All posts tagged: Musical

Happy Feet Broadway Musical in the Works

Happy Feet Broadway Musical in the Works

Published by Daniella Wilson

Broadway looks set to get a Happy Feet musical based on George Miller’s Oscar-winning animated feature about singing and dancing Emperor penguins. Tony-winning Michael Arden is on board to direct a live stage version being developed by Tony Award-winning producer Dori Berinstein (Legally Blonde, The Prom). The Broadway-bound musical, based on Miller and Warner Bros. Pictures’ 2006 foot-tapping, CG-animated musical movie, also has on its creative team book writer Douglas Lyons and a choreography team that includes tap dancer Ayodele Casel, Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher “Cree” Grant (The Lost Boys, Parade).  The Broadway musical now in development will feature toe-tapping songs from the original movie and its dance-driven soundtrack, the project’s producers said. The original film and its sequel went on to gross over $847 million worldwide.  The design team for Happy Feet musical also includes a host of other Tony award winners, including set designer Dane Laffrey, costume designer Susan Hilferty, lighting designer Natasha Katz, along with puppet designer Basil Twist orchestrator/ co-arranger Kenny Seymour and music supervisor/co-arranger Jackson Teeley. The musical is being produced with Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, whose upcoming projects include adaptations of Crazy Rich Asians, Practical Magic and the current Broadway productions of  The Lost Boys and  Dog Day Afternoon.  Mark Kaufman, …

Saturday Night Live UK confirms next celebrity guest and musical act

Saturday Night Live UK confirms next celebrity guest and musical act

Published by Daniella Wilson

Jack Whitehall and Jorja Smith have been confirmed as the next host and musical act on Saturday Night Live UK, helming Sky’s comedy cabaret the weekend after Riz Ahmed is joined by musical guest Kasabian on the 4 April. On Saturday 11 April, Whitehall will helm the show and take part in a number of sketches before Smith takes to the stage. This will be the last episode before the series takes a one week hiatus, returning on 25 April. The viewership has been steady for the late night comedy series, with its first episode bringing in 226,000 viewers, though the second episode drew 205,000. But the sketches have still proven to be popular outside of overnight ratings, with one sketch currently at 1.8 million viewers on YouTube. Wolf Alice, Jamie Dornan and Paddy Young on last week’s SNL UK. Sky UK Earlier this month, audiences were introduced to SNL UK’s inaugural cast, which consists of: Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, George Fouracres, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi …

No New York by Adele Bertei review – a vivid, vibrant, musical coming of age | Music books

No New York by Adele Bertei review – a vivid, vibrant, musical coming of age | Music books

Published by Sam Flores

You won’t necessarily have heard of Adele Bertei: she was a member of experimental jazz-punk band the Contortions from 1977 and recorded the pop-house single Build Me a Bridge. But her memoir is an essential slice of New York’s bohemian pizza pie, and works in part because she is a relative unknown, not weighed down by her own cultural baggage. Following a troubled, itinerant upbringing, she arrives in Manhattan in 1977 to find a city on its knees. The big apple was in the red, both literally (fires were a regular occurrence) and monetarily (there was a municipal debt crisis). But pre-Aids and post-Warhol’s avant garde grip, it was also a place that was creatively open. Searching for her artistic self, Bertei throws herself into the alternative scene, and as she zigzags into future counter-culture icons, her writing recalls the hip, young gunslinger era of the NME: Joey Ramone “resembled an anorexic hermaphrodite, replete with sex appeal”; Alan Vega from Suicide is “Al Pacino dolled up as a gay hustler on 53rd and Third”. She …

Trainspotting is heading to West End for ‘seismic’ new musical

Trainspotting is heading to West End for ‘seismic’ new musical

Published by Daniella Wilson

Danny Boyle’s classic movie Trainspotting is getting new life this summer 30 years after its original release. The film that reshaped British cinema in the 90s is heading for the West End for a “seismic and expectation-defying” new musical. The brand-new show has been written by Trainspotting novel writer Irvine Welsh with Caroline Jay Ranger on board to direct. The first casting has also been announced with Scottish actor Robbie Scott to play Ewan McGregor’s role of Renton, marking his west end debut. In the press release Welsh said: “This musical has a bigger, loudly beating human heart than either the book or the film. The various stage adaptations of Trainspotting have become acclaimed and moving theatrical experiences and the soundtrack to the movie is obviously iconic. So it made sense to put the music and words together to create an explosive, provocative and entertaining show. “People need to think about the world we’re living in, and we offer that inspection, but they also really need to sing their hearts out and laugh their heads …

New Trainspotting Musical To Open In London’s West End In July

New Trainspotting Musical To Open In London’s West End In July

Published by Sam Flores

A new musical based on the film Trainspotting is to premiere on London’s West End in the summer. This new take on the movie, itself based on Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel of the same name, will open at the Theatre Royal Haymarket from Wednesday 15 July. In addition to new songs penned by Irvine Welsh and techno musician Stephen McGuinness, the theatre show will also incorporate iconic tracks from the original film. While the original novel and movie centre around a group of drug-addicted young people, Welsh told The Telegraph that the musical “broadens out” themes of addiction to touch on issues relating to the modern world, including social media and the threat of artificial intelligence. “The problems of addiction are now pharmaceutical drugs or food, the air we breathe, [and] above all, the internet and mobile phones – these things we’re stuck to all the time, where we go through our dopamine hits,” he said. “So we’re moving into alluding to all that kind of stuff as well, so it’s become a much bigger …

Trainspotting The Musical to make its explosive West End debut this summer

Trainspotting The Musical to make its explosive West End debut this summer

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Trainspotting: The Musical, adapted from the best-selling novel by Irvine Welsh, will make its West End debut this summer, it has been announced. Scottish author Welsh wrote the cult novel in 1993, which was later adapted into a 1996 hit film starring Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle. Scottish actor Robbie Scott will take the stage in London this summer to star in the musical as Mark Renton, a heroin addict in Edinburgh navigating poverty, friendship and addiction alongside his dysfunctional peers. The award-winning Trainspotting franchise has previously been adapted for the stage but it will make its world debut as a musical when it launches in the West End in July. Irvine Welsh (David Cheskin/PA Wire) Award-winning author Welsh said: “This musical has a bigger, loudly beating human heart than either the book or the film. “The various …

New Musical ‘Wanted’ Coming to Broadway This Fall

New Musical ‘Wanted’ Coming to Broadway This Fall

Published by Daniella Wilson

New musical Wanted is coming to Broadway this fall.  The show, about Black twin sisters who passed as white in 1893 Texas, will star Solea Pfeiffer and Liisi LaFontaine. The musical is set to begin previews Oct. 15 at the James Earl Jones Theatre, ahead of a Nov. 8 opening night.  Formerly titled Gun & Powder, the show tells the “largely true” stories of Mary and Martha Clarke, who went from farmgirls to outlaws. The show had its world premiere at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va., in February 2020 and a recent run at Paper Mill Playhouse in Spring 2024.  Wanted features book and lyrics by Angelica Chéri (a descendant of the Clarke sisters), music by Ross Baum, direction by Stevie Walker-Webb (Ain’t No Mo’), and choreography by Chelsey Arce (Sweeney Todd 2023 revival). Pfeiffer recently starred on Broadway as Satine in Moulin Rouge and Eurydice in Hadestown. LaFontaine originated the roles of Satine in Moulin Rouge and Deena Jones in Dreamgirls on London’s West End.  “We’re so happy to finally bring this show …

These Musical Instruments of the Future Sound Weird, Wacky—and Are Easy for Anyone to Play

These Musical Instruments of the Future Sound Weird, Wacky—and Are Easy for Anyone to Play

Published by skeptic

“Taking extra or discarded materials and turning them into musical instruments; I’m seeing more and more of that coming into the mainstream,” Albert says. “They’re beautiful pieces of art, and they also sound really cool.” The most literal example of that upcycling is the people’s choice winner, the Lethelium. Creator Lateef Martin, a Montreal-based builder, musician, and author of a Cyclepunk comic book series, says the idea came to him after plucking the spokes of a bicycle in a bike shop. Combining that with guitar strings in place of the spokes led to a circular playing surface that can be played by plucking or with a bow. “I’d say it’s a lovechild between a dulcimer and a harp and a steel pan,” Martin says. “They had a threesome, and that’s the Lethelium.” Unpredictability is inevitable when you put on a show with unconventional instruments. There was a sense of chaos from the performances that felt fundamentally human. For the participants, that was the goal. “This world specifically needs more experimental instruments,” says Berlin-based musician Michael …

Humans are born musical, study finds

Humans are born musical, study finds

Published by Jenni Sidey

A newborn cannot speak, read, or walk. Yet moments after entering the world, the infant brain already responds to rhythm and melody. Researchers have found that babies detect patterns in timing and pitch almost immediately. Long before language develops, the human brain begins organizing sound in ways that resemble the foundations of music. That observation sits at the center of a growing scientific argument. Humans may not simply enjoy music as a cultural pastime. Instead, many scientists now believe people possess an innate biological capacity for it. University of Amsterdam music cognition professor Henkjan Honing describes how two decades of research across neuroscience, psychology, genetics, and animal cognition have reshaped how scientists think about music’s origins. The key shift, he argues, is moving attention away from music as an art form and toward “musicality,” the biological capacity that allows humans to perceive, produce, and enjoy structured sound. If a musical trait is found in humans and other primates, it likely existed in our common ancestor. (CREDIT: Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0) “For much of the …