We're nearly back home...

Last week we announced our brand new Homecoming Season which you may have read about on these pages last week. We open our newly refurbished building to the public on Friday 26 October with a two night gala celebration of the Coliseum, looking forward to an exciting future ahead of us. This grand re-opening show will be performed by a company of Coliseum favourites presenting key scenes and songs on stage from the theatre’s history as well as previewing some of the productions. On Saturday 27 October we will also be hosting another of our highly successful free Open Days to invite everyone back into the building and give you a chance to snoop around and see what’s changed. They’ll be activities, talks and backstage tours throughout the day so make sure you don’t miss out.

The first Coliseum production of the season will be Dickens’s David Copperfield adapted by Alastair Cording. This fast-paced, exciting adaptation is just as gripping as the original novel. For those of you who don’t know, Dickens’s stories were originally serialised in magazines which is why the end of each chapter ends on a tense cliff hanger – to make sure people would buy the next edition. This makes an excellent transfer to stage.

Following that we have Sugar Daddies by Alan Ayckbourn – a very popular playwright with the Coliseum audience. It’s one of his later plays with a bit of a darker tone but still full of all the famous Ayckbourn humour. Director/designer team Robin Herford and Michael Holt will return after their fantastic portrayal of Taking Steps at the Grange Arts Centre.

Blonde Bombshell’s of 1943 is the last Coliseum produced play of the season and something that I think really complements the other shows. It’s a feel good musical play - complete with a swing band - that will sit nicely next to the classic David Copperfield and humorous Sugar Daddies.

So those are just the Coliseum productions and I’m already running out of words. I’m really looking forward to welcoming back tours from both London Classic Theatre and LipService. We also have a small scale tour of Jane Eyre with students from the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts which I’ll talk more about next week and a huge variety of one night events from stand up comedy to a night of brass bands.

I have to say I am really looking forward to returning to the building and getting it up and running again. While our time out of the building has been great fun and full of new opportunities, I can’t wait to bring the company back together to welcome our audience back through the doors of theatre.

See you out and about.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director