Catherine Jones

1 day ago | artscityliverpool.com | Catherine Jones

Liverpool’s WowFEST is marking its 25th birthday in May with a month-long programme of unmissable events featuring a host of famous names. Frank Cottrell Boyce, Armando Iannucci, Irvine Welsh, The Singh Twins, Michael Rosen, John Cooper Clarke and Kit de Waal are among the line-up for the special anniversary edition of the annual festival of radical writing. WoWFEST 25 takes place from May 1-30 at venues across the city centre.

2 days ago | artscityliverpool.com | Catherine Jones

Two wizards running a struggling chippie are at the heart of a new comedy being staged at the Royal Court Studio this summer. Sauce and Sorcery comes from the pen of Paddy Clarke and will run at the Roe Street venue from August 1-23, directed by Joe Shipman. Its Royal Court Studio premiere follows the performance of an extract of the show at the theatre’s Stage Write event in February. Abrakebabra is just a normal chippy in the Swan. Chips, fish, scallops and doner meat all served up with a smile.

2 days ago | artscityliverpool.com | Catherine Jones

Some musicals start on stage and migrate to the big screen – and some begin as films and have an afterlife in the theatre. Calamity Jane falls into the latter category, being Warner Brothers’ Technicolor riposte to MGM’s Annie Get Your Gun and which made a proper star out of a bright eyed, rosy-cheeked Doris Day. The stage musical version followed a few years later and received its British premiere in 1974 with, fun fact, Liverpool’s own Lynda La Plante as the titular frontierswoman.

2 days ago | artscityliverpool.com | Catherine Jones

The Walker Art Gallery will stage an exhibition this autumn which considers the enduring influence of British painter JMW Turner. Tickets for Turner: Always Contemporary go on sale today, the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth in London on St George’s Day 1775. The exhibition, which is due to run from October 25 to February 2026, will explore both Turner’s own work and his impact on successive generations of artists.

6 days ago | artscityliverpool.com | Catherine Jones

Fascinating hidden wartime tunnels beneath a New Brighton indoor fairground are set to be opened to the public to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day next month. During the Second World War, the barrel-vaulted space beneath the Art Deco New Palace Arcades on the Wirral resort’s waterfront housed 200 women who made vital small armaments for the war effort.