JULIUS CAESAR (Royal Shakespeare Company/The Shows Must Go On)****

 

By Alan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFe9HZOhew  

Available until: 16^th April, probably 7pm

I have never seen Julius Caesar in the list of Shakespeare’s history plays but he was a real person. He was a Roman consul general and statesman who was born in 100 BC and was assassinated 55 years later. He really was married to Calpurnia (and three other women, sometimes to 2 at the same time) and she apparently really did dream he was going to die. Caesar really was assassinated by a group that was led by Brutus and Cassius on the Ides of March which is March 15^th. 

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (The Shows Must Go On)****

 

By Imogen 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BseBCzOh6s 

Available until: Sunday 4^th April at about 7pm

Jesus Christ Superstar was one of the first musicals Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber put online for free and now he’s bringing it back to celebrate Easter. Not that Easter was exactly the best time for Jesus but there are great musicals on all sorts of weird subjects. Sir Andrew has also written musicals about cats hanging round a junk yard and trains having races with each other and that sounds so boring but they’re actually good musicals.

LETTERS LIVE (22nd March) (The Shows Must Go On/Union Chapel)****

 

By Emma 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71G_imi-aBA 

Available until: 29^th March at about 7pm

I only watched the first Letters Live a few days ago because we didn’t know about it (it’s hard keeping track of everything) but I’m so glad we found out about this because it’s really lovely.

DICK WHITTINGTON (First Family Entertainment/The Shows Must Go On)****

By Louise

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CROqu2KiSUw

Available until: Sunday 3^rd January, probably 2pm

Dick Whittington is a lovely New Year pantomime treat which can be enjoyed by adults as well as children. It is a fun and energetic production with lots of humour and it’s great to see the The Shows Must Go On series continuing into the New Year. I don’t think Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is part of it anymore, but it was originally his idea and it has enabled to me see lots of different productions which I’ve really enjoyed.

THE RAILWAY CHILDREN (National Railway Museum/York Theatre Royal/The Shows Must Go On)*****

 

By Angel

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6JS1RfMf4w

Available until: 23^rd December

The Railway Children is my favourite play. Between 2014 and 2017, it was shown at King’s Cross Theatre on a real train track, though it’s not part of the King’s Cross Station. It is a theatre with a set. I think it was only on at Christmas but perhaps that is something my parents told me so they wouldn’t have to take me too often.

42ND STREET (The Shows Must Go On)*****

By Louise

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGsGmceTg9w

Available until: 6^th December 7pm

42^nd Street is a really good musical. It has some really good characters, some incredible dance routines and the plot is really good too. It’s not the most original plot, but it’s the sort of plot that will really appeal to a lot of theatre fans. Although it’s always really sad if a performer is ill or injured, there is something really special about seeing an understudy.

RED (The Shows Must Go On/Trafalgar Releasing/THIRTEEN/Michael Grandage Company/Wyndham’s Theatre)***

By Alan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsSdhhv6ldg

Available until: 7pm on Wednesday 2^nd December

I like plays about real people a lot. I also like plays about fictional people because it’s all about the playwright’s imagination but there is something special about seeing a play about a real person and then finding out about them. Often they’re not very much like the real person or you can’t be sure what if they’re like the real person or not. But it’s interesting just discovering a new person who is kind of great in some way.

Red by John Logan is about the painter Mark Rothko and his commission to do a series of paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant. I like art but I hadn’t heard of him. So I read about him and he had a really interesting life. He was Jewish and was born in what was then part of the Russian Empire and is now Latvia. He moved to America, he did very well at school but he dropped out of college and didn’t go back till they awarded him an honorary degree which I thought was funny. He was very political and an anarchist. He became interested in art when he saw other artists at work. He had a group of painter friends and a group of anarchic friends. He started writing a book which was a comparison between children’s art and the best painters’ art but he didn’t finish it.

MACBETH (Chichester Festival Theatre/The Shows Must Go On)****

 

By Alan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dalKG4ZiYg

Available until: 23^rd November

Content warnings: Blood, guts, gore, violence, gunfire

Macbeth is fiction but it is based on real people. There was a Macbeth who became King of Scotland circa 1005. Unlike in the play, he was king for over 17 years. Macbeth’s grandfather was king so Macbeth was part of the Royal Family and King Duncan was his cousin- so Macbeth was technically next in line after Duncan’s sons. (The rules of succession weren’t always followed, part of the plot of King John is based on the fact John was actually 3rd in line after his deceased brother Geoffrey’s two surviving children but the previous king, his brother Richard I, wanted John to be king after him so that’s what happened. Macbeth was at least 4^th in line and probably wasn’t Duncan’s first choice but he had a lot of support from others.)

RICHARD II (The Shows Must Go On)***

 

By Emma

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tzf3FZYqKM&t=1s

Available until: 16^th November 2020

I think it must be really difficult to be a man sometimes. We say men have it easy but they don’t always because there’s so much pressure on them. If a man said he didn’t think Fiona Shaw was very good as Richard II in her 1997 film, you’d probably get loads of women calling him sexist. But he might not have a problem with women playing Richard II – just with one specific woman.

MIDNIGHT TANGO****

 

 By Imogen

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYTbnmcFBJA

Available until: It doesn’t say but probably Sunday 30^th November at about 7pm?

If anyone watches Strictly and they’re quite old they might remember when Vincent Simone and Flavia Cacace were professionals between 2006 and 2012. This is their show.

I think The Shows Must Go On chose to stream it because it’s called Midnight Tango and that sounds quite Halloweeny, but it’s actually not very Halloweeny at all. But I think that’s a good thing. Some people go a bit crazy over Halloween. The only thing I care about is having a better costume than anyone else and even that’s not much fun when we can’t go to parties. I kissed six vampires last year and two werewolves. But I refused to kiss the zombies.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (The Shows Must Go On)****

 By Jack

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6hXc2lzfsk

Available until: Sunday 25^th October 2020.

I don’t usually like musicals. They’re too soppy and people keep singing for no reason and when they’re in danger, instead of running away like a normal person, they stand still and sing a song about running away. I know some idiots panic in a crisis and do all kinds of stupid things but standing still and singing a song? Not realistic. If you want to run away, just run away. It’s a bit pathetic but at least it makes sense.

FAME (The Shows Must Go On/Peacock Theatre/Sadler’s Wells*****

By Imogen

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYEEZ04lbDg

Available until: 7.30pm Sunday 27 September

I think Fame is really underrated as a musical. All most people know is that it’s about stage school and that it has a good title song but there’s so much more to it than that. Fame isn’t the only good song and the variation in musical styles is really impressive and not something you see in most musicals. This doesn’t just have the pop and rock styles you’d expect to find in a musical. There’s a bit of classical, a bit of Latin, a bit of street and lots of really good tunes.