Theatre prospects are bright for the first few months of 2011 with three world premieres coming to the region, as well as a host of popular classics.
Manchester's Opera House hosts the world premiere of Ghost, a musical version of the 1990 Oscar-nominated film. It stars Manchester's own Richard Fleeshman opposite Broadway actress Caissie Levy.
The show, featuring "illusions, multi-media and magic effects," runs for seven weeks from March, before transferring to the West End. Music and lyrics are by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame and Glen Ballard.
In April the Royal Exchange presents the world premiere of Brad Fraser's 5@50, described by the theatre as a "blisteringly comic dissection of the way we live now".
The play brings together five women who were school friends but now find themselves on the brink of their half-century. One has a drink problem, and the others try to help. The consequences are promised to be both hysterical and heartbreaking.
For a treat, try the Bolton Octagon's home-grown premiere, Demolition Man. Aelish Michael's funny and tender new play tells the story of Fred Dibnah, the late celebrity steeplejack. Michelle Collins (ex-EastEnders) plays his long-suffering third wife, Sheila, who takes it in her stride when he starts digging a 70ft mineshaft in the back garden. It opens on April 7.
The Octagon is also staging Romeo and Juliet as part of the theatre's commitment to Shakespeare, following their success last year with A Midsummer Night's Dream. The production, directed by David Thacker, former director in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company, opens in February.
Still on Shakespeare, The Lowry in Salford has Olivier Award-winner Rory Kinnear playing Hamlet in February in the National Theatre's touring production, and Sir Derek Jacobi as King Lear for a week in March.
Two Arthur Miller plays are on offer this season. The Price - another David Thacker production at the Octagon - opens in March. The play follows two brothers who meet for the first time in 16 years to sell off the possessions left by their dead father.
A View from The Bridge opens at the Royal Exchange in May - two cousins arrive in New York as illegal immigrants from Sicily, and throw family life into turmoil.
Earlier, in February, the Royal Exchange stages a six-week run of Noel Coward's Private Lives, about
a divorced couple whose passion is re-kindled as they both honeymoon with their new spouses. As does the Oldham Coliseum, with its own production of the same play opening at the end of January. Go compare.
At the Liverpool Playhouse, Oedipus opens in February, in Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Sophocles's greatest Greek tragedy. On a lighter note, Yes Prime Minister, a stage adaptation of the hit sitcom written by Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay, arrives on tour at the Grand Theatre, Leeds in February.
Merseyside hosts a biblical story (well, sort of) in March when Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat arrives at the Liverpool Empire. It stars Keith Jack, runner-up in BBC's Any Dream Will Do.
