Top 5: Waterside shows in November 2018

Lady Chatterley and Dorian Gray are given a new lease on life with inventive interpretations of old stories, and there are musical treats as The Carpenters and The Beautiful South also get a retelling at Waterside this November…

Theatre: Anthem for a Doomed Youth
Named with a nod to one of Wilfred Owen’s 1917 poems, this powerful one-man show from Guy Masterson (Under Milk Wood, Animal Farm) marks 100 years since the end of the Great War with a re-telling of some of the best-known stories from the trenches, such as the Christmas Truce, and a recital of pieces by French, German and English war poets including Owen, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon.
Thu 1 Nov, 7.30pm, £13-15, watersidearts.org

Music: The South
Former members of The Beautiful South, including singer Alison Wheeler and sax player-turned-vocalist Gaz Birtles, reinvigorate some of the band’s most famous numbers, with all the full flavour and excitement of a nine-piece live ensemble. Spanning nearly 20 years, since 1989 when they first formed, get ready for classics like number one A Little Time, Don’t Marry Her, Good as Gold, Perfect 10 and Rotterdam. Support comes courtesy Ivan Campo.
Fri 2 Nov, 7.30pm, £23-25, watersidearts.org

Theatre: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Award-winning theatre company Box Tale Soup’s unique and inventive 2017 take on the classic Oscar Wilde story of evil, debauchery and scandal combines puppetry, physical theatre, traditional performance and a powerful original soundtrack. Despite a frivolous lifestyle of glamorous luxury and selfish abandon, the titular character remains young and beautiful, unchanged by corruption and age – but Dorian Gray’s portrait, hidden away under lock and key, tells a different story…
Tue 6 Nov, 7.30pm, £12-14, watersidearts.org

Comedy theatre: Not: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Take a once-banned novel, add a few twists and innuendoes, and, ta-da, DH Lawrence’s classic comes to the stage with lots of laughs and a few touching moments. Lady Chatterley welcomes her husband home from a war that has left the world – and Clifford’s legs – in tatters. As their marriage falls apart, she falls into a steamy affair with gamekeeper Mellors – and the rest, as we know, is literary history.
Fri 9 Nov, 8.15pm, £12-14, watersidearts.org

Comedy musical: Richard Carpenter is Close to You
Not so much a biography as a “what if?” re-telling of the life of the less famous sibling after the death of the more famous, this show is a pitch-perfect parody, complete with all your favourite songs by The Carpenters brought to the stage by comedian and musician Matthew Floyd Jones. Richard used to be on top of the world, to the left of (and slightly behind) Karen. Now he’s flying solo…
Fri 9 Nov, 8pm, £12-14, watersidearts.org

Thu 1 Nov – Fri 9 Nov, Waterside, 1 Waterside Plaza, Sale, Manchester, M33 7ZF, Tel: 0161 912 5616, times and prices vary, watersidearts.org