The 1980s were turbulent times for the Soviet Union. The death of the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in 1981, and the slow-slow-quick-quick-slow waltz of the regime toward its collapse and eventual dissolution in 1992.

Group Editor Andrew Palmer surrenders an afternoon to Ambridge and emerges knowing far too much about yoghurt. Spoiler alert: this was a fabulous Sunday afternoon spent in the company of the people we are all, frankly, obsessed with.

Pre warnings of adult scenes of a sexual nature, depictions of violence and brief frontal male nudity left me in doubt that Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man is designed to provoke. Sparks fly from the outset - and not just from the welding in the mid-west greasy garage-diner, where mechanics with rippling muscles delight in bullying their sensitive co-worker, Angelo.

There is a surprisingly strong vein of science fiction running through Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s extraordinary body of work, a strand easily overlooked amid his better-known domestic comedies. His interest in speculative futuristic drama dates back to Standing Room Only in 1961 and includes 1998’s much-praised Comic Potential.

Andrew Palmer finds a play that trades on nostalgia, then quietly detonates it, as two men's secrets collide on the eve of the Brighton bomb. There is a particular kind of dread that arrives dressed as nostalgia.

Ahead of Brighton '84's arrival at Harrogate Theatre, King Brilliant co-founder Lee Bainbridge talks to Group Editor Andrew Palmer about class, comedy and a writing partnership a decade in the making. Mention the Brighton bombing and most people picture the same thing: Margaret Thatcher, the Grand Hotel, a nation holding its breath.

I always like to digest theatre performances on a full stomach, my favourite pre-show meal being thinly sliced steak and frites at a local French bistro. However, due to the cannibalistic nature of The Silence of the Lambs I swapped red meat for fish pie and mashed potato to avoid bouts of nausea - or worse.

Ahead of the world premiere of The Farmer's Wife at Theatre by the Lake, playwright Hannah Khalil talks to Andrew Palmer about writing three generations of Cumbrian farming women into being. When Theatre by the Lake asked Hannah Khalil whether she might make a stage version of Helen Rebanks' The Farmer's Wife, her first instinct was to say no.

Leeds-based Red Ladder Theatre Company and Hull’s Silent Uproar have joined forces to produce a powerful new play from an exciting and original voice in northern theatre.

Like the 1982 film, the current version of Annie is based on a feisty, eleven year old orphan with an unwavering belief that her parents will return for her – and her life will be transformed forever.

Andrew Palmer continued his enthusiastic support of Ripon Theatre Festival and found Stephen Smith's virtuoso solo turn as Edgar Allan Poe left him breathless — exhausting, exhilarating and utterly captivating, in a masterclass in gothic horror that stopped his heart. There are shows that entertain, and there are shows that leave you wrung out with admiration.

Am I the only person in the known universe to have never seen The Sound of Music? Well, I must be. Or more accurately, I 'was,' for now I have lost my innocence. I have been Rodger and Hammersteined, so to speak.

A scratch performance about medieval lepers was just one of hundreds of events at this year's Ripon Theatre Festival—but as an opening statement, it was a bold one. It is a good sign, and an increasingly rare one, to see a theatre festival so thoroughly supported: excellent productions, wonderful venues, a well-curated programme and, above all, outstanding commun…

A county-wide fringe festival is landing in Yorkshire this July — unfunded, unincorporated, and already boasting more shows than Edinburgh managed in its first year. Tyler Pickles, one of the seven volunteers behind it, talks us through how you build a fringe from nothing but an email and a room full of mind maps.

Do you want the good news, or the bad news? Let’s start with the positive. Theatre audiences in the UK are up on pre-Covid levels. The downside is the number of new plays has plummeted. A report published last autumn by the British Theatre Consortium found that attendances were up in 2023 compared to 2019, but there were 30 per cent fewer plays opening during the same period.

She's the cabaret siren, bringing a blaze of Broadway glamour, old Hollywood shimmer and flame-haired icons to Ripon – and she cannot, she insists, do a show without funny bones. There is a particular kind of performer who walks into a room and instantly rearranges its atmosphere. Amber Topaz is one of those.

The fashion for turning eighties films into stage productions continues with this version of the popular movie The Karate Kid. On one of the hottest nights of this spring so far, the prospect of sitting through a story in Leeds’ Grand Theatre that I was unfamiliar with wasn't an enticing prospect – how wrong my assertion turned out to be.

I must have had my own blonde moment when the highly acclaimed Legally Blonde film with Reese Witherspoon hit our screens in 2021, grossing 142 million dollars worldwide and shaping fashion trends. Determined not to let the 2026 stage production pass me by, I was at the front of the queue for the upbeat romantic comedy and its timeless appeal.

Red Ladder Theatre Company and Silent Uproar – two boundary-pushing theatre companies – are delighted to announce an exciting new partnership, showcasing the North of England’s rich seam of playwriting talent.