stage


WEST Various venues across Wales Sat 21 May-Sat 23 July


What could have been more appropriate for West, a work about people building a life in the New World, than a premiere at the 2019 North American Festival Of Wales in Milwaukee – resulting in a standing ovation, no less?


West is written by Cardiff playwright Owen Thomas, best known for his acclaimed one-man play Grav, a celebration of the life of Welsh rugby legend Ray Gravell. Gravell was played by Thomas’s frequent collaborator Gareth John Bale, who directs and stars here. West is not the first of Thomas’ works to play across the pond: Richard Parker won Best International Show at the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, and he took Grav to the Actors Theatre Workshop in New York City. Off the back of the reception afforded Grav, Thomas was asked to piece.


write an original


Bale, along with Gwenllian Higginson, play a pair of Welsh people who fall in


decide to leave their homeland to make a life in the New World. They become two of the first Welsh settlers who went over to America; on the surface a love story, deeper themes of the play explore immigration. Thomas has expressed a wish to “show the audience that we all from different places”.


love and originated


West is at Theatr Gwaun, Fishguard (Sat 21 May); Pontardawe Arts Centre (Tue 24); Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon (Wed 25); Theatr Felinfach, Dyffryn Aeron (Fri 27); Torch Theatre, Milford Haven (Tue 31 May and Wed 1 June); The Welfare, Ystradgynlais (Mon 4 July) and Plas Glyn-y- Weddw, Pwlhelli (Sat 23 July).


Tickets: £8.50-£14. Info: torchtheatre.co.uk CHRIS WILLIAMS


THE GODS ARE ALL HERE Y Ffwrnes, Llanelli Thurs 26 May


Welsh storyteller Phil Okwedy has a decade of live performance under his belt, and is now embarking on his first Welsh tour – an autobiographical, one-man performance piece The Gods Are All Here, opening in Llanelli and crossing Wales throughout summer and autumn.


After his mother’s death, Okwedy found a series of her letters, posted to Wales by his father in Nigeria. Citing “a need to do more with them than just read them,” he weaves these personal family stories with folktales, myth and song. Born in Cardiff of dual heritage, but raised in Pembrokeshire by his foster mother, having never lived with them Okwedy wondered if his parents were gods as some children view theirs to be.


Exploring themes such as equality and racism, Okwedy hopes The Gods… will resonate with audience members’ own stories – indeed, he says, “with the audience as a whole, because it is by working together that we ensure that equality, justice and freedom are experienced by all.”


Tickets: £12.50/£10.50. Info: theatrausirgar.co.uk CHRIS WILLIAMS


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NOTHING HAPPENS


(TWICE) Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff Fri 20 + Sat 21 May


Nothing Happens (Twice) has a content warning that promises “loud noises and strong language”; combine that with two women in flamingo costumes and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot and you know what you can expect... or perhaps not. Mercè and Patricia share a dream of staging WFG, but can this dream help them climb back up from rock bottom, where they currently find themselves (the aforementioned flamingo dress-up takes place in a shopping centre, to make ends meet)?


Described as “an hilarious and sometimes moving exploration of companionship, co-dependency and what motivates us to keep going, even in the face of failure and bureaucratic brick walls”, it’s the work of Little Soldier Productions, aka the real-life Patrícia Rodríguez and Mercè Ribot – with a team who’ve been hailed as one of the UK’s leading physical comedy theatre


making theatre, Little Soldier also offer workshops on clowning and comedy, as well as talks on making new works as female artists.


companies. As well as


Tickets: £14/£12. Info: chapter.org CHRIS WILLIAMS


A HERO


OF THE PEOPLE Sherman Theatre, Cardiff Fri 13-Sat 28 May


Few plays can have proven more adaptable than the 140-year-old An Enemy Of The People, by Henrik Ibsen. One might attribute this to theatre-makers’ keen nose for social issues, or more gloomily, the continuing tendency for white- collar crooks to hold sway over a biddable populace. Nearly all its themes have stayed relevant down the decades, and in its latest reimagining


Welsh town, courtesy of Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre and playwright Brad Birch, with an altered title.


is transplanted to a


A Hero Of The People has a cast of five but centres on two siblings, an MP (played by Oliver Ryan) and his doctor sister (played by Suzanne Packer). The former is an advocate for industrial development in the town, while the latter contends that it’s a pollutant and health hazard. It’s Ibsen’s plot – where a GP raises hygienic concerns about a Norwegian town’s communal baths – writ larger, and refracted through decades


poverty and economic competition lead to cut corners and morals.


of neoliberalism, where


Tickets: £10-£20. Info: shermantheatre.co.uk NOEL GARDNER


SIX Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay Tue 3-Sat 14 May


“Remember us from your GCSEs” says one of the self-referential Queens in Six. The ultra-modern, feminist look at the six wives of Henry VIII quickly became immensely popular due to its infectiously listenable soundtrack.


The musical was written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss while studying for their final exams at Cambridge; following a successful 2017 Edinburgh run, two years later it was in the West End, subsequently on Broadway (making Moss the youngest ever female director of a Broadway musical). Now back in Cardiff, it features musical numbers that reside in a Venn diagram of playlists between musicals and pop.


Songs include the Beyoncé- flavoured No Way, clubbier Haus Of Holbein and Jane Seymour’s pop ballad Heart Of Stone. At just 80 minutes you might want to see it more than once on its two-week stop in Cardiff. So fun, funny and smart; and still a bit educational, it makes you want Marlow and Moss to hurry up with their next theatrical creation.


Tickets: £19.50-£52. Info: wmc.org.uk CHRIS WILLIAMS


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