Theatre meets Music at Buxton Fringe
With post-Covid performers proving ever more ambitious, there is some larger-than-life musical theatre to be enjoyed at this year’s Fringe.
Mark Glentworth is known for composing the world-famous percussion piece Blues for Gilbert and his long-standing collaboration with Steven Berkoff, Seven and a Half Years, tells the true story of Mark’s life in an award-winning autobiographical musical. It’s My Life is a brand-new one-woman musical from talented composer and multi-instrumentalist, Katie Bell, and is an emotional rollercoaster through one woman's journey from the depths of despair to starting over in search of freedom and happiness, through love, lies, and lust - you can't keep a good woman down!
Shows We Used to Know bring a pair of shows celebrating the best of 20th Century music. Exploring the continuing popularity of Noel Coward, Still Mad About The Boy? is a unique cabaret journey through words, music and previously unseen material from the archives, and is part of the Coward Foundation’s COWARD125 Festival. From the music hall stage to On The Buses, Cicely Courtneidge did it all, and in Things are Looking Up, one of the 20th century’s brightest British stars comes to life with the words and music of Noël Coward, Ivor Novello, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and more.
Supplying humour alongside the music, Magpie Theatre have musically reimagined Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost with an original score and soundtrack. When a modern American family moves into an old English mansion, the resident spook determines to scare them off. Instead, the family torments the ghost in this hilarious and family-friendly tale.
Fringe favourite Naomi Paul returns with her (mostly) Jewish show, They May Have Eaten Ham. Original stories, humour and songs from the Baltic to Birmingham, from shamash to shellfish, fitting in and striking out, the things that divide us and the things that unite. A lively show crosses genre borders of theatre, cabaret and comedy.
Fringe Chair Stephen Walker says: “It’s great to see this level of ambition and creativity from Fringe performers and I’m confident our audiences will enjoy themselves immensely!”
Further theatre treats can be discovered on www.buxtonfringe.org.uk and on the free to download Buxton Fringe App.
The Fringe wishes to thank High Peak Borough Council, its Fringe Friends and the town’s many Fringe supporters and venues.