Calendar of Events
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2 events,
Ms. Lauryn Hill & The Fugees
Ms. Lauryn Hill & The Fugees
There’s a non-negligible school of thought out there which cites Lauryn Hill’s first and to date only studio album, The Miseducation Of…, as the greatest of all time. Not necessarily …
Unclean Beasts / Bwystfilod Aflan
Unclean Beasts / Bwystfilod Aflan
Unclean Beasts / Bwystfilod Aflan, commissioned for the National Eisteddfod by Music Theatre Wales and Music@Aber, combines opera, dance and film, with the production exploring the clash between tradition and …
5 events,
Wyrd Sisters
Wyrd Sisters
Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick are collectively known as Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters, and in Milford Haven this month – courtesy of amateur group Vision, the Boulevard’s in-house theatre company – you can join them as Pratchett’s world is brought to the stage by Stephen Briggs. Published in 1988, Wyrd Sisters was the …
Angry Snatch: A Reclamation Job In 15 Rounds
Angry Snatch: A Reclamation Job In 15 Rounds
Following The Fight, featured Upfront in this issue, here’s another interesting piece of Welsh theatre with a boxing theme. Indeed …15 Rounds is staged in a boxing ring, but deploys it metaphorically, depicting a woman’s efforts to recover from domestic abuse. A one-woman show devised by and featuring Frankie Walker, it’s again played well in …
Steve Ignorant Band
Steve Ignorant Band
A proper reunion of 70s/80s-era anarcho punk progenitors Crass is highly unlikely, but for now it’s not unusual to see ex-members maintaining the collective’s legacy in various ways. Vocalist Steve Ignorant takes the simplest route of enlisting some unrelated musicians and performing Crass songs in venues like this.
Rona Mac
Rona Mac
West Walian alt-folk type Rona Mac is touring her new album Honeymilk And Heavy Weather to what she calls “decentralised locations around the UK to move music away from big cities”. In Wales, these locations are Bank Vault, Aberystwyth (Thurs 10), Solva Memorial Hall (Fri 11), Melville Theatre, Abergavenny (Sat 12), Cwrw, Carmarthen (Tue 15) …
El Khat
El Khat
Mute, the third album by El Khat, has landed on a sound of remarkable originality – elements of Middle Eastern traditional music, repetitive trance-like passages, voodooed-up percussive workouts and Western psych and garage rock elements are all audible, yet surely just scratching the surface. The trio are led by Eyal El Wahab, who makes his …
7 events,
Etana
Etana
Reggae from Kingston, presented down the bay by local station Radio Cardiff. Shauna ‘Etana’ McKenzie has a new album Nectar Of The Gods and a strong profile in the US. She also stated her support for Donald Trump in very clear terms ahead of his 2016 election win, before walking that back when her fanbase …
Steve Hackett
Steve Hackett
Genesis guitarist and prog avatar Steve Hackett is still recording and touring with gusto, releasing a new album in February of this year and returning to Cardiff for a show originally booked in St David’s Hall. It sounds like it’ll be weighted towards Genesis’ catalogue, in particular 1974 LP The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.
Sarah Jane Scouten
Sarah Jane Scouten
Folky Americana fare from a solo performer who hails from western Canada but lives in a Scottish village not too far from Dumfries, where she divides her time between making music and herbalism. She has a new album, Turned To Gold, and is showcasing it in a few towns in the UK and Europe.
6 events,
Missy G
Missy G
Missy G is a rapper from Cardiff who’s best known for MCing at drum’n’bass nights but has a wider-ranging CV, some of which will be demonstrated on debut album Break The Code – and this launch gig for it. It’s preceded, from 6pm, by live hip-hop sets from Verbal Remedy and Skunkadelic among other locals.
Euros Childs
Euros Childs
Euros Childs is a figure of quiet significance in the history of Welsh independent rock music, forming Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci in 1991 and giving the national language – not to mention some fine oddball tuneage – some UK-wide exposure somewhere near the mainstream. These domestic dates are two of eight across Britain this month, with …
2 events,
COBO: Black History Month Special
COBO: Black History Month Special
Comedy Of Black Origin, back again with an early-evening revue at the Glee. Leroy Brito, who grew up in Cardiff Bay long before this venue arrived, is the local attraction, …
We’re Not Going Back
We’re Not Going Back
Written by Boff Whalley – formerly of one-hit wonder anarcho punk band of repute Chumbawamba – We’re Not Going Back is a musical comedy set during the 1984 miners’ strike. …
1 event,
Lil’ Jimmy Reed & The ‘A’ Team
Lil’ Jimmy Reed & The ‘A’ Team
Bluesman from Louisiana, well into his ninth decade and not to be confused with Jimmy Reed the bluesman from Mississippi, having appropriated his name when the latter died in 1976. I guess it was a heartfelt tribute but the story of it does read more like identity theft. Ex-Groundhogs sideman and fellow octogenarian Bob Hall …
7 events,
Feel Me
Feel Me
The Paper Birds Theatre Company’s Feel Me is truly interactive theatre at its most modern. Even as the stories are happening onstage in front of the audience, they’re asked via their phones “who and what they care about” from what they’re seeing onstage. Nobody is going to shout at you for having your phone on …
101 Dalmatians
101 Dalmatians
Kym Marsh is a wholesome light entertainer, reality TV graduate and latterday soap actor, but gets to exercise her range in this Disney-originated musical as Cruella de Vil. Good for her. What you really want to know though is ‘are there real dogs in this’, to which the answer is ‘maybe one? I think?’ Tickets: …
Mumfighter
Mumfighter
Joining The Fight and Frankie Walker’s touring A Reclamation Job In 15 Rounds, this one-woman play is another production using a boxing motif. Mumfighter stars Katie Payne and was written by Tracy Harris, who used her personal experience of its central subject, being mother to a disabled child. Harris, along with producers Grand Ambition (whose …
You Are The Sun
You Are The Sun
You hear a lot of anguish about the need to make opera more appealing to young people, but this doesn’t normally mean actual babies. However, that’s what Sidcup’s HurlyBurly Theatre …
Freddy Quinne
Freddy Quinne
Suffering a near-fatal illness is an experience disliked by nearly everyone across the political spectrum, apart from standup comedians who need a subject for their next touring show. Freddy Quinne, for example, contracted Legionnaires’ disease last year, and this year is contracted to perform a 20-date autumn tour of the UK about the ordeal.
Bess Atwell
Bess Atwell
Brighton songwriter with the sort of rep they call burgeoning, thanks chiefly to this year’s Light Sleeper album (Atwell’s third) and a credits list that throws the US indie-folk kitchen …
5 events,
Miss Kitty: 30 Years In The Biz
Miss Kitty: 30 Years In The Biz
Last month these listings featured a show from Cardiff drag institution Dr Bev, celebrating 30 years of performance. Now, Cardiff drag institution Miss Kitty is here with a show celebrating …
Frankenstein (On A Budget)
Frankenstein (On A Budget)
From Lamphouse Theatre, the creators of the acclaimed fringe production War Of The Worlds (On A Budget)}, comes another literary classic of science/horror fictio, subject to a similar gambit. Frankenstein …
12 events,
Love And Anger
Love And Anger
Two short plays, here for three days. Some Kind Of Love Story is by Arthur Miller, was on its 1982 debut half of a two-part presentation, and concerns a private dick and “schizophrenic call girl” (you could say that in 1982). Anger Management, by UK playwright Robert Scott, dates from the late 2010s and is …
30 Years Of Electroacoustic Wales
30 Years Of Electroacoustic Wales
Electroacoustic Wales has been a feature of event programming here since 1994 and seems like a really positive thing in a north Wales landscape not notable for fostering this sort of experimental music. They are doing three celebratory concerts (at 5, 7 and 8.45pm) with composers who cut their teeth with them before going onto …
Bywater Call
Bywater Call
From Toronto and starting life as a two-piece function band, Bywater Call now boast a full lineup – although the core duo actually played Cardiff last year, supporting Robert Jon – and play a combo of “gritty blues, gospel, soul and classic rock” in the words of Buzz’s Colin Palmer, who interviewed the band last …
Das Koolies
Das Koolies
Huw Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Daf Ieuan and Guto Pryce, billed as “the four Super Furry Animals” in the venue’s blurb, are currently trading as Das Koolies and – on 2023 debut album DK.01 – leaning more towards widescreen, grown-up techno, albeit with some guitar-pop moments. This is their second Swansea show this year, after playing …
7 events,
Clubland Classix Cwmbran
Clubland Classix Cwmbran
Bridging the not necessarily vast chasm between chart dance of a 90s/00s vintage and trance/happy hardcore/hardstyle of the type more often found in actual dance clubs, this event runs from 6pm-1am and features Billy Gillies, Andy Whitby, Sash!, Ultrabeat, Flip & Fill, Klubfiller and MCs Keyes and Wotsee.
Electric Fire
Electric Fire
London-based purveyors of best-time dance-pop Electric Fire are playing their first gig in Wales this month, and that’s something to be dead pleased about. What’s more, their appearance forms part …
Billy Porter
Billy Porter
American actor and singer Billy Porter’s autumn tour brings his dynamic life story to the stage, blending tracks from his latest album Black Mona Lisa with his 90s r’n’b roots and Broadway successes – including stints in Grease and Kinky Boots, the latter winning him a Tony Award.
10 events,
A Tiger’s Tale
A Tiger’s Tale
Sadly there isn’t a real tiger in this play, let alone one who tells you a tale, but it is based on a real story about a real tiger. She was named Fenella and lived in Holmfirth, Yorkshire in the 1940s, originally in a normal house and subsequently as part of a travelling circus. On …
Enter The Dragon
Enter The Dragon
Relive the golden age of trance mania, with all neon boob tubes and Lego glued to your forehead, at this day/evening rave by Enter The Dragon, boom-era trance promoters now reborn. Guiseppe Ottaviani and Factor B are the main room’s two main acts, with a second room of hard dance featuring Lisa Pin-Up and Rob …
Pontease
Pontease
Sophomore show for this recently-established Rhondda cabaret revue, following a sell-out debut here in March. This one has sold out too! They’re deeming 12 days before Halloween to be sufficiently close to make that date their theme, with “BOO-bies” – their words – promised amidst a variety lineup of drag, burlesque and circus.
1 event,
2 events,
Mumfighter
3 events,
Dolly Chicken Comedy
Dolly Chicken Comedy
DCC are back in Barry with four standups plus host/MC Anita Shaw. Rich Wilson, no relation to Meldrew-portraying actor Richard Wilson, headlines over Carwyn Jones, Kate McGann and Aled Richards, …
Undermined
Undermined
A one-man play set during the miners’ strike of 1984, Undermined has been brought back a decade after its 30th-anniversary debut. Written by Danny Mellor while he was a RWCMD …
3 events,
Now
Now
“Now, by choreographer Jasmin Vardimon MBE, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Jasmin Vardimon Company.” Sometimes you’ve gotta big yourself up. No but seriously, her show pays tribute to the performers who’ve made the JVC’s name in dance theatre over a quarter-century, while also referencing world events and social changes in that time. Tickets: …
ABC: An Intimate Evening With Martin Fry
ABC: An Intimate Evening With Martin Fry
British pop classicists ABC did a bells’n’whistles tour earlier this year, with lynchpin member Martin Fry fronting an orchestra, but for autumn the singer is out on his tod for evenings of “stripped-back music and conversation”. So expect timpani and tuba to be in short supply in Newport and Swansea, but silky patter in abundance.
6 events,
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler
Dating from 1891, Henrik Ibsen’s world-renowned play portrays a middle-class Norwegian woman who ruins people’s lives because she’s a bit bored and it’s something to do. Good idea for a modern update (disregard if already done) would be to have a narrator continually reminding the audience that Hedda is actually practising radical self-care. Tickets: £7.50-£15. …
H.M.S Pinafore
H.M.S Pinafore
Vision Arts Wales are taking on HMS Pinafore in a modern cabaret style – what would creators Ian Gilbert and Ian Sullivan, professionally known as Gilbert & Sullivan, say? I think they’d be fine with it personally. Not certain if the gentleman on the poster is part of the cast but he looks like a …
Wicked
Wicked
A month before its film adaptation (part one) gets its big screen outing, musical behemoth Wicked is flying back into Cardiff for a whole month at the Wales Millennium Centre. Coming up for 20 years in the West End to boot, this is the musical’s third tour of the UK and Ireland, and the fandom …
John Grant + Big Special
John Grant + Big Special
Having recalibrated his blend of classic and electronic pop with assistance from producer Ivor Guest, whose name is a self-contained ‘knock knock’ joke, John Grant is touring the results of this recalibration – The Art Of The Lie, his sixth album – this month, stopping off in Cardiff as he often does. Midlands duo Big …
9 events,
Boia Festival
Boia Festival
Boia began life in 2018 as a gig promo company in St Davids – farflung by British geographical standards, and thus shunned by most tour circuits – whose tastes focused on Americana, folk, indie and the threads connecting them. Last year, they took the plunge with their first three-day festival, dotted around the Pembrokeshire micro-city’s …
Stick Fly
Stick Fly
Written by Lydia Diamond and directed here by Jade Lewis, Stick Fly is an unflinching look at the wealthier echelons of Black America. It’s set on Martha’s Vineyard, in the dead posh Edgartown, and when the two LeVay sons each bring their new squeezes home to meet the family, race- and class-related sparks fly. Tickets: …
Kids In Glass Houses
Kids In Glass Houses
Cardiffian emo/alt/pop-punk/post-hardcore luminaries Kids In Glass Houses dipped their toe in the ‘being a band again’ water with some 2023 gigs, and have now recorded a new album – Pink …
Borderlines
Borderlines
Following a show by Alison Cotton at Powys country pile Gregynog in March, the in-house people there and local promoter Ian Fraser are again teaming up to air some of …
Queenz: Drag Me To The Disco!
Queenz: Drag Me To The Disco!
Drag variety show whose USP is that the Queenz sing live and… that might be it actually. None of them seem to be names who would in themselves entice drag fans along, and it all seems a little bit end-of-the-pier, Saturday night ITV kind of thing. One of them is called Billie Eyelash though, there’s …
9 events,
Tipping The Velvet
Tipping The Velvet
Twenty-two years ago, the BBC adaption of Sarah Waters’ Victorian-era lesbian romance novel Tipping The Velvet scandalised living rooms and broke ground. Retooled for the stage by playwright Laura Wade, this version premiered at Hammersmith’s Lyric Theatre in 2015 and is now set to play at the Royal Welsh College’s Richard Burton Theatre, presented by …
Neffa-T
Neffa-T
A step slightly outside this club’s self-imposed genre confines with a headline set from bass-first UK DJ Neffa-T, who loves his grime, dubstep and 140 bpm tackle but also some techno and the sort of lefter-field club sounds propagated by many producers in his home city of Bristol. Other DJs tonight include Ria, Grave and …
Kane Brown
Kane Brown
This London standup’s show does not specify what topics may feature but does promise “honesty and sincerity”. Titled Don’t Listen To Me, it debuted in 2022 with the longer title Don’t Listen To Me, I Chat Shit, which to my mind throws the claim of honesty and sincerity into question. Tickets: £20/£36 meet and greet.
8 events,
Jah Wobble
Jah Wobble
As with Jah Wobble’s last Welsh visits, in April, some of his shows will feature the music of his band since the 1980s, Invaders Of The Heart, and others will …
Bob Vylan
Bob Vylan
Rappin’, rockin’, complainin’ in song about not winning crap music prize ‘the Mercury’: London duo Bob Vylan can do it all. Singer Bobby Vylan, not to be confused with his bandmate Bobbie Vylan, was an engaging Buzz interviewee ahead of their latest album’s release, and the band have duly returned to Cardiff in a bigger …
6 events,
Hedda Gabler
Wicked
Stick Fly
Tipping The Velvet
Flossy & Boo: Crafty Cabaret
Flossy & Boo: Crafty Cabaret
Not just a show, though south Wales kids’ entertainers Flossy & Boo certainly specialise in those, but a workshop which precedes the show and indeed creates it. Crafty Cabaret is created from a bunch of unconventional objects repurposed Womble-like to be theatre props, costumes and set elements, before F&B improvise the set accordingly.
Reg Meuross: Stolen From God
Reg Meuross: Stolen From God
First unveiled in the form of an album in 2023, Stolen From God is a folk song cycle tackling England’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. The writer behind it, …
8 events,
Now That’s What I Call A Musical
Now That’s What I Call A Musical
Musical comedy, directed by Craig Revel Horwood, aimed at anyone nostalgic for the British pop charts of the late 80s. Concerning a school reunion 20 years on and the presence of old flames – not to mention flame-haired Scouse siren Sonia – if you saw SAW-themed musical I Should Be So Lucky when it toured …
Cymrix
Cymrix
Following past productions Inside Outside and Jemima, Arad Goch’s latest show, Cymrix by playwright Alun Saunders, explores identity and the Welsh language through the eyes of three young people. Aimed at children aged 9 and older, this bilingual production tackles self-discovery and the challenges of growing up as a young Welsh person. On at 11am, …
Tez Ilyas
Tez Ilyas
Arriving in Cardiff nearly two months into a near-three-month UK tour, roving Blackburn comic Ilyas, known for playing a character named Eight in sitcom Man Like Mobeen, takes a look back over the last two years of his life in standup show After Eight. Not that familiar with his comedy but he seems really sound. …
Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Mid Wales Opera return this autumn with Pagliacci, also known as Clowns. This is Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo’s gripping operatic thriller, one which blurs the lines between the stage and reality. Featured within, comedy actor Canio must perform as a husband whose wife is having an affair, even as his real-life marriage unravels.
9 events,
Under Milk Wood
Under Milk Wood
Swansea Little Theatre is not only the in-house company of the Dylan Thomas Theatre, it’s the one Thomas joined when he took up acting in the 1930s. There wasn’t a building called the Dylan Thomas Theatre at the time, obviously. Anyway, SLT have an annual crack at Under Milk Wood, and this is this year’s. …
Beak>
Beak>
Buzz’s Ben Woolhead called Beak>’s album >>>> “a genuinely psychedelic experience” on its release in June. I dislike when people use keyboard characters for titles rather than actual words, so dismissed it on principle, but folks with better things to care about may thrill to the rangy Westcountry rock action of Geoff Barrow and co.
Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Mid Wales Opera return this autumn with Pagliacci, also known as Clowns. This is Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo’s gripping operatic thriller, one which blurs the lines between the stage and reality. Featured within, comedy actor Canio must perform as a husband whose wife is having an affair, even as his real-life marriage unravels.
Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin
Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin
This fella is over from Dublin to play a few UK dates, including two in Wales, with a slot at Cardigan’s Other Voices following this warmup in Powys. Eoghan is …
11 events,
Ballet Cymru: Momentum / Surge
Ballet Cymru: Momentum / Surge
Following a well-received stint performing their Welsh-language take on Romeo & Juliet, Ballet Cymru return with two original in-house creations, each about 25 minutes long and premiering here in Newport. Momentum is directed by Marcus J Willis of Phoenix Dance Theatre, Surge by Marc Brew, both choreographers being Ballet Cymru Associate Artists. Tickets: £9.50-£18.
Blood Show
Blood Show
Only one stat that really matters for this bout of experimental transgender performance art, and that’s the amount of fake blood used in it: 75 litres, or just under half a beer barrel, and elaborately named solo performer Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth is tapping the keg for an hour of destruction, violence, ghosts and rebirth. …
Cymrix
Cymrix
Following past productions Inside Outside and Jemima, Arad Goch’s latest show, Cymrix by playwright Alun Saunders, explores identity and the Welsh language through the eyes of three young people. Aimed at children aged 9 and older, this bilingual production tackles self-discovery and the challenges of growing up as a young Welsh person. On at 11am …
Fern Brady
Fern Brady
Widely liked Scottish standup, as seen on various comedy programmes, gameshows and comedy gameshows. Her latest show, following the publication of debut book Strong Female Character in spring, is called I Gave You Milk To Drink, for reasons unspecified, but topics under discussion include being autistic, getting Botox and doing mushrooms.
Paddy McGuinness
Paddy McGuinness
First standup tour in nine years for Lancashire everyman McGuinness, who looks very good for 51 in this younger man’s opinion. Not sure what he’s been up to lately other than appearing on Who Do You Think You Are? and finding out that he has some Irish ancestry. The jokes write themselves, and hopefully will …
10 events,
Pest Control
Pest Control
Since their first stirrings in autumn 2020, Leeds quintet Pest Control have been absolutely holding it down when it comes to crossover thrash played by dedicated hardcore punks with a wardrobe of Slayer shirts. They’ve deservedly grown their profile pretty much month on month, so their first gig in Wales is seriously overdue, and as …
Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Mid Wales Opera return this autumn with Pagliacci, also known as Clowns. This is Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo’s gripping operatic thriller, one which blurs the lines between the stage and reality. Featured within, comedy actor Canio must perform as a husband whose wife is having an affair, even as his real-life marriage unravels.
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