Curtain up on a thrilling winter season

It would be easy to imagine that this piece is a bit of a ‘cheat’. After all, last week we brought you news of what was coming to the region’s theatres in 2013 – are we now just repeating ourselves? Given the sheer volume of activity on Yorkshire’s stages this second piece is easily justified – last week we ended up restricting ourselves to the region’s ‘producing’ theatres, the buildings that make their own work, through necessity.

It felt, however, like we had barely scratched the surface, so this week we’re looking at some of the region’s ‘receiving houses’ (theatres that only take in work) and other companies that don’t necessarily have their own base.

Phoenix Dance, for example, is one of our strongest dance companies, an outfit that has always refused to go gentle into that good night, but their latest season couldn’t fit in last week. Had we not found space for one of Yorkshire’s most resilient companies, it would have been a travesty.

This year’s mixed programme, Particle Velocity, opens at the West Yorkshire Playhouse on Feb 6. The programme features work by former Rambert artistic director Richard Alston, remarkably working with Phoenix for the first time.

The programme will also feature a new piece from Phoenix’s artistic director Sharon Watson, set to a specially commissioned score by composer Kenneth Hesketh and popular Leeds choreographer Douglas Thorpe, who made some major breakthroughs over the past 12 months.

Elsewhere in Yorkshire’s dance world, Huddersfield’s Lawrence Batley Theatre deserves a pat on the back for standing by its commitment to provide contemporary dance shows for its audiences. Its In Motion programme, which brings dance to the theatre, this year includes pieces from two of the UK’s leading female choreographers. Opening the season on Feb 25 is the only Yorkshire date of Jasmin Vardimon Company with the company’s latest show Freedom. The short season will also feature the work of Rosie Kay Dance Company, There is Hope, which is being presented off the back of an internationally acclaimed tour of the company’s last show. LBT will also be hosting the work of Northern Ballet Theatre and Opera North, with the latter showing its new co-production of The Firework-Maker’s Daughter at the venue.

Opera North will be returning to its home at the Leeds Grand Theatre in less than a fortnight, to present the world premiere of its new productions of Verdi’s Otello, Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito and the thrilling prospect of a double bill of La Voix Human, sung by Lesley Garrett, and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

The company will be at Leeds Grand, as usual, until the end of February, when it will make room for another world premiere – this time a dance show and Northern Ballet’s version of The Great Gatsby. Literally years in the planning, this will be nothing short of sumptuous and with the company’s artistic director David Nixon in charge expect storytelling with absolute clarity.

When the city’s biggest art companies move out of the Grand, the touring shows move back in with one of the biggest – The Mousetrap – opening up the theatre’s programmed season. The show, touring for the first time, is at the theatre for six days in March and the following month The Ladykillers, one of the major comedy theatre hits in recent years, arrives.

Another of the region’s biggest receiving houses Bradford’s Alhambra, has an impressively strong line up and, like LBT, is keeping its commitment to showcasing dance. It opens its dance season with Les Ballets Trockadero, a ballet company featuring all male dancers performing the roles traditionally occupied by women. Dance fans will already also be excited by the prospect of Matthew Bourne returning to the theatre. His sell-out production of Edward Scissorhands was a major hit at the venue and in March he will present his new version of Sleeping Beauty at the Alhambra. While some in the dance world are a little snooty about Bourne’s ‘commercial’ leanings, it’s impossible to deny that he knows how to tell a good story on stage.

The theatre will also see a new staging of James and the Giant Peach, directed by Skipton’s Nikolai Foster for a national tour, and a production of Cats landing on the stage. As one of the longest-running Broadway and West End shows in history, someone’s got to be buying tickets.

Away from the mainstream, there are interesting venues all over Yorkshire that are either finding their feet or really coming into their own.

A venue falling firmly into this latter category is Bradford’s Theatre in the Mill. Run by a visionary called Iain Bloomfield, who leads a small and dedicated team, the venue has the sort of programme that the word eclectic might have been created for. The work at the venue is always interesting and challenging. Highlights will include Rabbitskin by Dominic Grace and Conversations Not Fit For The American Dinner Table.

In Sheffield The Lantern Theatre is still a little heavy on the music/comedy side of the scale, but the theatre it is staging is very interesting. Not least of which is The Beginning, performed at the end of January, which takes a look at what it’s like to perform for the first time in this little gem of a venue.

Speaking of hidden gems, The Milton Rooms is coming off the back of a successful year and will be looking to keep the track record going in 2013. The season so far is not exactly packed, but little nuggets like My Arms in February will be worth seeking out.

This has to be the last of our new season round-ups – the seasons are beginning – but it should demonstrate that in Yorkshire, whatever your taste in theatre, there really is plenty to see this year.