Leading pantomime company Evolution Productions will this year celebrate its 20th anniversary with ten productions at theatres right across England.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the conpany’s  founders, Paul Hendy and Emily Wood, about their upcoming panto season and about what goes into making their pantos, as well as about Paul’s play The Last Laugh, which will follow a very successful run at the last Edinburgh Fringe with a West End run early next year.

Evolution Productions’ twentieth anniversary panto season in 2024 will run at theatres in Canterbury, Sheffield, Northampton, York, St Albans, Crawley, Dunstable, Shrewsbury, Lichfield and Basildon.

Paul’s play The Last Laugh will run at London’s Noël Coward Theatre from 25 February to 22 March 2025.

Fierce Festival is a “youthful and joy-filled festival of international theatre, performance and experiences” which takes place in and around Birmingham every two years.   Midlands editor Steve Orme spoke to Fierce’s artistic director Clayton Lee and Adam Kinner whose one-to-one show Manual will be presented daily in the Library of Birmingham.   Fierce Festival will run from Tuesday 15 until Saturday 19 October.   (Photo: Clayton Lee and Adam Kinner, credit Steve Orme)

In 2009, TV writers Trevor Suthers and John Chambers put together a night of short, brand new plays written by established TV writers which took its name from its original venue, the Joshua Brooks pub on Princess Street in Manchester.

Fifteen years on, and now at fringe venue 53two, JB Shorts is an established biannual event on the Manchester theatre calendar with its two-week runs of six 15-minute plays.

With the 25th JB Shorts about to open, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Trevor together with actor James Quinn, who wrote for the very first JB and has written, directed and performed in many since, about what JB is all about and what this next run will offer, as well as how the whole thing began.

JB Shorts 25 runs at 53two, Arch 19, Watson Street, Manchester from Wednesday 9 to Saturday 19 October 2024.

Derby Theatre is to present a new play, Welfare, by local playwright Abi Zakarian, that will take audiences to The Derbyshire Miners’ Holiday Camp in Skegness, where miners went initially to convalesce and later to holiday, as it was turned into a holiday camp for Derbyshire miners and their families.

Midlands Editor Steve Orme spoke to director Sarah Brigham and three of the actors, Jo Mousley, Hanna Winter and John Holt-Roberts, about the play and about the history behind it, both local and from much further afield.

Welfare will run at Derby Theatre from 28 September to 12 October 2024.

(Photo Jo Mousley, Hanna Winter, Sarah Brigham and John Holt-Roberts, credit Steve Orme)

The next production to open at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, London is a new adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, adapted for the stage by Suzanne Heathcote and directed by Christopher Haydon, Rose Theatre’s Artistic Director.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Christopher just before a rehearsal for the play about the adaptation, working with one of his literary heroes, the necessity for co-productions and the state of arts funding and arts education in the UK at the moment.

Never Let Me Go will run at the Rose Theatre from 20 September to 12 October 2024 before touring to Royal and Derngate in Northampton from 16 to 26 October, Malvern Theatres from 29 October to 2 November, Bristol Old Vic from 5 to 23 November and Chichester Festival Theatre from 26 to 30 November.

(Photo of Christopher Haydon in rehearsal for Never Let Me Go, credit DMLK)

Guy Masterson, one of the most well-known and well-respected theatre producers on the Edinburgh Fringe, this year celebrates his thirtieth consecutive festival season. However, he has announced that this is also to be his last festival visit as a producer.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Guy just after the first performance of one of the shows in his programme for this year about producing nearly 150 shows over three decades, the trials and joys of producing, writing, directing and performing at the Fringe and his decision to stop producing shows there.

In Guy’s programme for this year’s Fringe, Making Marx and Victor’s Victoria both run at the Assembly Rooms from 1 to 26 August 2024 each day at 11:35AM and 8:30PM respectively.

Guy’s solo shows Under Milk Wood and Animal Farm are both at Pleasance at EICC at 6PM, the first on 14 August and the second on 18 August.

For more information about Guy and his work, past, present and future, see the Theatre Tours International web site.

2024 marks twenty years since Just the Tonic venues first appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, although founder Darrell Martin had been putting on shows at the festival since 2002 and started the company by running Sunday night comedy clubs in 1994.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Darrell before the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe about 20 years on the Fringe, the current state of the Edinburgh festival season, getting into the business as a fan of comedy in the ‘80s, running comedy clubs around the country and about producing comedy as a decades-long act of procrastination to avoid writing material for his own stand-up act.

Just the Tonic will be hosting more than 190 shows across five venues during the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For more information about its Edinburgh programme and to book tickets online, see edinburgh.justthetonic.com—or you can also book at Edfringe.com.

You can see what’s on at the other Just the Tonic venues around the UK and book tickets for them at www.justthetonic.com.

Writer-director Paul Hendy brings back three comedians through performers Bob Golding, Damian Williams and Simon Cartwright.

Every year, the Edinburgh Fringe programme features solo performances about real people, which in the past have included Bob Golding as Eric Morecambe in Tim Whitnall’s Morecambe from 2009, Damian Williams as Tommy Cooper in Being Tommy Cooper by Tom Green from 2012 and Simon Cartwright as Bob Monkhouse in The Man Called Monkhouse by Alex Lowe from 2015.

Writer-director Paul Hendy brought these three performers together for a film short called The Last Laugh in 2017, which he has now extended for a stage production featuring the same cast.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke with the four of them about the play, what drove these great comics—and some of their demons—and why they have returned to playing them so many times.

The Last Laugh will be in Studio One at Assembly George Square Studios, Edinburgh at 1:20PM every day except Monday 12 August from 31 July to 25 August 2024.

For more information and tickets, go to Edfringe.com or Assembly Festival and search for “The Last Laugh”.

Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland and The New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich are co-producing a new production of the stage musical Footloose, based on the ‘80s film of the same name that starred Kevin Bacon.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to New Wolsey Artistic Director Douglas Rintoul, who will direct the production, and Pitlochry’s Artistic Director, Elizabeth Newman, about the production, other musicals that both their theatres are producting this year (Little Shop of Horrors, Beautiful: The Carol King Musical, The Sound of Music).

They also spoke about the advantages of co-productions—and when they may not be appropriate—as well as programming and casting a rep season and panto.

Little Shop of Horrors closes at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton on 18 May and then moves to Hull Truck Theatre from 22 May to 8 June 2024.

Footloose will run at various times and dates in Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s season between 31 May and 26 September before transferring to The New Wolsey Theatre from 3 to 26 October.

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical will run at Pitlochry between 7 June and 28 September, and The Sound of Music will be there between 15 November and 22 December.

Sleeping Beauty, the New Wolsey panto written by Vikki Stone, will run from 22 November 2024 to 18 January 2025.

Guildford Shakespeare Company began with an outdoor production of Much Ado About Nothing in Guildford Castle Grounds in 2006.

Eighteen years on, the company is celebrating its coming of age with a production of Romeo and Juliet which mostly takes place along Guildford High Street.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the company’s founders, Matt Pinches and Sarah Gobran, about the production and about the challenges, practical and financial, of mounting their style of theatre in spaces that were not designed for performance—including holding on to scenery in high winds and preventing foxes from chewing through microphone cables.

Romeo and Juliet from Guildford Shakespeare Company will take place in Guildford Castle Grounds and the town centre from Friday 21 June to Saturday 13 July 2024.

For more information and tickets, see www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk.

(Photo of GSC Co-Founders Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches in October 2022. Credit: Matt Pereira.)

The 2024 summer season at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London will open with a new production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Or What You Will directed by Owen Horsley, an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and an Associate Director for Cheek by Jowl.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Owen at a break during rehearsals about his approach to the play, his love of Shakespeare and the perhaps unusual way he was originally introduced to the Bard’s work.

Twelfth Night Or What You Will directed by Owen Horsley runs at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre from 3 May to 8 June 2024.