Arts Theatre, London 28/09/2019
★★★★★
Make some room on that “hottest ticket” top-spot Hamilton, there’s a new show in town. Officially re-opening it’s open-ended residence at the Arts Theatre in January 2019 (currently extended until July 2020), Six is no stranger to heightened fandom. Sold out performances, masses of fan art and queues to meet the cast after each performance gives an indication to the level of success with it’s audiences.
Alongside seeing every musical we possibly can and binge watching everything on Netflix, we love to see films too. Here’s a list of our top 5 that we enjoy together. Once again we have our personal picks too so we can share an individual favourite each.
★★★★★
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is going from strength to strength. Streamed live across cinemas in the UK, her one-woman show Fleabag gives its swansong as a limited sell out run at Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End. Originally created as an Edinburgh fringe performance from a successful 10 minute stand-up storytelling routine, Fleabag was a huge hit at the arts festival. Fringe success led to the creation of the BBC series starring Waller-Bridge alongside Sian Clifford and Olivia Colman which received critical acclaim, thus being renewed for a second series. After eleven Primetime Emmy Award nominations, it was announced that the show’s creator would reprise the original show and role in London’s West End, with a performance broadcast by National Theatre Live.
After a musical-heavy introduction (sorry-not-sorry), it’s about time we shared our top 5 TV shows. These are what we enjoy watching together the most. Once again there are personal picks at the end as we both have big lists of TV that we love separately too.
★★
Northern Stage 06/09/2019
One of the most talked about (and poorly reviewed) Edinburgh Fringe shows, Miranda Larson’s Friendsical has embarked on a small UK tour after the summer season in Scotland’s capital. The show is marketed as a parody musical inspired by the iconic TV show Friends, and has captured the curiosity of many dedicated fans.
★★★★
Pennywise, hailed as one of the scariest clowns of pop culture is back gracing our screens once again. Created originally by Stephen King in his 1986 novel, It, and after a successful TV miniseries directed by Tommy Lee Wallace in 1990 starring Tim Curry in the iconic role, it falls to director Andy Muschietti (Mama (2013)) and actor Bill Skarsgård to respectively take this story and character into the 21st century and onto the big screen (with a little more help from CGI). The second half of Muschietti’s two part adaptation has got big shoes to fill with the success of the first film. IT Chapter 2 sees the “Losers Club” of Derry all grown up and brought back together to once again fight the killer clown who is fatally terrorising their hometown.
★★★★★
Sunderland Empire Theatre 03/09/2019
It’s the first UK tour of Matt Stone, Robert Lopez and Trey Parker’s multi-award winning production of The Book of Mormon after 6 outstanding years in London’s West End and a stint in Manchester, it’s Sunderland’s turn to host one of the most successful comedy musicals of our time. Assumptions could be made that this show from the creators of South Park and Team America: World Police would be rude, offensive and immature. Those assumptions would be correct; but not only is this show all of those things, it has heart and morals supporting the hilarious jokes and musical numbers.
★★★★★
Newcastle Theatre Royal 23/08/2019
Les Misérables is a timeless classic. A show seen by over 70 million people all over the world since its debut in London 34 years ago cannot be denied the legendary status it has. The Victor Hugo novel released in 1862 has been adapted by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg for the stage. This touring production is the “new production” that has split the opinion of fans with the removal of the iconic revolving stageamongst other slight changes in the show.
What better way to introduce ourselves to theatre lovers than sharing our top 5 musicals? At the end of the list, we have a personal choice each that didn’t make it into the top 5! Nobody wants to read a big introduction to a list of favourites so here it is:
Hello!
We are John & Kayley Camus, a North East based married couple who have a passion for theatre, film and TV. We wanted to create this blog and our Instagram (@thestageycouple) to share our experiences, what we love about these things and other bits and bobs.
We have been together for 5 years and have recently got married. Our wedding was musical theatre themed (definitely going to have a blog post featuring that!) and we loved the day. Since getting together we have always been seeing shows at the theatre, watching films and TV and just thought it would be cool to share our experiences with the world.
We live together in Newcastle upon Tyne with our pug, Frank and our guinea pig, Arnold. John likes live music and has an unhealthy obsession with Frank Turner. Kayley likes creating artwork and sharing posts all about mental health. Frank likes chicken and Arnold likes dandelion leaves! We like to be a positive couple, so the reviews we share will be complimentary and see the positive in things with minimal concentration on negative aspects if we can help it.
We hope you enjoy reading what we’ve got to share.
The Stagey Couple 