Ah, the damage you can wreak with a gauzy scarf, a tutu, an overweening ego and perhaps just a hint of chest hair. Yes, the Trocs have been on tour again, delighting all afficionados of classical ballet with a programme of dance excerpts that embody every…

This was the first time that Irish shoegaze/noise rock band Just Mustard had played Newcastle. The five-piece from Dundalk are riding high at the moment having secured support slots for the likes of Fontaines D.C. and The Cure this summer, and they …

China Crisis are marking 40 years in the game with their 2026 Tour. If the Gosforth show was anything to go by, they’re doing it in style, just without the usual overblown anniversary hype. Kicking things off earlier this year, the tour feels more like a …

The only thing I love more than a romcom is a romcom parody, and The Fit Prince - or, The Fit Prince who gets switched on the square in the frosty castle the night before (insert public holiday here), to give it its full title - is nothing if not pure, ta…

During WWII composer Benjamin Britten, an East Anglian lad, toyed with the idea of settling in America, but was drawn back to coastal Suffolk by a Victorian poem about life in the fishing village of Aldeburgh which became the basis for his first opera, “P…

Difficult to imagine that back in the late eighteenth century Beaumarchais’ trio of plays (and, indeed, the operas based on them) about wily servant Figaro presented a political hot potato. Valets and barbers weren’t supposed to be smarter than their up…

Echo and The Bunnymen were back at Newcastle City Hall with their “Very Best of Echo & The Bunnymen 1978-2026” tour which celebrated the songs that have brought the group twenty top 20 hits and nine top 20 albums spanning across their legendary career. I…

Though this 1930 comedy of manners must be one of Noel Coward’s most popular and enduring plays, there’s no doubt that the social conventions creating the plot are so dated that a younger audience probably needs footnotes. In a lovely, neatly turned game …

It seems impossible that a decade has passed since the release of Ken Loach’s uniquely powerful Newcastle-set movie “I, Daniel Blake”. I say uniquely because the film deals with issues of social justice not via politics, criminality or violence but by hi…

Right from the start of the play, where a queen has effectively disinherited her son by marrying the brother-in-law who less than two months earlier had surreptitiously murdered her husband the king, it would be fair to describe the Kingdom of Denmark as…

On the night I went to see Pilot Theatre's production of Noughts and Crosses, they had the most terrifying, difficult-to-impress audience that I can imagine. Not reviewers. Worse: a whole room full of teenagers. Noughts and Crosses is adapted from the …

I am, first and foremost, a literature nerd, so when I heard that the latest show at the People's Theatre was all about the life of Mary Shelley, I jumped at the chance to see it. As the daughter of two of the biggest political philosophers of the 18th ce…

Watching Se Gæst felt less like attending a dance performance and more like being drawn into a shared act of reflection. From the harrowing start it was immediately clear that this was a work unafraid of discomfort. Watching the metaphorical depiction of …

I was unfamiliar with Window Kid when I was invited to the Newcastle date of his latest tour, and it’s these kind of shows that are my favourite to review. There’s an unmatched anticipation to being in a room full of people who are buzzing to see one of t…

Michael Morpurgo’s novel “War Horse” was, surprisingly, no great success when first published in 1982. Inspired by the first-hand experiences of a bloke the author had met down the pub, its gritty realism might have been too strong for the Young Adult aud…

As someone whose football knowledge begins and ends with the glimpses I saw of ‘Match of the Day’ in the living room growing up, I wasn’t sure what I’d make of Dear England, the National Theatre production about Gareth Southgate’s eight years managing the…

On a sweltering Sunday afternoon, Glasgow’s The Pastels played a sold out matinee gig in Byker. The band has been integral to the Scottish indie music scene, and are forever associated with the NME’s C86 cassette cult. When other bands moved to London, Th…