- Northern Theatre News
- Posts
- Northern Theatre News
Northern Theatre News
January 2026 - Week 4
Anthony Cawood
January 21, 2026
In partnership with
January 2026 - Week 4
Welcome to Northern Theatre News!
How is it coming up to the end of Jan already!?!
Most of the pantos have now gone and I’ve no shows to go to this week, but I’m super excited to be seeing The Constand Wife next week at York Theatre Royal, love a serving of biting wit!
As always we have a ton of new shows hitting the schedules for you to get your theatre fix with - enjoy!
And as always we have the usual mix of news, listings, competitions and more. I’d love to hear your feedback. So let me know what you’d like to see featured (or not!) in future editions of your newsletter.
Enjoy, and see you in the stalls!
Subscriber giveaway
£50 monthly prize giveaway
Every month we give away a £50 Theatre Token to one of our subscribers, usable at over 250 venues across the UK (including loads in the North). Just stay subscribed and you’ll be in the draw.
What’s on over the coming weeks
North East
Alnwick Playhouse have Aladdin 20 - 24 Jan.
Newcastle’s Theatre Royal has the brand new musical Weird 28 - 31 Jan and that’s followed by Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts 3 - 7 Feb
Sunderland Empire has The Rocky Horror Show coming 19 - 24 Jan followed by Fawlty Towers 3 - 7 Feb
Arts Centre Washington have Beauty and the Beast 16 - 31 Jan
North West
Liverpool Empire has the timeless Mary Poppins 14 - 31 Jan followed by SIX 3 - 7 Feb
Still in Liverpool and over at the Royal Court we have The Scouse Christmas Carol 7 Nov - 17 Jan - correction, it has been extended by an extra week, now runs to 24 Jan.
Over at The Atkinson in Southport we have Peter Pan 15 - 25 Jan.
Palace Theatre in Manchester has The Bodyguard 19 - 31 Jan.
Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester has Singin’ In The Rain until 25 Jan!
Home in Manchester has The Home We Made 28 - 31 Jan followed by The Lightning Thief - The Percy Jackson Musical 11 - 21 Feb
Still in Manchester, Hope Mill Theatre has Noel Coward’s Private Lives 28 Jan - 8 Feb.
Over to Blackpool and the Grand Theatre has Murder at Midnight 28 - 31 Jan followed by Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story 3 -7 Feb
The Lowry, in Salford has the amazing adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird 13 - 24 Jan - check out our review from Leeds dates. They also have Murder at Midnight 21 - 24 Jan with the eagerly awaited tour of Operation Mincemeat 16 - 28 Feb
Storyhouse in Chester has The Ghost of Graves End 21 - 24 Jan followed by the The Signalman 3 - 7 Feb
Over in Crewe, The Lyceum Theatre has Blood Brothers 20 -24 Jan followed by The Wedding Singer 4 - 7 Feb
Octagon Bolton has The Memory of Water 29 Jan - 21 Feb.
Yorkshire & Humberside
Leeds Grand Theatre has Opera North’s The Marriage of Figaro 30 Jan - 20 Feb.
Leeds Playhouse has Uncanny: Fear of the Dark 27 - 29 Jan followed by Sherlock Holmes: The Hunt for Moriarty 10 - 12 Feb
Bradford’s Alhambra has FRIENDS! The Musical Parody 27 - 31 Jan followed by The Rocky Horror Show 2 - 7 Feb
York Theatre Royal has The Constant Wife as it starts its UK tour 26 - 31 Jan followed by The Last Picture 5 - 14 Feb
The Grand Opera House in York has The Talented Mr Ripley 19 - 24 Jan followed by Carlos Acosta's Nutcracker in Havana 28 - 31 Jan and Single White Female 3 - 7 Feb
Hull New Theatre has The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical 28 Jan - 1 Feb
Rotherham Civic Theatre has The Incident Room 19 - 23 Jan.
Over in Sheffield at the Lyceum we have Top Hat playing 20 - 24 Jan followed by To Kill A Mockingbird 27 Jan - 7 Feb
The Playhouse has My Brother’s A Genius 28 Jan - 14 Feb.
The Crucible has Crown of Blood 2 - 7 Feb.
Easy setup, easy money
Making money from your content shouldn’t be complicated. With Google AdSense, it isn’t.
Automatic ad placement and optimization ensure the highest-paying, most relevant ads appear on your site. And it literally takes just seconds to set up.
That’s why WikiHow, the world’s most popular how-to site, keeps it simple with Google AdSense: “All you do is drop a little code on your website and Google AdSense immediately starts working.”
The TL;DR? You focus on creating. Google AdSense handles the rest.
Start earning the easy way with AdSense.
Northern Theatre News reviews
When we’re lucky enough to be invited to press nights we add the review to the very next newsletter! Here are the shows we’ve seen recently.
Ticket offers not to miss!
Not so much of a ticket offer this time, but an offer to get an additional theatre fix from home with Marquee TV. They have a ton of theatre, opera, concerts and ballet, and they are running a new offer where your first month is subscription is just £1.
Also with a Jan offer we have The Theatre Channel at just £1.99 a month for 6 months! (Before it reverts to £5.99 a month)
Theatre competitions
They’re not all northern, but when they’re not they do involve a hotel stay too, good luck! All are free to enter and run by 3rd parties (not me!), and I will keep them in each newsletter whilst the entry date is still valid.
Theatre spotlight
City Varieties Music HallAll images are credit Leeds Heritage Theatres or Northern Theatre News.        | Some theatres shout about themselves with big plazas and glass fronts. City Varieties hides down a little ginnel off Briggate and somehow still feels like one of the most theatrical spot in Leeds. Slip under the green sign on Swan Street and you are walking into one of the oldest working theatres in the city, a proper Victorian music hall that has hung on with a grin abd a prayer for more than 150 years. Not bad for what started as a room above a pub. It began life in the eighteen sixties as a singing room at the White Swan Inn. Local landlord and impresario Charles Thornton saw the potential in the upstairs space and rebuilt it as Thornton’s New Music Hall and Fashionable Lounge. Inside he created a long, narrow auditorium with cast iron columns, two bow fronted balconies and a small stage crowned with a royal coat of arms. Sit there today, wrapped in red plush and gold details, and you are basically in the same space a nineteenth century audience knew, just with better electrics and fewer cigars. Over the decades a serious roll call of stars has trod that tiny stage. Marie Lloyd, Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin and all manner of music hall and variety acts entertained the working folk of Leeds. People came to drink, laugh, heckle a little and sing along. It was noisy, cheeky and occasionally a bit chaotic. National fame arrived in the 50s when the BBC chose City Varieties as the home of The Good Old Days. For thirty years television audiences watched Leeds recreate Victorian music hall, complete with Leonard Sachs and those tongue twisting introductions, the audience dressed up in period finery and a big sing song of Down at the Old Bull and Bush to finish. In 2009 City Varieties closed for a major restoration. When it reopened in 2011 it still seated around four hundred and sixty odd people and still looked every inch the Victorian gem, only now with a lot less risk of bits falling off! Today City Varieties is part of Leeds Heritage Theatres alongside Leeds Grand Theatre and Hyde Park Picture House. At Christmas it hosts the amazing Rock n Roll Panto, a gloriously loud mash up of classic panto gags and live band energy. The rest of the year you might find folk and acoustic gigs, stand up, a live talk. It is the kind of venue where big name comics talk about it as one of their favourite rooms, because the audience is practically in their lap. What really makes City Varieties special is the feel of the place. Sit in the stalls and you are close enough to catch every wink and raised eyebrow. Sit up in the balcony and you get that postcard view of red plush, ornate plasterwork and a small but mighty stage that has seen more than a century and a half of showbusiness. It started as a singing room above a pub and somehow grew into a national treasure without losing its friendly, slightly cheeky heart. Next time you are on Briggate, duck down the ginnel and have a look. Leeds does not get much more theatrical than this. |
Theatre index
I’ve collated an index of all the northern venues I could find, it’s broken down by region so you can find the ones nearest you.
Do let me know if I’ve missed any.
Courses & training
I’ve had a few reader requests to add theatre related courses/training to the newsletter, so when/if I find any I’ll feature them here.
If you know of any more just let me know and I’ll include them
That’s it for this week
I’d love to know what you think about this newsletter, what we could do to make it better, and what else you’d like to see.
Thanks for reading and subscribing, and please spread the news.
Reply