There has been a lot of love for Heartbreak Productions via email and Twitter since Tuesday's blog about their forthcoming visit to Manchester, including several impassioned cries of "I want to buy tickets but there's no link on the website!" Obviously my grim weather warnings have been soundly ignored by the occupants of Greater Manchester, who are made of sterner stuff and are clearly not to be put off by a gallon of rain or two.
Tickets for Pride & Prejudice, The Taming of the Shrew and Pinnochio will be available online from this Sunday; however, Heartbreak have been in touch with the following very kind offer...
Hi Heartbreak here, really love this blog and as a treat for Liz’s followers here is the link to purchase tickets at a special 20% discounted rate
http://www.heartbreakproductions.co.uk/friendstickets
The link expires this Saturday so be quick. Thereafter visit the home page of our website and in the top right is a link to the ticket sales area.
This offer is available wherever you are in the country, not just Manchester, so it's worth a look to see if they're coming anywhere near this summer, because they are ACE.
So, absolutely no excuses now - go and get your tickets this minute; you should then probably spend the money you've saved on a nice sturdy brolly and some galoshes.
Showing posts with label Heartbreak Productions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heartbreak Productions. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Heartbreak Productions Outdoor Theatre 2011: Mini Ice-Age Predicted for Didsbury
Now listen very carefully; I need your help. At the very least, you should acknowledge the huge effort it has cost me to resist appending the words "I shall say this only varrrrrnce" to my opening statement. Anyway, if it gets to the end of August and I have spent two misery-sodden evenings sitting outside in the cold, the rain and the raging gale, one of you is to take me to one side and read me, slowly and patiently, the following pre-prepared statement:
"You do this every year, and you are a fool. Each April, after an unseasonably warm few weeks during which you have got over-excited and decreed it to be summer, you get a letter from Heartbreak Productions, you know, the people who do the really good outdoor theatre. You forget that in July and August you do not have to go to work, and therefore the weather is always unspeakably foul during these months, offering little but constant drizzle and continually prompting you to wonder whether it would be extravagant to put the heating on. Having forgotten this, you book tickets for whatever lovely productions they are doing - and this year it was two of your favourites, wasn't it, Pride and Prejudice and The Taming of the Shrew. You stood no chance. And yet, shouldn't you have paid that extra two pounds (two pounds!) for covered seating, just in case?. Well, too late now - just make sure you learn a valuable lesson for next year."
Please make sure that last bit is read in a really FIRM voice, preferably with a cross face so that I really take notice. I have written before of the sheer brilliance of the Heartbreak team - they are talented beyond belief, and one of them is often very good-looking as well (the cast varies from year to year), but they do not always bring good weather with them. We have in truth often been lucky with the weather, apart from an embarrassingly miserable evening when I took a Spanish friend to see Twelfth Night and it hammered it down - we struggled on until half time, but when the contents of our glasses had reached a ratio of half pink wine, half rainwater, it really was time to go.
Full details of this year's programme are on the Heartbreak website - both P & P (I have already started work on my "I love you, Mr Darcy" banner, in the hope that he will be this year's good-looking one) and The Taming of the Shrew are on at Didsbury's Fletcher Moss Park in August. They are also doing Pinocchio at Wythenshawe Park, but as my friend's nephews, whom we borrow as a pretext for attending such things, are now getting a little too old to be so easily manipulated, we haven't booked for this one. This is worth you knowing, as the weather will be fine and sunny for these performances; if you're alongside me during P & P, ruminating sadly on your soggy quiche, then please accept my apologies. Perhaps next year, you'll learn a valuable lesson and book the covered seating...
"You do this every year, and you are a fool. Each April, after an unseasonably warm few weeks during which you have got over-excited and decreed it to be summer, you get a letter from Heartbreak Productions, you know, the people who do the really good outdoor theatre. You forget that in July and August you do not have to go to work, and therefore the weather is always unspeakably foul during these months, offering little but constant drizzle and continually prompting you to wonder whether it would be extravagant to put the heating on. Having forgotten this, you book tickets for whatever lovely productions they are doing - and this year it was two of your favourites, wasn't it, Pride and Prejudice and The Taming of the Shrew. You stood no chance. And yet, shouldn't you have paid that extra two pounds (two pounds!) for covered seating, just in case?. Well, too late now - just make sure you learn a valuable lesson for next year."
Please make sure that last bit is read in a really FIRM voice, preferably with a cross face so that I really take notice. I have written before of the sheer brilliance of the Heartbreak team - they are talented beyond belief, and one of them is often very good-looking as well (the cast varies from year to year), but they do not always bring good weather with them. We have in truth often been lucky with the weather, apart from an embarrassingly miserable evening when I took a Spanish friend to see Twelfth Night and it hammered it down - we struggled on until half time, but when the contents of our glasses had reached a ratio of half pink wine, half rainwater, it really was time to go.
Full details of this year's programme are on the Heartbreak website - both P & P (I have already started work on my "I love you, Mr Darcy" banner, in the hope that he will be this year's good-looking one) and The Taming of the Shrew are on at Didsbury's Fletcher Moss Park in August. They are also doing Pinocchio at Wythenshawe Park, but as my friend's nephews, whom we borrow as a pretext for attending such things, are now getting a little too old to be so easily manipulated, we haven't booked for this one. This is worth you knowing, as the weather will be fine and sunny for these performances; if you're alongside me during P & P, ruminating sadly on your soggy quiche, then please accept my apologies. Perhaps next year, you'll learn a valuable lesson and book the covered seating...
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Heartbreak Productions at Wythenshawe Park; Or, the Power of Pink Wine
As discussed in a previous post, if you want to guarantee a wet summer, simply book tickets for a selection of open-air theatre productions. I'm sure it's no coincidence that my interest in such events has corresponded with a series of utterly rubbish summers; I hold my hands up and accept the blame. So none of our party was remotely surprised yesterday evening to find ourselves glumly trudging to Wythenshawe Park in the rain, grimly clutching our folding chairs and our optimistically exuberant picnic (you see - English to the core; still intending on picnicking despite the monsoon.)
And then a funny thing happened. As we took our seats for Heartbreak Productions' "Love in Shakespeare" and popped the cork on the pink fizz, the heavens cleared. Blue sky arched overhead and the sun smiled down on us through the trees. A hush descended and we took a quiet moment to appreciate the power of the pink wine, the cup-cake, and the M & S pork pie.
After such an auspicious start, the play was bound to be good; and it was. I had initially been a little suspicious - Heartbreak always put on a mighty Shakespeare performance, with previous years including The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Romeo and Juliet, so why mess about with something calling itself "a comedic and at times, irreverent love story intertwined with some of the Bard’s best bits"? Why would you want to chop Shakespeare up into little pieces? I want it ALL, not a Big Brother-style highlights package!
Of course, it was all fine. The play was written especially for Heartbreak, and featured a talent night in a modern-day pub called The Shakespeare where each of the acts found themselves mysteriously transformed into Bard-spouting poets. The plot is so hopelessly contrived that one of the cast cheerfully admits as much right at the beginning of proceedings, but it IS funny - even a stray husband who'd been forced to attend due to a last-minute spare ticket enjoyed it. The cast switch effortlessly between roles, with all the characters played by just five performers, and as usual they can all sing and play instruments as well as act. The boys are cute this year as well, after a slight dip in quality in recent years.
The summer season for Heartbreak is nearly at an end but there is still time (just) to catch them - check out their website at www.heartbreakproductions.co.uk to find out where they'll be. I've even got some leftover party sausages in the fridge if you're willing to collect - no pink wine though, so you'll need to get your own if you want to stay dry.
And then a funny thing happened. As we took our seats for Heartbreak Productions' "Love in Shakespeare" and popped the cork on the pink fizz, the heavens cleared. Blue sky arched overhead and the sun smiled down on us through the trees. A hush descended and we took a quiet moment to appreciate the power of the pink wine, the cup-cake, and the M & S pork pie.
After such an auspicious start, the play was bound to be good; and it was. I had initially been a little suspicious - Heartbreak always put on a mighty Shakespeare performance, with previous years including The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Romeo and Juliet, so why mess about with something calling itself "a comedic and at times, irreverent love story intertwined with some of the Bard’s best bits"? Why would you want to chop Shakespeare up into little pieces? I want it ALL, not a Big Brother-style highlights package!
Of course, it was all fine. The play was written especially for Heartbreak, and featured a talent night in a modern-day pub called The Shakespeare where each of the acts found themselves mysteriously transformed into Bard-spouting poets. The plot is so hopelessly contrived that one of the cast cheerfully admits as much right at the beginning of proceedings, but it IS funny - even a stray husband who'd been forced to attend due to a last-minute spare ticket enjoyed it. The cast switch effortlessly between roles, with all the characters played by just five performers, and as usual they can all sing and play instruments as well as act. The boys are cute this year as well, after a slight dip in quality in recent years.
The summer season for Heartbreak is nearly at an end but there is still time (just) to catch them - check out their website at www.heartbreakproductions.co.uk to find out where they'll be. I've even got some leftover party sausages in the fridge if you're willing to collect - no pink wine though, so you'll need to get your own if you want to stay dry.
Friday, 23 July 2010
Crazy Ladies Sign Up for Outdoor Theatre...Again
So, after a blistering start, the British summer has now reverted to type and is offering up a surly mixture of rain, thunder, gale-force winds and fleeting glimpses of sunshine. This happens every year, so surely only blind optimists and downright foolhardy types would continue to book tickets for theatre productions staged outdoors in the middle of the pot-luck English summer. And yet I notice that my diary is insisting I appear to be doing this very activity tomorrow night, having apparently signed up to see An Ideal Husband in Didsbury's Fletcher Moss Park.
As I obviously prefer to think of myself as an optimist rather than some kind of idiot, let us examine the reasons behind my devotion to outdoor theatre:
1. The company that we go to see every year, Heartbreak Productions, are brilliant. Over the years we have seen them perform all sorts of things - they always do a Shakespeare, a children's play, and a third play that this year has been snaffled by Oscar Wilde. Although the cast is slightly different each year, they are always irritatingly young, attractive and talented; it's not clever to be able to sing, dance, act AND play musical instruments, you know. Take a look at their website at www.heartbreakproductions.co.uk if you don't believe me.
2. Ususally, the weather is lovely. We have only had one real disaster, when we saw Twelfth Night a few years ago - it poured and poured, and umbrellas were banned in the interests of the people at the back still being able to see (selfish). To make things worse, we had a persuaded another friend of mine to come along; she is Spanish, and was not amused by watching Shakespeare in the rain. We left at half time and drank wine at my house instead.
3. Last year my friend was volunteered by her young nephews to get up on stage during The Wind in The Willows and play the part of a prospective Mrs Toad. When asked what she could bring to the marriage she (accurately) replied that she was very good at opening champagne bottles. That's my girl. Mr Toad did go on to turn her down, but not until her sister had helpfully videoed the whole thing.
4. Picnics are obligatory, the more middle-class the better. Ideally, pop to M&S or Waitrose and purchase a range of items to include quiche, pork pies, potato salad, coleslaw, crisps, dips, strawberries, and pink wine. You then spread this out around you and proceed to consume it noisily throughout the performance.
5. The locations are beautiful. Tomorrow's play is in the exquisite Fletcher Moss Gardens; the Shakespeare one in August is at Wythenshawe Park, in the lovely gardens by the house. Although we do walk VERY quickly back through the park afterwards.
So, you see - actually not foolish at all. Although, if it's wet tomorrow I'll be wishing once again I'd coughed up for the undercover seats....
As I obviously prefer to think of myself as an optimist rather than some kind of idiot, let us examine the reasons behind my devotion to outdoor theatre:
1. The company that we go to see every year, Heartbreak Productions, are brilliant. Over the years we have seen them perform all sorts of things - they always do a Shakespeare, a children's play, and a third play that this year has been snaffled by Oscar Wilde. Although the cast is slightly different each year, they are always irritatingly young, attractive and talented; it's not clever to be able to sing, dance, act AND play musical instruments, you know. Take a look at their website at www.heartbreakproductions.co.uk if you don't believe me.
2. Ususally, the weather is lovely. We have only had one real disaster, when we saw Twelfth Night a few years ago - it poured and poured, and umbrellas were banned in the interests of the people at the back still being able to see (selfish). To make things worse, we had a persuaded another friend of mine to come along; she is Spanish, and was not amused by watching Shakespeare in the rain. We left at half time and drank wine at my house instead.
3. Last year my friend was volunteered by her young nephews to get up on stage during The Wind in The Willows and play the part of a prospective Mrs Toad. When asked what she could bring to the marriage she (accurately) replied that she was very good at opening champagne bottles. That's my girl. Mr Toad did go on to turn her down, but not until her sister had helpfully videoed the whole thing.
4. Picnics are obligatory, the more middle-class the better. Ideally, pop to M&S or Waitrose and purchase a range of items to include quiche, pork pies, potato salad, coleslaw, crisps, dips, strawberries, and pink wine. You then spread this out around you and proceed to consume it noisily throughout the performance.
5. The locations are beautiful. Tomorrow's play is in the exquisite Fletcher Moss Gardens; the Shakespeare one in August is at Wythenshawe Park, in the lovely gardens by the house. Although we do walk VERY quickly back through the park afterwards.
So, you see - actually not foolish at all. Although, if it's wet tomorrow I'll be wishing once again I'd coughed up for the undercover seats....
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