Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby
A doff of the cap to Rambert’s artistic director Benoit Swan Pouffer for teaming up with Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and the late Benjamin Zephaniah to deliver this blistering prequel to the street gang’s saga. A hit in 2022, it brought dance to a huge new audience and heads back out on tour this autumn, but a version filmed at the Hippodrome, in the gang’s home turf Birmingham, is on BBC iPlayer.
Prima Facie
After sold out runs in the West End and Broadway, and a phenomenal success with NT Live, Jodie Comer reprises her Olivier and Tony award-winning role as a barrister in a new audiobook version. Suzie Miller’s study of sexual assault and a broken legal system is available from Audible on 14 March.
The Magic Finger
In 2020, the Unicorn released a disgustingly delightful theatrical reading of The Twits. Now it presents a version of one of Roald Dahl’s lesser-known stories, The Magic Finger, directed by Milli Bhatia and performed by Corinna Brown and Lucy Mangan. Available free for 12 months on the Unicorn’s YouTube channel.
They
They, Kay Dick’s 1977 dystopian novel about artistic repression, “very delicately describes the asset-stripping of culture” director Sarah Frankcom told the Guardian before staging it at Manchester’s John Rylands Library in 2022. “It feels right to do this in a place which is a sort of church of art and a church of learning.” Performed by Maxine Peake, with movement direction by Imogen Knight, it’s released on Factory International’s online platform Factory+ on 9 March.
Complete Works: Hamlet
Who needs star casting? The Prince of Denmark is played by a long-necked bottle, Ophelia is a vase of roses, Polonius is a sad iron and Claudius is a container of flea powder in Forced Entertainment’s version of the tragedy, performed by Terry O’Connor using household objects. The company’s full collection of irreverent, insightful and addictive “tabletop Shakespeares” is now free online.
To Da Bone
“5, 6, 7, 8!” And they’re off – a crew of jumpstyle dancers in trackie tops, moving through throng, line and ring formations to an explosive finale that is all angular limbs and blistering beats. Choreographed by hip French collective (La)Horde, who are at London’s Southbank Centre this month, To Da Bone is on YouTube, with an accompanying documentary.
Star on the Rise: La Bayadère ... Reimagined!
Marius Petipa’s problematic 19th-century classic becomes the backstage drama of a Hollywood western. Phil Chan, whose initiative Final Bow for Yellowface aims to eliminate stereotypes of Asians in ballet, co-stages with dance historian and musicologist Doug Fullington. Indiana University Bloomington present three livestreams from 29-30 March.
Barnes’ People
Peter Barnes’s monologues, written for BBC Radio in the 1980s, were first released in 2021 as part of Original Theatre’s digital offerings during the pandemic. Now they are back online, bringing together a fine cast: Jon Culshaw, Matthew Kelly, Jemma Redgrave and (in the controversial True Born Englishman) Adrian Scarborough.
A Close Approximation of You
The playwright and teacher Oliver Emanuel, who died aged 43 from brain cancer last year, left behind a richly reflective body of work for stage and radio. This hour-long audio drama, on BBC Sounds, is a fitting tribute as it explores the theory of a mirror version of our world.
Unseen
The Unseen is the name of a 2022 report by the Vision Foundation into blind and partially sighted people’s experiences of domestic abuse. Now, its findings have inspired an audio drama, directed by Ben Wilson for theatre company Extant, asking: “Where do we turn when the ones who are supposed to love and care for us are the very people we’re most afraid of?” Available from 4 March.
