Despite being part of the same tour, the cost for tickets for Lady Gaga’s next round of UK show tickets will be two or three times as much as the tickets for her current shows.

May and June date tickets are selling at £50 to £75, despite earlier tickets costing £27.50 to £35.

It is no surprise some fans are complaining. She has announced that due to “overwhelming” demand, extra shows have been added. However, extra shows do not generally cost so much more.
The ticket price hike was confirmed by Live Nation, which is promoting the forthcoming dates. On Lady Gaga’s official website some fans were quick to complain.

One asked: “Will we be getting a brand new show when the tour comes back to the UK in May? Or will the show be the same, and fans will be expected to pay £75 for a show that only cost them £27 to see months earlier?”

He added: “I will gladly pay the extra if we are promised something extra – however, surely it would be a case for trading standards … I am a big Gaga fan but the advertised ticket prices on Live Nation have pissed me off – I feel like someone is taking the piss with what we are expected to pay.”

Another said: “I was sure the price will go up but this is steep!!!!”

The big question in London theatre today is: Will “Love Never Dies,” the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” revive the composer’s faltering career?

“Phantom” was in fact his last big hit and you have to wonder if a sequel will make the grade. “Love Never Dies” opened Tuesday after a brief two weeks of previews. The official opening is tonight.
Ten years have passed since the mysterious disappearance of The Phantom from the Paris Opera House. An offer is made to Christine Daaé to come to America and perform at New York’s new world famous Coney Island.

Christine, her husband and their son, Gustave arrive in New York and soon she discovers the identity of the anonymous impresario who has lured her from France to sing.

“Love Never Dies” is filled with obsession and intrigue and The Phantom sets out to prove that truly “Love Never Dies.”
Love Never Dies stars Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess, as the Phantom and Christine, Joseph Millson as Raoul, Liz Robertson as Madame Giry and Summer Strallen as Meg Giry.

The roles of Fleck, Squelch and Gangle will be played respectively by Niamh Perry, Adam Pearce and Jami Reid-Quarrell.

The cast will also include Derek Andrews, Dean Chisnall, Helen Dixon, Lucie Downer, Paul Farrell, Charlene Ford, Chris Gage, Lucy van Gasse, Celia Graham, Simon Ray Harvey, Jack Horner, Erin Anna Jameson, Pip Jordan, Jessica Kirton, Louise Madison, Janet Mooney, Colette Morrow, Tam Mutu, Ashley Nottingham, Tom Oakley, Mark Skipper, Jonathan Stewart, Tim Walton and Annette Yeo.

“A Good Night Out in the Valleys” opens tonight at the Brentwood Miner’s Institute in Gwent tonight.
It is based on real Valleys stories with plenty of laughs and will feature live music performed by bands from each institute’s local area.
In the day, the coal mines had thriving communities and quite a bit of wealth in the South Wales valleys. The people in those communities were full of a sense of pride and spirit, hence, the creation of the miners’ institutes. They took a penny from every pound they earned as miners and built institutes which became their theatres, meeting places and snooker halls.
The cast includes Sharon Morgan, winner of last year’s BAFTA Cymru Best Actress Award for her role in Martha Jac a Sianco, who also appeared in BBC Wales’ Torchwood and Belonging. Boyd Clack, star of BBC Wales’ High Hopes and Satellite City, as well as Twin Town, will also appear, alongside Siwan Morris, star of Channel 4’s Skins and who last year performed in Sherman Cymru’s acclaimed Cloakroom. Siwan has also appeared on television in Con Passionate and Caerdydd.

Three young actors from BBC Wales’ Belonging will also appear: Oliver Wood ( who played Asbo), Huw Rhys (Carl), and Amy Starling (Nurse Spencer). Huw also appeared in Caerdydd.

A Good Night Out in the Valleys is written by Alan Harris, originally from Church Village, Pontypridd. His play The Gold Farmer will be performed on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday 6th February.

The play is directed by National Theatre Wales Artistic Director John McGrath, previously Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, Manchester. John trained in New York, where he was also Associate Director of Mabou Mines. In 2005, he was awarded the NESTA Cultural Leadership Award.

A Inspector Calls, a Stephen Daldry production, is a classic thriller by JB Priestey and continues to wow audiences at Wyndham’s Theatre until March 13th.

Nicholas Woodeson plays Inspector Goole. He also played the role on Broadway in 1994. His recent London stage credits include Moonlight And Magnolias, The Birthday Party and Legal Fictions, not to mention his well-known role in BBCs Rome.

Woodeson is joined by David Roper, Sandra Duncan, Marianne Oldham, Robin Whiting, Timothy Watson and Diana Payne Myers.
This thriller by J B Priestey begins when the mysterious Inspector Goole arrives unexpectedly at the well-to-do Birling family home.
The family’s peaceful dinner party is shattered by the inspector’s investigations into their involvement in the death of a young woman. It emerges that each person knew the victim and exploited her in some way. The Inspector’s startling revelations shake up their lives, challenging them (and the audience) to examine their consciences.

An Inspector Calls was written at the end of the Second World War and is set before the First World War.

The cast includes Sandra Duncan, Marianne Oldham, David Roper, Elizabeth Ross, Timothy Watson, Robin Whiting and Nicholas Woodeson.

The director is Stephen Daldry.

The production of The Cat in the Hat is a wonderful and engaging first theatre experience for 3 to 6 year olds and will be showing at the Young Vic until March 13th.

Based on the much-loved Dr. Seuss book, this legendary story was adapted for the stage by Katie Mitchell.

With his red and white striped hat and his red bow tie, the cat in the hat is full of tricks, from the moment he appears in their house. Sally and her brother know that the cat in the hat is the funniest cat they have ever met. He brings cheerful chaos to two children on a rainy day when they are left unattended.

The naughty cat does all sorts of balancing acts, including balancing the family goldfish (in his bowl) while standing on a ball, to the chagrin of the goldfish! Finally, he cleans up the mess he has made throughout the house on his way out the door, disappearing just before the mother arrives home.

Published in 1957 by Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat is still one of the best selling children’s books of all time.

The influential British director Peter Brook returns to London with 11 And 12, a work five years in the making, that brings together a multinational cast in a meditation on faith, race and tolerance.

Based on a book by West African writer Amadou Hampaté Bâ, 11 And 12 recounts the author’s relationship with a Malian sage, Tierno Bokar, which began in his childhood and influenced him throughout his life. Yet the production plays not like an account of real-life events, but in the manner of a fable, written to teach the young Amadou and the audiences who watch the play about the importance of peace and understanding between religions and cultures.

The play takes us back to pre-WW2 colonial French West Africa, where the young Amadou is growing up in a land whose divisions are growing ever wider. He is sent to school in a white community and begins working as a scribe for the French administration. The divisions and antagonisms between white and black that are fostered by the colonial rulers are exacerbated by divisions within the predominant Muslim community caused by a disagreement as to whether an Islamic prayer should be recited 11 or 12 times. When the opposing leaders – Tierno Bokar and Cherif Hamallah – meet to discuss the situation, they demonstrate the necessity of tolerance towards each others’ beliefs.

Though it is a highly relevant theme rooted in today’s reality, there is a whimsical air about 11 And 12. A minimal set of rich colours, highlighted by beautiful lighting, places this story in a place so far removed from our own that it seems mythical. The atmospheric music played on traditional instruments by Toshi Tsuchitori, who sits onstage throughout, adds to this impression.

The cast play multiple roles, each of them transforming from character to character with just a change in accent or body language. Their creativity with minimal props leads to a particularly lovely scene in which Amadou travels by boat to his new school.

Yet this only adds to the impression of the play as a fable, a story handed down from generation to generation to the point that we no longer know if it is true. This is sadly appropriate; the divisions that existed in Tierno Bokar’s time have also been passed down through the years, and the grief caused by lack of tolerance between religions is as rooted in our culture as a fairytale.

The only major theatre awards voted for by the paying public, the tenth Whatsonstage.com Awards, has already broken records, with a fortnight left to go.

As of 10am today, 18 January 2010, more than 36,000 people have voted in the 2010 Whatsonstage.com Awards, which tops the record of 35,000 set last year in 2009.

The Whatsonstage.com Awards were born, almost by accident, ten years ago this month. When the nominations for that year’s Laurence Olivier Awards were announced, Whatsonstage.com published the shortlists and allowed readers to vote for who they thought should win. More than 7,000 people voted in five weeks, and the results were very different from the decisions of the Olivier judges.

The following year, Whatsonstage.com published its own shortlists and the “theatergoers choice” awards have evolved from that. Years of steady growth show that voting figures more than doubled from 12,000 to 25,000 between the 2007 and 2008 prizegivings – and have continued to gain dramatically in popularity and prominence since 2008, the same year the Whatsonstage.com Awards Concert was launched, where trophies are presented to the winners in front of a sell-out audience of theatergoer voters, at a West End theatre.

This year, the 2010 Awards Concert takes place at 7pm on Sunday 14 February 2010, at the 1,200-seat Prince of Wales Theatre, home of Mama Mia.

It is only appropriate that a play about suffragettes should be the first play written by a living woman to be presented in the National Theatre in London. Her Naked Skin, written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, appeared there last year in the Olivier auditorium to high acclaim from both critics and the theatre-going public.

While Lenkiewicz had written several other successful dramas prior to her debut at the National, there are a lot of new female voices being heard in the theatres, and Her Naked Skin will undoubtedly be only the first of many to appear on Britain�s most venerable stages.

Playwright Polly Stenham is only 22 years old, and her second hit play, Tusk Tusk, ran to sell-out crowds at the Royal Court in London this spring. Stenham�s first play, That Face, was written when she was 19, and that one got the 2007 award for Best New Play.

Lucy Prebble reportedly has commissions from the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre. Her first full-length play, The Sugar Syndrome, won the Best New Play award for 2004 and her second, ENRON, about the great financial scandal and the people who perpetrated it, has been hailed as a �major theatrical event�.

Another woman in the impressive line-up is Ella Hickson. Her offbeat play Eight has been picked up by Nick Hern, the most respected theatre publisher in the U.K. Hickson, at 24, is the youngest playwright ever to have that honour. Eight won the Fringe First at Edinburgh in 2008, made a smash hit in New York early this year and will be opening in Trafalgar Studios in July.

Look for Atiha Sen Gupta�s What Fatima Did . . . among other great new offerings at the Hampstead Theatre�s autumn season.

The opening season of the Off-West End venue, Westminster Theatre will feature a production that may include the Royal Shakespeare Company and will feature direction by Steven Berkoff a patron of the London Aloft team.

The Shakespeare Company may use the Westminster Theatre as its home for testing new material if negotiations proceed as planned with London Aloft who owns the rights to the site.

Although the Westminster Theatre has two performance spaces that can host 260 standing in one and 350 seated in the other, plans are to open the location to a variety of uses including a restaurant, jazz music, and cabaret.

Chief Executive of London Aloft commented that this is not a crazy idea, as the hope is the restaurant will provide enough income to sustain the artistic aims of the group for the new Theatre. He went on to say that with no arts council funding, the building needs to be commercialized in order to complete its original purposes.

Theatre productions and programming will be overseen by Greg Thompson who formerly worked with both the Glasgow Tron and the RSC. Thompson stated expectations are high for the restaurant as the programming will be aimed at the fringe of London, therefore the more capital that the restaurant earns the more risqu� productions can be.

Michelson mentioned that London Aloft would love to perform a show that contains the Spymonkey theatre troupe if proper negotiations work out. Additionally, they would like to bring smaller theatre groups from London�s edges up to the London environment to expose citizens to new talent.

Found near the Victoria Palace Theatre, the restaurant is planned to serve breakfast and lunch to patrons without reservations throughout the day and offer meal deal enhanced tickets to theatre goers in the evening to further encourage show attendance.

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