Express & Star

Your Midlands and Shropshire am dram guide

One of the best-loved musicals of all time has to be Lerner and Lowe’s classic, My Fair Lady.

Published
My Fair Lady which Bilston Operatic Company is performing

You cannot really call this show a musical; it is really a play with music, so strong is the storyline and characters.

Based on George Bernard Shaw’s tale, Pygmalion, the show premiered on Broadway in 1956 before transferring to London, starring Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle.

A humble flower girl, Eliza, is determined to better herself in order to become a lady in a flower shop and so decides to recruit the services of Professor of Phonetics, Henry Higgins to help her.

So amused by her request is Professor Higgins that he wagers a bet with an old friend, Colonel Pickering, that he can transform Eliza into a lady and pass her off as a Duchess at the Embassy Ball, but of course not everything goes according to plan.

The score of the show includes I Could Have Danced All Night, Get Me to the Church on Time, Wouldn’t it be Lovely and On the Street Where You Live.

Bilston Operatic Company will be delighting audiences with My Fair Lady from November 12 to 16 at the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, with performances at 7.30pm nightly and 2.30pm matinees on Wednesday and Saturday.

In this production, Tim Brown appears as Henry, with Lucy Follows as Eliza, Nicholas Sullivan as Colonel Pickering and Greg yates as Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father.

For tickets priced from £10-£24.50 call 01902 429212 or visit www.grandtheatre.co.uk.

Another classic musical taking place over the next couple of weeks is Oklahoma! presented by CLOC Musical Theatre Company at Sutton Coldfield Town Hall, from October 23 to 26.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration remains, in many ways, their most innovative, having set the standards and established the rules of musical theatre still being followed today.

Set in a Western Indian territory just after the turn of the twentieth century, the high-spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys provides the colourful background against which Curly, a handsome cowboy, and Laurey, a winsome farm girl, play out their love story.

Although the road to true love never runs smooth, with these two headstrong romantics holding the reins, love’s journey is as bumpy as a surrey ride down a country road.

Including some wonderful musical theatre favourites such as Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’, The Farmer and the Cowman, People Will Say We’re in Love and of course the rousing title song, Oklahoma!

For tickets priced at £17.50 and £16 for concessions, visit http://www.cloc.org.uk or call 0121 244 7475 or 07873 192715.

Over in Shropshire, from October 24 to 26, the Market Drayton Amdrams will be presenting Play On! at the Festival Drayton Centre with performances at 7.30pm nightly.

This is a very funny comedy by Rick Abbot, which follows the hilarious trials and tribulations of a local drama group who are struggling through the final rehearsals to a disastrous opening night of a brand-new murder mystery play.

For tickets, priced at £8.50 and £7.50 for concessions, call 01630 654444 or visit http://www.festivaldraytoncentre.com.

Continuing on the drama front, from November 2 to 9 at the Oldbury Rep, you can catch a production of Beryl, a heart-warming true story by the acclaimed stage and screen actress Maxine Peake.

This is the tale of the unsung sporting legend, Beryl Burton who cycled her way into the record books by becoming the fastest woman ever on two wheels. While her story was largely forgotten, a recent surgency in its popularity won it the Behind the Arras Best Play of 2018 for amateur theatre.

For tickets visit www.oldburyrep.org or call 0121 552 2761.

Meanwhile, Acting Out Theatre Company will present Oscar Wilde’s comedy drama, An Ideal Husband, at MAC Birmingham from November 1 to 2.

Sir Robert Chiltern is a respected government official and a loving husband. His friend, Lord Arthur Goring by contrast is a notorious womaniser who lives a life of casual lounging, meaningless flirtations and multiple illicit affairs.

But, when old acquaintance, Laura Cheveley, arrives in London to stir up trouble, the lives of the two men become increasingly complicated and intertwined and their true natures are revealed.

For tickets priced at £7, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk or call 0121 446 3232.

Gilbert and Sullivan fans will be delighted to hear that Erdington Operatic Society will be presenting The Yeoman of the Guard at Sutton Coldfield Town Hall from November 5 to 9, with performances at 7.30pm nightly.

This is without doubt one of the duo’s best operettas, but of course in true G&S style, the plot is complex and a little far-fetched.

The show takes place in the Tower of London where the gentleman Colonel Fairfax is wrongly accused of sorcery and sentenced to death within the hour. Fairfax hatches a plan to avoid letting his estate fall into the hands of his scheming cousin (incidentally, his accuser) by secretly marrying Elsie Maynard, a strolling singer.

Elsie agrees to be blindfolded during the ceremony and expects to be a wealthy widow upon Fairfax's imminent demise, leaving her free to marry her lover, the jester Jack Point. However, Fairfax miraculously escapes his fate and chaos ensues. Following his escape, Fairfax woos Elsie, and naturally she falls in love with him.

The score includes the tunes Here's a Man of Jollity, Night has Spread her Pall Once More, A Man Who Would Woo a Fair Maid and I Have a Song to Sing, O!

For tickets, priced at £17-£15 visit www.erdington-operatic.co.uk or call0121 360 6627.

That’s all for this week. Please send all your news and good quality photos to me at a.norton@expressandstar.co.uk, call me on 01902 319662 or follow me on Twitter @AlisonNorton or Facebook.

Break a leg!