Latest 7 magazine

Michael Ball is busier than ever with the launch of his new album, a live tour & Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street at Chichester Festival Theatre. Andrew Kay talked to him as he finished his long run in Hairspray

How are you enjoying the last weeks of Hairspray in Bristol?
We are having the best time. I don’t know what’s in the water there, but the audiences have been a credit, a perfect way to end the whole experience.

Are you going to miss Edna?
Oh God, hugely, but it’s the right time. It’s time to move on, to leave on such a high having had such a success and a joy from beginning to end. Read the rest of this article »

The international comic from Scotland Danny Bhoy will be filling the Dome’s Concert Hall this Saturday, but first he talks on his travels, his grandma and the Edinburgh Festival with Victoria Nangle

Described as ‘Scotland’s brightest hope since Billy Connolly’, Danny Bhoy’s anecdotal style and Scottish heritage begs comparison with the Big Yin.
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Nigel Harman, aka EastEnders’ Dennis Rickman, is about to star in Shrek The Musical. He explains to Andrew Kay why he is totally at home in a West End show

How excited are you about being cast in Shrek?

Very excited. It goes back two years. I was working with a producer, and she said there’s a part for you in Shrek, just in passing, and I said ‘yeah, right’. Two years later I went in to do an audition – that was last summer. It’s been a slow journey but now it’s suddenly ‘Oh my God’, I just can’t wait to start.
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Andrew Kay talks to Jonathan Harvey, playwright and Coronation Street scriptwriter, about his new stage show Corrie and life on Britain’s most famous street

How did Corrie come about?

It came about last year, the 50th anniversary of the show. ITV was looking to do various events to celebrate and they had been talking to Phil McIntyre the theatre producer about doing some sort of theatrical experience. It was their idea to do a sort of a Reduced Shakespeare version of the show, so they asked all the writers of the team and I put my hand up and got the job.

Are you a big fan like me?
Yeah, starting as a teenager. I was about 13 when Deirdre had an affair with Mike Baldwin, that’s when I started getting slightly addicted to it. Read the rest of this article »