In London, meanwhile, the Digital Stages festival takes place for five days from today (22 April) bringing together performances, discussions, workshops and exhibitions. Among those who may take your fancy are Pecora Ura with Part 11 of the Hotel Medea Trilogy and Lightwork’s installation, The Good Actor, which aims to capture the moment prior to actors going on stage to perform. The Spill festival also continues in fine fettle, and includes the Spill National Platform over the weekend, featuring work by Jo Bannon as well as Martin O’Brien’s punishing The Mucus Factory. There’s also a chance to see new work by Sylvia Rimat and Kings of England. The Globe’s touring production of Hamlet, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, heads to home base for a few performances before setting out on a long tour. I saw the viciously funny and sad Chekhov in Hell at the Drum in Plymouth and now you can catch it at Soho, and Told by an Idiot’s examination of what motivates violence, And the Horse You Rode in On, clip clops into the Barbican Pit before galloping off to the Brighton Festival. It’s your last chance for David Eldridge’s Knot of the Heart at the Almeida. Birmingham Rep’s Behna (Sisters) makes its London debut in somebody’s kitchen in a secret location in North London from Thursday. I’m looking forward to Philip Ridley’s first new play for three years, Tender Napalm, at Southwark Playhouse and The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut at the Roundhouse, a show created with teenagers by the brilliant Mark Storor, and am still dying to see the Ipswich musical London Road at the National which everyone seems to have an opinion on. If you live in the east of the country, take a look at a very well-received A View From the Bridge at the Mercury in Colchester, and book for the High Tide festival which opens on Thursday with the European premiere of Stephen Belber’s Dusk Rings a Bell about a teenage romance reignited 20 years later. Put the weekend of 30 April in your diary for the Junction Sampled at the Junction in Cambridge, which includes a chance to see work from some really talented artists including Deborah Pearson, Greg McLaren, The Other Way Works, Dancing Brick, Non Zero One and others. And don’t forget that the Norfolk and Norwich festival opens on May 6. There are some great shows, including a number of Without Walls outdoor theatre commissions. Pulse won’t be far behind at the New Wolsey in Ipswich. The RSC open their new season with a version of Shakespeare’s lost play, Cardenio, and Jonathan Slinger as Macbeth on the main stage. Plenty of Macbeths at the moment, in fact, with Belt Up getting lost in the mind of the anti-hero in an old underground prison in Clerkenwell, and David Morrissey losing his Lady M – Jemma Redgrave – in Liverpool. (She’s been replaced by Julia Ford.) It’s your last chance for a blistering Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Northern Stage and you don’t have long for Arthur Miller’s The Price which is at the Stephen Joseph in Scarborough. Book for Fissure, a walking performance over the weekend of 20-22 May in the Yorkshire Dales. Heading into Scotland, you should catch Catherine Wheels’ Caged, a beauty and the beast variation, which is at the Macrobert in Stirling, Eastwood Park and the Tron this week. Des Dillon’s revenge comedy Six Black Candles goes into Dundee Rep, Liz Lochhead’s spin on Moliere, Educating Agnes, continues at the Lyceum in Edinburgh and Rona Munro’s rom-com, Pandas, is at the Traverse. Phew. That’s that. Enjoy your Easter break.

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This week’s new theatre includes a Mike Leigh play, Shakespeare, David Eldridge and more. London theatres mentioned are in Islington, the Almeida, Hampstead Theatre

This article titled “This week’s new theatre” was written by Mark Cook & Lyn Gardner, for The Guardian on Saturday 5th March 2011 00.07 UTC Ecstasy, London So successful has Mike Leigh been as a film director, with international hits such as Secrets And Lies and the most recent, Another Year, that it’s easy to forget he started out in theatre. He’s still best known for the cult play Abigail’s Party, which premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 1977. Leigh, using his improvisational approach, has staged three more plays at Hampstead, and now he returns to direct one of them. Ecstasy is set in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher is set to change the country. In a north London bedsit, political turmoil is reflected in the maelstrom of a group of friends. Expect pain and humour in equal measure. Hampstead Theatre, NW3, Thu to 9 Apr Mark Cook The Cleansing Of Constance Brown, Birmingham Who is Constance, and how can she be everywhere and nowhere at the same time? In Stan’s Cafe’s intriguing show, first seen back in 2007 and performed without words in a 14 metre-long corridor, Constance is a mysterious presence. She’s the figure just glimpsed at the edge of the frame in a TV news story, the unidentified figure in a painting or photograph of famous people, the person nobody notices as momentous events unfurl. The corridor is the corridor of history, where the Tudor maid and the Jewish victim of the Nazis co-exist and where women are peripheral to the power machinations of men. But Constance is always there, a silent witness, unnoticed but taking note. AE Harris Factory, to 19 Mar Lyn Gardner The Knot In The Heart, London David Eldridge returns to the Almeida with a world premiere, the first since his adaptation of the Danish film Festen, which went on to conquer the West End and Broadway. He seems to have a penchant for the Scandinavians, having translated three of Ibsen’s works, but on this occasion his new play is rooted in the here and now – in fact it all takes place within a mile of the Islington theatre. The Knot Of The Heart stars Lisa Dillon – recently at the Old Vic in Design For Living and A Flea In Her Ear – as Lucy, a successful children’s TV presenter who seemingly has always had everything but gets addicted to heroin and finds her life beginning to unravel. The part was written for Dillon, and is unusual in that the character is not defined by her relationship with men. The play is ultimately about love but, says director Michael Attenborough, it defies stereotypes. Almeida Theatre, N1, Thu to 30 Apr MC From Newbury With Love, Newbury Red Cape’s The Idiot Colony, about women incarcerated and forgotten in mental asylums, put them on the map in 2008, and this new piece was also inspired by a true story. In 1971, at the height of the cold war, 73-year-old Newbury resident Harold Edwards and his wife, Olive, sent a postcard to seven-year-old Marina, the daughter of an imprisoned Soviet dissident. The result of a letter-writing campaign by Amnesty International, it led to a 15-year correspondence between the families that lasted until Harold died. By then Marina was 24. The production draws on the original letters, which were a lifeline to Marina and her family in the knowledge that there was somebody who cared about their plight. Corn Exchange, Wed to 12 Mar LG The Tempest, Stratford-upon-Avon Once seen, never forgotten, Little Angel Theatre’s collaboration with the RSC on Venus And Adonis even had hardened theatre critics professing a love of puppets. Here, Little Angel tackles Shakespeare’s late play in a shortened version for children and adults. Playwright Phil Porter has adapted the original and Peter Glanville’s production makes use of puppetry and music to create the magical isle where Prospero rules by magic. The fantastical nature of the story should lend itself well to puppetry in what should be a spellbinding spectacle. Swan, Fri to 26 Mar LG Yerma, Leeds Surprisingly, West Yorkshire Playhouse has never produced a play by Federico García Lorca, and this new adaptation has a distinctly Irish bent. Directed by Róisin McBrinn, the Trinity College Dublin-trained director whose production of Novecento was recently seen at Trafalgar Studios in London, and adapted by the Irish writer Ursula Rani Sarma, it stars Kate Stanley-Brennan, who has appeared in plays at the Abbey including Mark O’Rowe’s Young Vic-bound Terminus. Stanley-Brennan plays Yerma, a young woman who has been married to Juan for years but who has not had the child that she so desires. Desperate and fearing the lonely years ahead in a passionless marriage, she takes matters into her own hands with tragic consequences. West Yorkshire Playhouse, Sat to 26 Mar LG Diary Of A Nobody, Northampton Holloway clerk Charles Pooter really is a nobody. Condemned by class and education to be part of the faceless grind of Victorian London – unexceptional, unrecognised and unremarked upon – Charles is determined to be a somebody. So he decides to keep a diary, pointing out why he is a cut above his fellow clerks, and you are going to hear the sparkling gems within, whether you like it or not. George and Weedon Grossmith’s late-Victorian satire really is a timeless comic gem, detailing Charles’s small acts of rebellion, social gaffes and attempts to make himself appear more important than he is. This new version by Hugh Osborne is performed as a physical theatre farce by a cast of four. The Royal, Sat to 19 Mar LG Sex Idiot, Manchester There are not many shows where you learn something new: such as the fact that you can make a fake moustache out of pubic hair. That’s exactly what performance artist Bryony Kimmings does in this bonkers but really rather lovable little show, which was inspired by her experience of contracting a common sexually transmitted disease. The pubic hair belongs to members of the audience who are invited to offer it up mid-show – and many of them do in a real spirit of generosity. This probably isn’t a night out for those who hate audience participation or who are easily embarrassed, but for all its cheerful wackiness this is a serious and upfront show about love, sex, one-night stands and broken hearts. Contact, Sat LG

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Les Miserables on Tour If you’ve ever been on a London Theatre Break to see Les Miserables then here’s a chance to see the world’s longest running musical at a venue closer to home perhaps. Of course if you haven’t ever seen it properly in London then what are you waiting for? ** Book Les Miserables London Theatre Breaks ** Cameron Mackintosh announced recently that John Owen Jones will star as ‘Jean Valjean’, Earl Carpenter as ‘Javert’ and Gareth Gates as ‘Marius’ in the exciting new 25th anniversary production of “LES MISÉRABLES,”. This new production has spectacular new designs inspired by the paintings of Victor Hugo and embarks on a major international tour starting in Wales. Les Miserables Stars John Owen Jones has been hailed as the best Jean Valjean since Colm Wilkinson. As well as starring in “Les Misérables” in both the West End and on Broadway he has also appeared as ‘The Phantom’ in “The Phantom of the Opera” at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London. Earl Carpenter who is currently playing ‘Javert’ in the West End production of “Les Misérables” has also starred as ‘The Phantom’ in West End.

Gareth Gates of course, is the multi million selling popstar who had the 2nd best selling single this decade. He played the title role of ‘Joseph’ in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” at the West End’s Adelphi Theatre and was a semi finalist in ‘Dancing on Ice’ 2008. Les Miserables Score The score of “LES MISÉRABLES” includes the songs, ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ (currently the world’s most popular song thanks to Susan Boyle), ‘On My Own’, ‘Stars’, ‘Bring Him Home’, ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’, ‘One Day More’, ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’, ‘Master Of The House’ and many more. Les Miserables Amazing History Les Miserables “LES MISÉRABLES” originally opened in London at the Barbican Theatre on 8 October 1985, transferred to the Palace Theatre on 4 December 1985 and moved to its current home at the Queen’s Theatre on 3 April 2004 where it continues to play to packed houses. When “LES MISÉRABLES” celebrated its 21st London birthday on 8 October 2006, it became the World’s Longest Running Musical, surpassing the record previously held by “Cats” in London’s West End.

Seen by over 56 million people worldwide in 42 countries and in 21 languages 34 cast recordings of Les Miz, Multi-platinum London cast recording Grammy Award-winning Broadway cast album. 10th Anniversary Royal Albert Hall Gala Concert album sold nearly two million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling musical videos ever in the UK. There are over 2,000 productions of the Les Misérables School’s Edition scheduled or being performed by over 100,000 school children in the UK, US and Australia, making it the most successful musical ever produced in schools.

Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Les Miserables is written by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg and is based on the novel by Victor Hugo. It has music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer and original French text by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel and additional material by James Fenton. The original London production of “LES MISÉRABLES” was adapted and directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird. This new production will be directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell and designed by Matt Kinley inspired by the works of Victor Hugo and John Napier. Original costumes by Andreane Neofitou, lighting by Paule Constable and sound by Mick Potter. Les Miserables International Tour Dates LES MISÉRABLES International Tour 2009/2010 11 December 2009 – 16 January 2010 WALES MILLENNIUM CENTRE CARDIFF 19 January – 13 February 2010 MANCHESTER PALACE THEATRE 16 February – 20 March 2010 NORWICH THEATRE ROYAL 23 March – 17 April 2010 BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME 20 April – 15 May 2010 EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE 26 May – 4 July 2010 PARIS – THE CHATELET ** Book Les Miserables LONDON Theatre Breaks **

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News in of some tour dates for Quadrophenia the iconic Rock Opera. As announced last night, the Quadrophenia UK tour starts in Plymouth

Saturday 9th May 2009, Monday 11th May 2009 - Saturday 16th May 2009

Theatre Royal Plymouth

Tuesday 19th May 2009 - Saturday 23rd May 2009

Hippodrome Birmingham

Tuesday 16th June 2009 - Saturday 20th June 2009

Opera House Manchester

Tuesday 7th July 2009 - Saturday 11th July 2009

The Empire Theatre Sunderland

Tuesday 25th August 2009 - 29th August 2009

Empire Liverpool

Set in London and Brighton at the height of the 1960s Mods and Rockers scenes, Quadrophenia the Rock Opera is told through the eyes of Jimmy, a thrills seeking teenager who hates his mundane job, is misunderstood by his parents and lives only for his music, scooter gatherings Mod culture. But Jimmy always takes things just a little bit too far..

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