bc magazine

Into the Woods

Into-the-Woods-poster

Stephen Sondheim’s epic musical Into the Woods brings together many of the Grimm brothers’ best known fairytales including Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood. Framed by a moving story about a childless couple who long to have a family of their own. With a challenging and captivating score, dark comedy and physical theatre, Face Productions brings an exciting new edge to this classic Broadway and West End musical.

When the baker and his wife are cursed to be childless by the witch from next door, the only way to break her spell is to venture into the woods to find four mysterious ingredients. With a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold, they must create a potion to appease the Witch and restore her former beauty. On their way, they cross paths with familiar characters: each with a wish of their own. Who will make it out of the woods alive? And will we find truth in the old adage of happily ever after?

Into the Woods opened on Broadway in November 1987 to massive critical acclaim winning several Tony Awards, including Best Score, Best Book, and Best Actress in a Musical. While Disney’s 2014 film adaptation, directed by Rob Marshall and featuring an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Anna Kendrick, earned US$212 million worldwide, as well as three Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globe nominations.

Into-the-Woods

Face Productions – whose recent productions include Hairspray (2013), Footloose (2014), and Legally Blonde (2015) – revival has Conor O’Grady at the Director’s helm, with Roy Rolloda and Jessica Peralta as the Baker and Baker’s Wife respectively, Candice Caalsen as the Witch, and Sophie Connell as Little Red Riding Hood. Choreographed by Claire Johnson, with Enrico Narvaez as Musical Director, the show features many professional and veteran performers, a live band, and some of the highest calibre community theatre performers in Hong Kong.

Cast
Baker: Roy Rolloda
Baker’s Wife: Jessica Peralta
Witch: Candice Caalsen
Little Red Riding Hood: Sophie Connell

Director: Conor O’Grady
Choreographer: Claire Johnson
Musical Director: Enrico Narvaez

Into the Woods
Date: 4-7 February, 2016
Venue: HK City Hall, Theatre
Tickets: $395 from Urbtix
More info:
4-6 February – 8pm
7 February – 7:30pm

Into the Woods Junior
Face Academy: $275
6–7 February – 10.30am and 2.30pm

Udderbelly Festival – 4 December, 2015 – 14 February, 2016

It’ll be interesting to see over the next couple of months if the ‘there’s nothing to do in Hong Kong’ brigade will open their wallets to support the inaugural Udderbelly Festival Hong Kong which takes place at the Central Harbourfront event space from the 4 December-14 February. Centered around the iconic Udderbelly, a 410-seat pop-up theatre in the shape of an upturned cow (specially brought to Hong Kong from the UK) the festival features a smorgasbord of shows and will sit alongside The AIA Great European Carnival. The Udderbelly cowshed will be full of entertainment, music, food, comedy (lots of comedy) and family fun throughout the holiday season. Udderbelly has proved a huge hit with audiences at the Edinburgh Festival for over 10 years and on London’s South Bank for the past seven.

Udderbelly Festival
Date: 4 December, 2015 – 14 February, 2016
Venue: Central Harbourfront
Tickets: see individual event
More info:
Check the events diary for schedule

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot’s seminal poem, The Waste Land, comes to life in this new, dramatic adaptation.

Internationally renowned cellist David Pereira teams up with actor and Chinese University of Hong Kong professor Julian Lamb to bring you a fusion of music and spoken word which will appeal to aficionados of The Waste Land as well as those who have never encountered it.

T.S. Eliot’s haunting vision of a spiritually barren post-war Europe is brought to life in a performance which draws out the poem’s vast array of characters as well as its rich lyrical language. Dramatic presentations of The Waste Land are rare since it is often regarded as too difficult to perform. A performance of The Waste Land with live musical accompaniment is almost unprecedented.

The Waste Land is the most influential poem of the twentieth century. It is written in short, interconnected fragments, each one offering a glimpse of humans coming to terms with a world which they find increasingly confusing. For nearly a century, readers have been haunted by its images, amused by its comedy, and absorbed by its vast array of characters.

The music will feature passages of improvisation, original composition, and direct quotation from the work of some of the most important composers of the twentieth century, including Sibelius, Shostakovich, and Schoenberg.

“Julian Lamb and David Pereira bring clarity to ‘The Waste Land’,” Canberra Times

“An utterly inspiring performance,” The RiotAct, Canberra

The Waste Land
Shadow Players
When: 22-27 September
Where: Kwai Tsing Theatre, Black Box Theatre
Tickets: $230 ($170 Seniors, Students) from Urbtix
More info:
22-26 September – 8pm
26, 27 September – 4pm
Free Seating
For each purchase of 5-10 standard tickets 10% off, 11-15 standard tickets 15% off, 16+ standard tckets 20% off

War Sum Up @ Macao Cultural Centre – 27 June, 2015

War Sum Up is a highly visually alternative opera, merging Japanese manga images projected on stage with classic warrior texts. Fuelled by a mash-up of chamber pop, electronic and new classical music, the piece has been received with great acclaim after its premiere in Riga in 2012.

Conceived by experimental Danish theatre Hotel Pro Forma and performed by Grammy award winners Latvian Radio Choir with a score by British symphonic art-pop ensemble The Irrepressibles and Latvian composer Santa Ratniece, the piece is a pioneering artistic reflection on the brutal, yet fascinating nature of war.

Through a blend of striking light effects, smashing sets and technical innovation, 12 singers appear on stage wearing costumes by fashion designer Henrik Vibskov, to tell a story with three main characters: a soldier who suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the spectre of a Warrior killed in battle and a Spy who became a superwoman in order to survive. Playing with light and darkness, the strong visuals are accompanied by a mix of sounds blending in men and machines as metaphors for an endless scourge of the human existence.

War Sum Up looks to push our senses to the limits, while offering it’s audience a chance to reflect on a universal subject, materialized in a visual manner that it hopes will encourage us to look at the world with new eyes.

Conceived by: Hotel Pro Forma
Performed by: Latvian Radio Choir

War Sum Up
Hotel Pro Forma
Date: 8pm 27 June, 2015
Venue: Macao Cultural Centre, Grand Auditorium
Tickets: MOP$300, $250, $200, $150, $100
More info: In Japanese with Chinese and English surtitles

Legally Blonde The Musical @ Shouson Theatre – 4-7 June, 2015

Face Productions’ highly anticipated summer show, Legally Blonde, appears at the Shouson Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Centre, from 4 – 7 June. The hilarious Broadway and MTV smash-hit musical, inspired the novel and the 2001 Hollywood movie of the same name, tells the story of blonde bombshell Elle Woods as she embarks on a journey to win back her ambitious boyfriend Warner. Captain of Delta Nu Sorority at UCLA, tireless advocate of the colour pink, and proud parent of Bruiser the chihuahua, Elle is left broken-hearted when Warner dumps her in favour of finding someone more “serious”.

Starring: Samantha van den Esschert, Nathan Koval, Joms Ortega
Director: Candice Caalsen
Choreography: Claire Johnson
Musical Director Enrico Narvaez

Legally Blonde The Musical
Date: 4-7 June
Venue: HKAC, Shouson Theatre
Tickets: $395, $295, $320, $220 from URBTIX
More info:
8pm, 4-6 June
3:30pm, 6-7 June

Junior Version
6-7 June 11am
$275, $175, $200, $100

Je Dance Toujours – 8pm, 30 April, 2-3 May 2014

A winter’s night in 1942, a young woman bends over a typewriter waiting for a fellow resistance fighter, her name is Claire. She doesn’t utter a word. The man she is waiting for has not come, as he usually does every evening, to dictate to her his clandestine messages. She should go, leave the flat which may already be surrounded. But Claire stays. She knows it’s almost time. She writes the woman she will not be, the life she would have loved to tell, one day…

The HK Theatre Association Ltd present a one-woman poetic stage play staring Emilie Guillot on the French Resistance with physical theatre, performed in French with English subtitles.

Je Dance Toujours
When: 8pm, 30 April, 2-3 May 2014
Where: Auditorium French International School, 34 Price Road Jardine’s Lookout, HonKong
How much: $250, $220 (students)
More info: www.hkta.org.hk

West Kowloon Bamboo Theatre 2014

The Bamboo Theatre – this year designed by Raymond Fung – returns to the West Kowloon Cultural District on 17 January in a new location on the waterfront promenade, set against the stunning Hong Kong skyline. This year’s Bamboo Theatre features a strong array of performances including the Plum Blossom Award Art Troupe of the Chinese Theatre Association and other locally popular Cantonese opera artists.

The month-long Bamboo Theatre season includes not only stage performances but also a variety of associated events, including a free public talk on xiqu and the Bamboo Cinema which features screenings of six xiqu movies.

For the full schedule of performances and events see www.westkowloon.hk/bambootheatre

West Kowloon Bamboo Theatre 2014
When: 17 January to 9 February 2014: 5-10pm (Opens from 3pm on weekends and public holidays, from 2pm on 29 and 30 January)
Where: West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade
How Much: individual event tickets from URBTIX
More info: www.westkowloon.hk/bambootheatre