Summer Fun for the Coliseum

This week we said goodbye to the fantastic week-long touring production of Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong which closed on Saturday. This show marks the start of the Coliseum’s hugely hectic summer transition into our Autumn/Winter programme which begins with Chicago in September. 

The summer months are vital for the theatre to prepare for our busiest time of the year and carry out necessary maintenance on our nineteenth century home. We are seeing out July with a flurry of activity in the form of our upcoming Shake It UP! – our week long youth programmed theatre festival. Plus Shakesperience, a fresh fun filled look at six of the bard’s greatest plays including Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet – with famous scenes performed enthusiastically by students of Judes Drama aged 4-20 years old.

Our normal auditorium programme may lessen somewhat each summer until the end of August. This is a vital time for the theatre. I am currently overseeing the second round of auditions for Chicago which requires a crack cast of multi-talented performers to bring this spectacular show to life on stage. The standard of those auditioning for the starring roles has been remarkably high, making my job a lot harder.

Each department in the theatre is currently a hive of activity working towards transforming the auditorium into downtown 1920s Chicago, which is no small task. The set build is shaping up to be a gloriously mammoth undertaking, whilst our wardrobe department is well on the way to creating the glamorous and equally seedy characters in a traditional Vaudevillian style. The play is fast transforming into what will be a treat for the eyes as well as the ears.

Plus, as if trying to focus on Chicago wasn’t enough I currently have Christmas on the brain as I continue to develop and hone the script for our seasonal panto Jack and the Beanstalk. Myself and Coliseum regular Fine Time Fontayne, who also plays Dame Trott this year, have managed to squeeze in a fair few surprises, as well as all the traditional panto fun which you expect from Jack.

With the huge amount of work that goes into pulling together each one of our shows we are forced into thinking months in advance here, where it may appear that things quieten down through August, behind the scenes it is in fact the opposite. 

See you at the theatre,

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director 

Out and About

Thank you to those of you who came along to say hello to us at our fetching gazebo at Oldham People’s Carnival. 

It was great to be amongst the community at Alexandra Park once more and brought fond memories of our Out and About season to mind. 

We will however be venturing out to Saddleworth Show next weekend too, so if you’re attending be sure to drop by and see our smiling team. You’ll be able to find out about our brand new season, get your hands on a few freebies and also have a chance to win a family ticket to our fantastic panto Jack and the Beanstalk.

The atmosphere of community spirit at events in Oldham is a strong one. It is this spirit which we try to simulate week-in-week-out at the Coliseum.  So with this in mind I’ve decided to relinquish all control of the theatre for an entire week this month and let some of the talented young people involved with the Coliseum run things and hope that the building is still standing afterwards.

The Shake It UP! theatre festival, 22-27 July, has been entirely programmed, marketed and organised by a dedicated bunch of 14-25 years olds. It will be a packed week made-up of original performances, workshops, talks and comedy with something for all ages. I, for once, will merely be an onlooker able to properly enjoy appearances from the likes of the award-winning Slaughterhouse Live, who are Dave Spikey’s favourites, as well as Coliseum panto mainstay Fine Time Fontayne’s one man show.

Whilst I still have my hands on the ship’s wheel however, we have the incredible Nick Ross Orchestra bringing the superb Sounds of the GlennMiller Era to our auditorium.  With a full line-up of saxophones, trumpets, trombones, a rhythm section and special guest vocalist Matthew Ford, the orchestra will faithfully recreate the wonderful sounds of such Big Bands as those led by Glenn Miller. There has been nothing like the big band-era since and I doubt there will be again, so this is sure to be a rare live treat.

See you at the theatre,

Kevin

Artistic Director 

Our Autumn Winter 2013/14 Season Has Launched!

It’s here, it’s announced and I don’t have to bite my tongue any longer – our new season was officially launched. It’s certainly been a struggle to keep the lid on it this time around. 

As many of you will know already, the posters have been up for some time, we’re opening our September to February programme with a huge coup for the Coliseum – Chicago. You all know the hugely popular story of Roxie and Velma from previous incarnations on stage and screen alike. However, I am massively delighted to say here in Oldham, the Coliseum has been granted the rights for a new production of the show. This will be the first new airing of the vaudevillian classic since 1997, and we’re already well on the way to pulling together an ambitious show including with a few surprises too. 

With Baz Luhrmann’s recent adaptation of The Great Gatsby 1920s Americana is very much of the moment and if you throw in a little of the all-singing, all-dancing fun from our hugely popular Blonde Bombshells of 1943 production you can start to get a flavour to what will be a fantastic spectacle.

And that’s only one show – there’s also the world premiere of No Fat Juliets, written by and starring Sue McCormick of recent Ladies’ Day fame. Think Fawlty Towers meets Morecambe and Wise and you’re someway there. This new play is part of our commitment to new writing and helping to keep theatre new and original.

Our third in-house production shall be Alan Ayckbourn’s hilarious Bedroom Farce. Throw in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, The Holly and the Ivy, The Marriage of Figaro, The Reduced Shakespeare Company, and our fantastic panto Jack and The Beanstalk to name a handful more and my calendar is looking very full. 

Our packed out season launch event was a brilliant way to let the cat out of the bag about what we’ve got coming up, but we also have the tail end of our summer season upon us.

Sebastian Faulks’s epic wartime novel Birdsong has flown it’s West End nest is currently here in Oldham until Saturday, as part of a national tour. The BBC celebrated it as one of the best-loved books in the country and the stage adaptation has been just as lovingly received. 

 See you at the theatre,

Kevin

Artistic Director

Party Night

The theatre stages of Greater Manchester are groaning a huge variety of top quality talent at the moment, there’s something for everyone to see and Oldham Coliseum is no exception. Currently my ears are ringing with the sound of an auditorium full of laughter at our current production of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever as the central Bliss family make life intolerable for their weekend guests – to our excruciating delight of course.

 But we also have one eye on the fabulous upcoming touring production of Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong, the West End hit comes to the Coliseum on Monday 1 July for one week only. I also hear that the cast of a much-loved tea time soap opera will be joining us to cheer on one of their own who is starring in the play.

The stage-adaptation of the widely cherished book, which came thirteenth in a 2003 BBC poll to find the nation’s favourite book, tells the story of a young Englishman in pre-war France. His idyllic life is interrupted by the outbreak of WWI and he finds himself in the midst of horrors of the Battle of the Somme. Birdsong’s setting precedes Hay Fever by a mere ten years but they could not be more of a contrast to one another – we certainly do like variety here.

For the more youthful among us with eyes on a long holiday after their current exams there is still the opportunity to come along to any of our shows for just £5 if you are under 26. 

Some of the young people we work with here aren’t giving themselves a break however. They’re busy planning the week long Shake It UP! festival, beginning Monday 22 July, where the Coliseum will be totally under their control.

Among everything else going on we are also gearing up for our season launch announcement. If you want a sneak peak and a free night of entertainment on us then we are throwing open our doors on Monday 24 for a very special launch party. While it’s a free night on us to say thank you for supporting the Coliseum, booking is required if you’d like to join us - ring our Box Office on 0161 624 2829 to confirm your attendance. I’ll be on stage to introduce the new season followed by some special musical entertainment and exclusive skits from Sue McCormick of Ladies’ Day fame as well as the multi-talented Bernard Wrigley. 

Also excitingly the theatre will be launching a new scheme at the Season Launch. I will be able to tell you more on the evening, but in a nut shell we currently have a golden opportunity for our loyal audience to show their love and support for what we do. The Arts Council are currently matching everything we manage to raise, pound for pound for a limited time. So you’ll be doubling your money. In fact more than that: £100 in a year becomes £125 with Gift Aid, then £250 overall! So any support given for the work on the stage, growing new talent and in our local communities will have more than twice the impact!   

See you at the theatre,

Kevin Shaw

Artistic Director

Theatrical Bliss

This week the Coliseum plays host to the lovably monstrous Bliss family of Noel Coward’s classic HayFever. Coward’s perennial favourite comedy of manners, or even bad manners, has been taking shape over recent weeks in a hugely enjoyable rehearsal period. It’s great to be able to fill the stage with a nine strong cast for this production and we are welcoming back some familiar faces to the theatre.

Jackie Morrison and James Simmons are back with us as the eccentric host couple Judith and David Bliss, having previously played the leads of Amanda and Elyot in Coward’s Private Lives which received fantastic reviews back in 2011.

Bringing the inappropriately named Bliss family to life has been a joy for me with smiles and laughter all around from the cast as the ridiculous theatrical arguments of Coward’s scripted barbs are tossed back and forth between the irritable family members and their unassuming guests.

We all know people like the Bliss family in Hay Fever – people who are inexcusably rude, but fun, and they get away with it, the sort of people who invite you round for a drink only to be horrified when you actually arrive and point out they have no tonic for your gin.

The playwright himself described Hay Fever as: “One of the one of the most difficult plays to perform that I have encountered… it has no plot at all, and remarkably little action”. That may well be true but the talented cast we have assembled fill our auditorium with hilarious dynamism and verve. Besides, we all enjoy a challenge here.

Despite Coward’s own analysis the play has stood the test of time and has been an audience favourite since it was first conceived in 1924. It’s a superb script for a summer’s eve too and the Pimm’s will be flowing at the Coliseum as the Bliss family reluctantly open their house to their guests - thankfully we shall merely be onlookers, safe from the callous toying of the unfeeling hosts.

The whole process of putting the fun into dysfunctional with this close-knit cast really transfers an impetuous energy onto the stage. And what a stage it is, designer Dawn Allsopp has excelled in creating a traditional idyllic English country house – the setting for the Bliss’s tortuous theatrical games as they heartlessly pull the rug out from under their unwitting guests’ feet.

See you at the theatre,

Kevin

Artistic Director