Our friends at the Westend Theatre Club have updated their offers on some spectacular productions over Christmas. You can take advantage of discounts on Peter Pan (pictured) and that festive favourite, The Snowman. You can also enter the online competition to win two tickets to Hairspray.
Check out all the offers by clicking here
The West End is looking particularly bright and shiny this month with a glittery array of big-budget musicals. Comedian Phill Jupitus and pop diva Belinda Carlisle have joined the cast of Hairspray – plus they’ve introduced Sunday matinees – and you can save £25 on tickets. There are also big cast changes at Calendar Girls, with a new wave of actresses willing to bare all including Kelly Brook, Julie Goodyear, Jan Leeming and Janie Dee (Save £15). Con O’Neill has joined the cast of Prick Up Your Ears to great acclaim and to celebrate we have a whopping 70% off ticket prices (top price seats for only £15). More musicals fun comes in the shape of Jane Horrocks in Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic Theatre (only £22.50), John Barrowman still packing them in at La Cage Aux Folles (Save £20.50) and savings on Sister Act (£20 off), Blood Brothers with Mel C (£29 off), Dirty Dancing (£22.50 off) and Oliver! (£11 off). Finally, big-hitting plays are out in force with Lenny Henry in Othello (£15.50 off), Mark Rylance in Endgame (£10 off), John Simm in Speaking in Tongues (£13.50 off) and Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption (£10 off).
To book these and many other shows visit the reFRESH Theatre Club at www.westendtheatre.com/refresh
Also the West End's love affair with drama continues apace with An Inspector Calls getting rave reviews as it makes a brief reappearance in the West End, alongside classic drama such as The Shawshank Redemption .
You’ll find discounts on all of these shows this month, plus the Autumn musicals sale is coming to a close so hurry if you'd like to enjoy offers on a range of shows including Oliver, Jersey Boys, Billy Elliot, Sister Act and Hairspray.
To book these and many other shows visit the reFRESH Theatre Club at www.westendtheatre.com/refresh
GAY LONDON MAPS
Your essential guide to London’s Gay Villages!
GAY GUIDE TO LONDON
QX gives you the ultimate guide to going out in London - the best bars, clubs and gay events and venues.
- Clubber's Diary
This week’s hottest club and bar events in and around London!- Gay Bars In London
Your area-by-area guide to the best gay bars in LondonTHE SECRET GAY HISTORY OF LONDON
A superb five part series looking at the secret gay history of London!
Autumn is always a busy time in the West End as new shows hit town after the summer. And this month proves no exception as we bring you a range of great Theatre Club offers.
Discounts this month include three major new shows based on successful movies - compelling drama The Shawshank Redemption; a sumptuous new production of Breakfast At Tiffany's starring the lovely Anna Friel; and powerful musical The Rise and Fall of Little Voice - featuring the X-Factor's Diana Vicker's in her West End stage debut. There are also further savings to be made on other great movie-to-stage shows, including our best deals yet on Hairspray, Billy Elliot, Sister Act and Dirty Dancing. All this plus a range of Theatre and Dinner packages including a lunchtime cruise on the Thames and The Rat Pack for only £49.99, dinner and theatre at Hairspray or Chicago for only £28.50, and dinner and theatre at Dreamboats & Petticoats for only £24.99.
To book these and many other shows visit the reFRESH Theatre Club at www.westendtheatre.com/refresh
This month's Theatre Club offers include a fabulous saving on SISTER ACT, the hit new musical at the London Palladium, with £23 off tickets.
Planning ahead for autumn, save £10 on new play PRICK UP YOUR EARS starring Little Britain's Matt Lucas and the revival of acclaimed musical THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE featuring The X-Factor's Diana Vickers.
All this plus £20 off Frank, Sammy and Dean in THE RAT PACK LIVE FROM LAS VEGAS, £11 off Adam Cooper's SHALL WE DANCE and £28 off the new drama that critics have been going wild about - THE MOUNTAINTOP. It's also the last chance to enjoy savings on LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (save £29), CHUN YI THE LEGEND OF FUNG FU (save £15.50) and CALENDAR GIRLS, featuring a new cast including Jerry Hall, Anita Dobson and June Brown (save £14.50).
Finally, we have a pair of top price tickets to THE 39 STEPS to give away - see your Theatre Club page for details.
To book these and many other shows visit the reFRESH Theatre Club at www.westendtheatre.com/refresh
CHICAGO is a show that's hotting up over summer with some high profile casting. Throughout June you can see the charismatic showman and TV host Jerry Springer playing suave and slimy Billy Flynn, and from 13 July multi award-winning Destiny's Child singer Michelle Williams will be wowing audiences at the Cambridge Theatre as Roxie Hart. Theatre Club followers can save up to £21 on tickets.
All good things come to an end and after a mammoth run at the London Hippodrome LA CLIQUE is closing on 27 June. Don't miss out on this truly unbelievable mix of spectacle, circus, burlesque and comedy, and save 20% on tickets.
For those regular readers of the magazine you may remember our St Sebastian front cover from a couple of years ago. Shot by our friends at Ohlala Magazine the issue also conjuncted with an exhibition dedicated to St Sebastian that was held at one of our favourite London art galleries, Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Well they've just forwarded us a novel use of the imagery associated with St Sebastian.
Saint Sebastian (died c. 288) was a Christian saint and martyr, who is said to have been killed during the Roman emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians. He is commonly depicted in art and literature tied to a post and shot with arrows.
The shirt has been created by artist Patricio Forrester who teaches on some of the outreach courses run by Dulwich Picture Gallery. You can see the shirt in all its glory (complete with arrows and blood) on Patricio's website - Touched by Patricio Forrester,
Beat those January blues and enjoy a night out at the theatre. Our friends at the West End Theatre Club have a whole host of discounted rates available for Hairspray, Sunset Boulevard, Wicked and Zorro.
They have also just partnered with hotels in London to offer a great promotion - a free hotel room when you buy a theatre ticket.
There are also ticket offers available for Joseph - featuring Gareth Gates from February, Carousel, Avenue Q and Billy Elliot.
For more information visit www.westendtheatre.com/refresh
For culture vultures tired of the same old acts, Ballet Black brings you classical ballet with a twist. Their new show, held at the Linbury Studio in the Royal Opera House, London, will bring you a seamless fusion of the beauty of traditional ballet and edgy choreography. Showcasing the talent of dancers of black and Asian descent, for the last four years all their shows have been sell-outs. If you're lucky, Christmas holidays are right around the corner. In-between furiously planning lunch time feasts, last minute present shopping and lavishly decorating your tree, there are plenty options for enetertainment during your break.
Black Ballets new show will run from February 25th to 28th 2009. Prices start at as little as £9.50. For more information visit www.balletblack.co.uk
Photo: Bill Cooper
Fancy a night at the theatre? Well check our friends at the West End Theatre Club have just added four new shows to the reFRESH Theatre Club. Benefit now from discounted rates on Hairspray, Piaf, Monkey and Thriller Live in addition to a whole host of others West End favourites.
For more information visit www.westendtheatre.com/refresh
Three Brits, aged seventeen are set to take on the Hollywood big wigs. They’re goal? To raise one million pounds and make the world’s first ever fully public-funded motion picture. Adrian Bliss, Benjamin Robbins and Tobias Stubbs have launched a revolutionary idea to support the production of a world-class feature film. The concept is simple: sell film credits online for just £1 a piece.
On www.buyacredit.com the process of online payment is quick and simple, and every pound will go towards funding the production of Dardentor. This is an adaptation of a forgotten novel by the world famous French author Jules Verne, titled Clovis Dardentor', which has been unpublished in English for over a century. Though Verne was better known for tales such as Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, this is said to be his hidden gem, largely undiscovered in England.
Adrian says, "This is a cinematic tale worth telling. It is a great story with characters, situations and dilemmas that are quite simply cinema gold. I'm incredibly excited to be working on it." The London based trio is determined to bring it to light, and the innovative buyacredit.com project is the key. Contrary to their age, the Britain born and bred filmmakers have the experience, knowledge and passion to pull the project off.
Having worked together from a young age, collectively they have had extensive experience in professional production companies such as Pinewood Studios and Artem Special Effects co, Talkback Thames Television, Elstree Film Studios. They have been involved in the production of various commercial ventures in film, including acting, directing and editing, some within their own company Focal Point Pictures.
Benjamin is currently busy with sales, increasing public awareness and private investment. So far he has raised a massive £100,000 towards the Dardentor project. Toby has been responsible for alternate fund-raising, tirelessly pushing to make the buyacredit project successful.
And it’s working. Buyacredit.com is growing in popularity as more and more people pledge their pound for the honour of seeing their names flash on the big screen as the credits roll at the end of Dardentor. The website itself is currently under construction and is soon to launch a credit reel listing all credit buyers so far. The team are also introducing company credits, whereby companies and individuals can buy credit space for their logo for just £10.
The boys are confident about the project’s success, determined to see it through. A script is currently in the pipeline along with a number of shorts to promote the project and to give credit buyers a taste of the film.
Meanwhile, various scenes are being storyboarded at the world famous Elstree Film Studios. "This is really happening! It's incredibly exciting!" Says Tobias Stubbs. Benjamin adds, "The three of us are wholly committed to the project and will see it through. We will reach the Million Pound marker, no matter what."
And why not – one pound is a small price to pay to be a part of film history.
Want to be a part of filming history? Visit www.buyacredit.com to pledge your pound and to find out more information about the Dardentor project.
Get your diaries out and take note - this coming February, as part of the Mardi Gras Festival, hot new art gallery Urban Uprising diverts from its usual path and takes a walk on the wild side to host a solo show from internationally renowned UK artist Trademark for his first Australian exhibition. With a slight deviation from urban art to a more pop art slant, the gallery will be filled with some of the sexiest male images and art in town for two weeks only.
From the images he created for London's legendary club Trade, to his recent series of portraits of Kylie Minogue for the V&A's Kylie exhibition, Trademark's technique is instantly recognisable. After being commissioned by Andy Warhol to create a hand painted t-shirt in 1986, he went on to become an instrumental figure defining the imagery in the new gay society that was taking over the streets, bars and clubs of London's Soho. In the 90's after creating the visual identity for Trade, the name Trademark was born.
As well as Kylie, over the years Trademark has worked with many in the pop world including Boy George, Grace Jones, Queen, Bryan Ferry, Marc Almond, Paula Yates, the Psychadelic Furs and many more.
Recently Trademark has been creating the images on Kylie's creative director William Baker's new B*Boy underwear brand. The B*Boys images will be off the undies packs and on the walls at Urban Uprising, alongside Trademark's Hunk men, and a number of new limited edition images created specially for the gallery.
Trademark has a remarkable following around the world, and with so many international fans in town for Sydney's Mardi Gras it's the perfect time to have his works fill the gallery. He will be flying in especially for the show opening and to sign a limited number of exclusive prints at the he is creating especially for Urban Uprising.
If you are not able to make it over to Sydney for next year's Mardi Gras a selection of prints will also be available on www.urbanuprising.com.au
The exhibition will run from Thursday 19th Feb until Saturday 7th March 2009.Urban Uprising is located at 314 Crown Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney
Hiam Abbass plays Salma Zidane, a 45-year-old widow whose life is invested in her family’s 50-year-old lemon tree orchard. Situated in a small Palestinian village on the West Bank, this humble and eventless existence is turned on its head when the Israeli Minister of Defense (Doron Tavory) builds his home next door and his secret service team deem the orchard a hazard to his security and order its immediate logging.
The threat to Salma’s livelihood ignites a passion that belies her position as a poor, widowed, Palestinian woman, and she embarks on a legal battle that the world is invited to witness. Enlisting the aid of a young, good-hearted lawyer Ziad Daud (Ali Suliman), the bitter battle that ensues against the minister and all the odds begins to attract media interest.
On the other side of the grove the Minister’s wife, Mina Navon (Rona Lipaz-Michael), witnesses major changes in her outlook as the events unfold. Though in a favourable position married to a Governmental figure, her husband’s dealings and attitude towards the Lemon Tree case and the human being on the other side of the iron fence separating their dwellings, opens hers eyes to the unfulfilled nature of her lifestyle, and her own husband’s callousness. As the battle reaches fever pitch and the background issues of family, love, religion, culture and duty begin to seep through the cracks, the audience witnesses unlikely, intangible bonds being formed between the characters and Salma slowly begins to realise the extent of her own inner-strength.
But The Lemon Tree embodies much more than an illustration of individual human spirit. This is not a sop-story about a widow’s battle against adversity, nor is it about some heightened political feud. It’s about subtle relationships between strangers, unaccountably forged through cultural and hierarchical differences. It’s about overriding human traits of decency, empathy and kinship.
It’s not the kind of movie you would expect to be scheduled for release around Christmas, among the feel-good family films and comedies that are bound to spew out around this time. But it’s definitely a keeper, and contains the makings somewhat of a classic. The underlying plot and the outcome are almost irrelevant to the issues actually explored in the film. The audience finds it’s completely left to their interpretation as to whether the film achieves a happy ending or not, and will likely think about it for some time after the credits have rolled, the lights are raised and the curtain has fallen.
The Lemon Tree will be released in UK cinemas December 12th.
The campaign to save Titian’s Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto for the nation entered a new phase today (22 October) with the unveiling of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon in Room One of the National Gallery in London.
The painting is a special loan to London from the Bridgewater Collection, which hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. The public will have just four weeks to see Titian’s great masterpiece in London, before it returns to Scotland later in November 2008.
The National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery London have formed a partnership in an effort to raise the required funding to acquire the two Titians, and to obtain assurances concerning the loan of the rest of the Bridgewater Collection in Scotland. The current owner, the Duke of Sutherland, has offered the Galleries the chance to acquire the two works on extremely favourable terms.
The Galleries have until the end of this year to raise £50m to acquire Diana and Actaeon. If this is successful, we have also been offered assurances which we hope will secure the loan of the rest of the Bridgewater collection for the next 21 years, and the galleries will be offered an option to buy the second painting, Diana and Callisto for a similar amount by 2012. Both paintings will then go on a rotating display between London and Edinburgh, spending five years at a time in each location.
Diana and Actaeon will be shown in London alongside the National Gallery’s Death of Actaeon, Titian’s sequel to Diana and Actaeon, in which the luckless Actaeon is turned into a stag. This work was saved for the Nation when it was acquired following a nationwide public appeal in 1972, and the two pictures will be reunited for the first time for two centuries.
The painting is one of six large-scale mythologies inspired by the Roman poet Ovid that Titian painted for King Philip II of Spain (Titian’s great portrait of whom features in Renaissance Faces, the exhibition running concurrently in the Sainsbury Wing). Titian began the picture and its companion Diana and Callisto in 1556, the year of Philip’s coronation. Spurred on by the prestige of royal patronage, he unleashed all his creativity to produce works of unprecedented beauty and inventiveness.
Titian worked for three years to perfect these masterpieces, which were shipped to Spain in 1559. He claimed their lengthy genesis was due to the relentless pains he took to make sumptuous works of art worthy of the king.
The campaign to save the Titian’s received a boost last week, with the announcement that The Art Fund - the UK’s leading independent art charity - is donating £1 million, the largest grant for a single work of art in its 105 year history.
Over 60 artists from all over the UK have also joined the campaign to save the Titians. In a special gesture of support, Lucian Freud has given his approval for his Self-Portrait to hang in the National Galleries of Scotland next to the Self-Portrait by Rembrandt, whilst the Titian is in London.
For more information on all of the exhibitions currently on show at the National Gallery visit www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Photo Credit: Diana and Actaeon, 1556-59, Titian, National Galleries of Scotland; Bridgewater Collection Loan 1945. Photo © National Galleries of Scotland
Take advantage of a whole host of ticket offers for theatre productions and shows available exclusively for reFRESH readers
Recent Comments