Bradley Riches is excited to be back on stage in Babies, a new British coming-of-age musical, because the theatre is where he first found “my people”. The 22-year-old actor is best known for Netflix’s hit coming-of-age drama Heartstopper, in which he plays James, a character who, like him, is queer and autistic. Riches also boosted his profile with a recent reality TV stint. “I walked past some builders the other day and they were like, ‘You’re the lad from Celebrity Big Brother,'” he says, still sounding surprised.

But before that, he trained in musical theatre at Emil Dale Academy in Hitchin. “I did some stage shows when I was younger, but then my voice broke,” Riches says, speaking over Zoom from a “cubby hole” at his Buckinghamshire home. “So I had to work out my lower vocal range. Then I graduated and obviously went into TV. So this is my adult professional stage debut.”

Babies, which has just opened at London’s The Other Palace theatre, definitely presents Riches with a fresh challenge. Written by rising stars Jack Godfrey and Martha Geelan – who also directs – it follows nine Year 11 classmates who are tasked with keeping a fake baby alive for a week.

“That might sound a bit ridiculous,” Riches says with a laugh. “But the show is really about growing up and finding out who you are.” He plays Toby, a gay student who shares his simulated baby with Jacob, the school’s “typical popular boy” played by Nathan Johnston. “They go on a bit of a journey together,” Riches says teasingly.

One of Toby’s classmates is negotiating a fraught relationship with her own mother; another is grappling with their gender identity. Babies explores these multifarious teen experiences in perky original songs that draw from contemporary pop. “Some have a rocky vibe and others are sadder – a little more Olivia Rodrigo,” Riches says.

Growing up in Surrey, Bradley Riches found his own voice at after-school acting classes. He began taking them aged nine because his parents thought, correctly as it turned out, that the creative environment might boost his confidence.

“I didn’t go in thinking I wanted to act for a living – it was just a hobby,” he says. “But as I gained in confidence and started auditioning for roles, I was like: ‘This is helping me in so ways.'” At 14, Riches signed with an agent and began acting in Off West End productions including Disaster!, a musical spoof of Hollywood disaster movies.

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Nine was also a milestone age for Riches because he was diagnosed with autism. “My parents were slowly understanding why I did things in certain ways, but I didn’t really understand what being autistic was,” he says. At secondary school, he only told “very close friends” he was neurodivergent.

“There’s a stigma and shame around autism,” he says. “So I would always mask it and dim myself. I was like, ‘Yeah, I know I am [autistic]. But let’s just ignore it and keep going.'”

Thankfully, as he entered his late-teens, Riches felt able to be “very open about my sexuality”. This in turn helped him to embrace his autism. “I began to understand ‘me’ with regards to being gay and being autistic. It helped me feel more confident and kind of solidified who I was,” he says.

At drama school, Riches was warned by a neurodivergent teacher that no one in the industry would “really care” about his specific needs as an autistic person. He expected to have to “grin and bear it”, but after being cast in Heartstopper in 2022, he received an email from producers asking how they could make filming easier for him. “That was incredible,” he says.

Some of his audition experiences have been less positive. “It feels like they never want to give too much away in case it gives you the upper hand,” he says. “One time I was auditioning for an autistic role and they literally just said: ‘Meet here at 2pm.’ I had to ask for more information because often I need to get to the audition space three hours early just so I can find the door and know 100% where everything is.”

It would be relatively easy for the industry to improve, he says. “Just being sent a photo of the audition space in advance and being told who’s going to greet you are little things they could do – but generally don’t – to make it more accessible.”

Riches describes Heartstopper, which returns for its third season in October, as an “amazing first job” that gave him a gateway into advocacy work. Because Heartstopper centres on a varied array of LGBTQ+ characters, it turned Riches and castmates Joe Locke, Kit Connor and Yasmin Finney into role models. He is now an ambassador for the campaigning and research charity Autistica.

With author James A Lyons, he has co-written a children’s book, “A” Different Kind of Superpower, that reframes autism as something to be celebrated. When Riches entered the Celebrity Big Brother house in March, he was comfortable enough to show himself “stimming”: using repetitive movements to dispel anxious energy from his body.

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He also opened up to housemate Marisha Wallace, a fellow musical theatre performer, about some of the ways in which his autism shows up. “I lie there in bed and it’s like, god, how am I going to greet everyone in the morning,” Riches told her.

But after he left the house, Riches received comments from trolls who claimed his autism was somehow disingenuous. He used this as a teachable moment, writing on Instagram: “We have always been presented by stereotypes in the media telling us how autistic people are meant to look, behave and present. Just because I don’t fit into what you have seen before and fit into what you think ‘being autistic’ is, doesn’t mean I am not autistic.”

Bradley Riches says the routine of appearing in Babies suits him – he arranges his day “like a school timetable” to manage his autism. And he has straightforward advice for anyone still getting to grips with their own neurodivergence: “Give yourself time. You don’t need to learn every single thing about what it means for you straight away. Like every part of finding out who you are, it’s an ongoing process.”

Bradley Riches stars in Babies at The Other Palace, London, until 14 July.

When watching rehearsals of the new stage adaptation of his memoir Maggie & Me, Damian Barr had to resist the urge to help.

“Seeing an actor playing you being bundled by bullies into a wardrobe and then that wardrobe being pushed down a hill and exploding on stage, I wanted to run on in rehearsals and save the actors or myself,” said the author, speaking about the new stage adaptation of his memoir Maggie & Me. “And I wanted to save my mother, my brother, my sister and my father from what is about to happen.”

What is about to happen is what might be described as Maggie & Me version 2.0, a new take on Barr’s memoir mounted by the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) touring Scotland and the north of England this spring.

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The production of the award-winning story, which was published in 2013, zooms out from the harrowing narrative of the author’s childhood and places him as an adult character (played by Boiling Point’s Gary Lamont) watching his life play out through the memories of the troubles he endured as a boy growing up in Thatcher-era Lanarkshire.

Damian Barr’s personal traumas while coming of age in the double sunsets of the doomed Ravenscraig Steelworks are paralleled by the societal trauma wreaked on Scotland’s industries by her policies. 

As the furnaces cooled and were eventually blown down, the young Barr was grappling for survival amid the head-spinning tumult of physical abuse, growing up gay in a hard-handed society trammelled by tombstone Aids adverts on the telly and Section 28 in the classrooms which imposed a veil of silence, secrecy and shame on the lives of young people who thought they might be something other than straight.

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It took Barr seven years to finish writing his memoir. Adapting it for stage with playwright James Ley has taken much less time. Still, watching himself being roughhoused through his tender years hasn’t been any easier than writing it was for the journalist, author, TV presenter and former Big Issue columnist.

Barr said: “I’ve had nightmares that I have not had for years. I have had to sit in meetings talking about myself in the third person. Talking about the moment when my mum’s boyfriend nearly drowned me in the bath, talking about that as a scene and something that has to work on stage, and the responsibilities that you have to other actors to make that safe.

“I’m there thinking, ‘This actually happened to me, but now it’s work.’ It’s not like the thing is happening again, but you have to go back into the burning building and come out with something different.

“I have clear boundaries about things that I don’t want to see dramatised, and things from my past that aren’t in the book. But there are also things I have put on stage that I didn’t put in the book. Things that I can handle now.”

The theatre company have provided Damian Barr with two therapists throughout the process. They’ve also given him tickets near an exit.

“It’s loads of fun,” he said. “Very exciting. I love dialogue and all the humour is expanded on. But it’s not easy.

“You’re much more vulnerable with memoir,” said the Bellshill-born author, whose first novel, You Will Be Safe Here, was published in 2019.  “It’s another level with the play, sitting with a bunch of strangers watching the most intimate moments of my life played out. I don’t know how that is going to feel. I have seats near the door so I can run if I need to.”

For Barr, who lives with his husband on the south coast of England, the distance travelled by British politics since those days of Thatcherism has taken today’s Tories into territory their prime matriarch would fail to comprehend.

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“I think people thought Margaret Thatcher was as bad as it could get. But you look at the current Conservative government at Westminster and it’s far beyond anything even in Thatcher’s darkest dreams. 

“There was a sense of conviction. She did things I didn’t agree with but they weren’t just power for the sake of power.

“I think a lot of the seeds of the bitter harvest we have today were sown then. But you have Conservative politicians invoking Thatcher now that I think even Thatcher would be repelled by.”

Maggie & Me has been followed by Booker-winner Douglas Stuart, whose novels Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo mine similar territory, and newcomer artist Juano Diaz, whose recent memoir Slum Boy tells of his rise in New York art society after a tragic start in Glasgow. I suggest to Damian Barr that he’s blazed a trail for a new genre in queer Scottish literature.

“If me writing my story can help others tell theirs then that gives me great joy,” he said. 

“Compare the number of books about Motherwell and Newarthill and Glasgow to the number about Edinburgh and London, or even specific postcodes in London, and you see there’s a need for representation.

“I went to bookshelves looking for stories about people like me when I was younger and they just weren’t there. 

“It took me ages to find my voice, to become myself in order to write that book. And that voice is the voice that you will hear in Maggie & Me on stage. 

“I hope people leave thinking that their story is worth telling, too. Everybody has a story. And stories are for everybody.”

Maggie & Me is touring Scotland 7 May-15 June.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.

Between the Lines is a play borne out of collaboration between myself and Jammz as co-writers, Maggie Norris the director, and perhaps most crucially, the members of The Big House. 

Set in a pirate radio station in Hackney, the play spans the last 15 years, exploring the birth of grime music, one of Britain’s most celebrated and influential subcultures. We use this microcosm to examine themes of censorship, the right to exist and freedom of expression. 

We started with the music – looking at how the songs blaring from speakers and out of car windows of young people in certain areas of London changed over the years from garage to grime to drill. The lyrical content went from partying and status, to gang culture and slew tracks, to direct provocation and explicit intent of violent crime. 

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In recent years, drill rappers Skengdo x Am received a two-year suspended prison sentence for performing their song Attempted live after a court order banned them from doing so. This felt so wrong to us. Art is an expression of experience, why is the art being censored, while the problematic experiences these young people are facing aren’t being addressed? It’s a ‘band aid’ approach rather than addressing the root course of the problems within our society which these young people are rapping about. 

Further to this, even the association with the music can have serious implications. Just this week The Guardian published an article alleging, “Rap and drill music was used as evidence against 250 defendants.” They specifically reference one joint enterprise case where, “12 people were charged with murder despite there being only one principal offender suspect.” This was due to a gang narrative being formed around one drill music video as part of the prosecution, “even though none of the 12 rapped in the video nor had any role in producing it. These defendants appeared as extras.”

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Examples of this kind of censorship of Black experience and culture have sadly been present for decades and Between the Lines explores this generational trauma through the lens of a Jamaican family, who lie at the core of this story. 

As we watch them fight for their voice to be heard through their music, cheat their way around a system which they believe doesn’t provide for them and feel the cracks emerge under their relentless struggle to exist, we see the value of the art beyond just a song.

The cast of Big House members brings a rawness to these pertinent themes and the authenticity of their musical performances unleashes the power behind Jammz’s lyrics. 

At a time when the conditions of society feel harsher by the day, when the streets of London feel less and less safe and tensions continue to rise between authorities and minority communities across the western world, Between the Lines asks the question… whose voices have the right to be heard? And who is making that decision?

James Meteyard is the co-writer of Between the Lines, which runs until 1 June at the New Diorama Theatre, London. newdiorama.com/whats-on/between-the-lines

Liz Carr was born in Bebington, Merseyside, in April 1972. She was disabled from age seven, owing to arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, and has used a wheelchair since she was 14. She studied law at the University of Nottingham, where she became involved in politics, disabled rights and activism. After graduating she volunteered in a law centre and became a campaigner for civil rights for disabled people in the UK and internationally. 

In 2000 she co-founded the comedy group, Nasty Girls. In 2003, Liz studied performing arts with Graeae Theatre Company and London Met University and performed in productions of Mother Courage, The Vagina Monologues and The Exception and the Rule among others. 

In 2005 she joined the comedy group Abnormally Funny People, she was a finalist in the Funny Women competition 2006 and in 2007 she was runner-up in the Hackney Empire New Act competition. She has taken six shows to Edinburgh Fringe, two shows to Melbourne Comedy Festival, toured all over the world with her comedy, her cabaret and with her one woman show, It Hasn’t Happened Yet. On screen, Liz is best known for her role as forensic examiner Clarissa Mullery in the long running BBC drama, Silent Witness. 

Speaking to The Big Issue for her Letter to My Younger Self, Liz Carr looks back on facing prejudices, comedy inspirations and finding love.

From my appearance most people will think I was born disabled, but I wasn’t [Carr was disabled from age seven, owing to arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, and has used a wheelchair since she was 14]. So I understand what becoming disabled means. Although I was only seven, I went from being one kind of person – popular, fit, conventionally attractive – to another. Suddenly I was not popular any more. Kids were scared of me and I was excluded from so many things because they weren’t accessible. 

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I was led to believe that unless I could walk and do everything for myself, I didn’t have a chance in life. I was quite ill as a teen, so I only went part time to school. Every holiday I went to Wexham Park Hospital. And most evenings and weekends were doing physio. It was miserable, because I was told repeatedly that I couldn’t be any of the things I want to be. 

I grew into the person I wanted to be, but I certainly wasn’t her at 16. My good music choices were from my older brother. Left to my own devices, I’d listen to a lot of Phil Collins and (I’m embarrassed to say this) Hooked on Classics. But comedy was really important to me. I’d never watched something that made me cry laughing until An Audience with Billy Connolly. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. We booked tickets to see him at Liverpool Empire and I remember the language. My dad would swear, but never the F word – I say it all the time. So this left us a bit shellshocked. 

I wanted nice clothes but couldn’t get them because I’m little. The drugs I took meant I didn’t grow past the age of seven. I remember going to Dolcis in the Pyramids in Birkenhead with my mum. Classy! Shoes were important to me, but the manager said: “You don’t walk, so you don’t need shoes.” Even as a business model, that’s bad. But people think they can say these things to us and they won’t hurt. Yet clearly, 40 years later, I’m still carrying that around. These days I wear incredible heels and shoes. I’m stubborn like that. 

I’d like to befriend the younger me. During lockdown, my mum would ring most nights. She was sorting the house, doing that Swedish death cleaning thing. She’d go through old diaries and call with the most harrowing bits. It would be, “What did you have for your tea? Did you know you wanted to die when you were 12?” Now, I knew I was miserable but to say I’d rather be dead? It hurts me to hear that my younger self didn’t see a future. I would love to tell her you’ll fall in love, have mates, travel the world and do a job people can only dream of. She wouldn’t have believed any of it. 

I’ve never not known that I’m loved. Whatever I’ve done, my parents supported me. But I need help to go to the loo, get dressed, make a meal, and knew I had to get away from home otherwise my parents would have to look after me forever. I got a place at Nottingham to study law. At uni they provided volunteers to support us, so this was the first time people other than my mum had to assist me – I was 18 and had to find the language to tell someone how to give me a hand in the shower or dress me. It was hard to learn, really embarrassing. I also had to mingle with other disabled people for the first time. I realised how much we had in common and loved it. To feel OK in that world was the hugest relief. 

I was told all the time that I wouldn’t live to be old, and I believed it. I thought I was going to die as a teenager. I thought I was going to die as a 20-year-old. Then I thought I would die by 30. So I’d love to tell my younger self that she won’t die young – because I’ve wasted a lot of my life worrying needlessly. And there’s a lot of things we do need to worry about. 

There is a way of viewing disability that takes it away from being this individual problem and says it’s the barriers in society that are the issue. I went on a course in a care home in Ross-on-Wye, and within three hours my life changed forever. I met a woman called Sue. She had everything I wanted: lived on her own, had a partner, worked, was funny. Sue took me under her wing. Before the course I’d think, I can’t get on the bus because I can’t walk and that’s my problem. They said, what if the buses were all accessible? And it was like a celestial moment. My life’s lightbulb moment. I don’t have to do everything on my own to be dignified and have a good life. It’s called the social model of disability. Once you take the guilt off you, it’s the world around you that has to change. That’s where activism started for me. 

Non-violent direct action is a privilege to be part of. I started to run the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN) in Nottingham and we had some big protests. Our most successful was around public transport – there’s something about being in the middle of the road that’s exciting. We’d say: “I’m sorry you’re inconvenienced for 20 minutes until the police come, but we can’t get on this bus any day.” It’s a powerful visual representation.   

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Drama at school was inaccessible and I didn’t think I could act because I didn’t see disabled actors on TV. So the idea I would be stopped in the street most days because people will have seen me on Silent Witness or The OA, which is what happened today, felt completely impossible. Doing The Normal Heart at the National Theatre meant so much to me on so many levels. My character was based on a disabled woman called Linda Laubenstein, a doctor who did so much to help gay men during the Aids crisis in the 1980s. I can’t imagine the barriers she must have overcome. I can’t imagine there will ever be a better role. It came at a tough time. Covid was hard and still is. Yet, in the rehearsal room, I felt like I belonged. I didn’t feel like an imposter. Winning an Olivier Award made it even more special. 

I could have had more affairs of the heart – and more sex – if I’d believed in me more. We often do things later, disabled people. Leaving home, working, relationships. I didn’t lose my virginity until my late 20s. I remember feeling that I’m a pretty good person, so I couldn’t understand. But I also did get it. We’re not seen as viable partners. So the advice to young me would be try everything. Take risks. Be open to everything. At the time, I just wanted a boyfriend because that’s what you did. I didn’t have a sense that I would be a lesbian or bisexual. But then Jo was there – she’s a recruiter lesbian, anyway – and we fell in love.

If I could relive one day, it’s going to be a cliché, but it would be my wedding day. We had a Day of the Dead-inspired wedding. When they said ‘you may kiss the brides’, a mariachi band appeared; we had frozen margaritas. Having a big wedding really mattered to us both, for different reasons. We wanted to celebrate with the living and the dead – we thought, we’re going to get fewer presents from the dead, but they’re gonna cost less, food-wise! No, but Sue, who changed my life completely, I only knew for seven years before she died. Jo’s dad had died when she was eight. If you are part of the crip community, you lose a lot of friends. I proposed through an advent calendar on Christmas Eve 2009, and my dad started writing his speech on Boxing Day. It was beautiful. 

There’s no way I expected to get married. Admitting this makes me queasy, but I remember thinking if I ever married someone, it would have to be a doctor because they’d know how to look after me. And that’s so fucked up. It shows how medicalised and how sick you see yourself when you’re disabled. All those shitty, negative low expectations have to be overcome. But I like proving people wrong. And maybe I don’t know how to live without a fight.

Liz Carr’s documentary Better Off Dead airs on BBC One and iPlayer, 14 May at 9pm.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.

To support our work buy a copy! If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.

The idea for Lay Down Your Burdens grew in a few places. It started during Covid as I was thinking about my neighbours, the ones I knew lived alone, and I was wondering what was happening to all the ‘stuff’ that piles up in our minds, that we usually get off our chest by chatting to a mate, or family. When we haven’t got someone to chat to, listen, help find solutions, offer advice, make a joke to make it feel easier, where does the ‘stuff’ go?  

Then when everything returned to ‘business as usual’, we began a creative process called The Care House Project in Harlow, Essex. People came to talk about the care, or lack of care in their lives and over a long period of workshops with a group of people from the local community, writing, moving, sharing our experiences, I created a performance called 9 Acts Of Care. 

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One of the people involved in that project was Dave. Dave is brilliant, he’s super smart, political and cares an extraordinary amount for the people in Harlow and its environment. We would meet before each workshop and he would take me around the town, he is the beating heart of this place and a community touchstone. He told me how in one day he had lost his job, his home and was out on the streets. He introduced me to the charities that had supported him – Streets2Homes and Rainbow Services – and he told me about the load he had carried and how he had to navigate the stigma of poverty. I was in awe of how he was managing and his enthusiasm but what stood out was his determination to bring people in the community together. 

We invited him and eight other brilliant people from Harlow to be part of a show that we would create together. A show where, with their consent, their voices and experiences could be heard, and in turn resonate with anyone else going through a similar time. The objective was to help people feel that they are not alone. During the process they felt seen, they felt valued and they felt that they mattered. These are all essential basic needs that within our society that so often seem to be overlooked. The group performed the shows in Harlow Park during our Festival of Care, became a community in their own right, and also a little famous in Harlow!

Lay Down Your Burdens captured both of these moments in time. It is a dance theatre piece that began by visiting communities on the margins, again in Harlow, but then branching out to Restoke (Stoke-on-trent) and Oxford Playhouse (Oxford). We invited anyone that wanted to come along to talk about the burdens we carry. They would share the load they were carrying and in return we would offer a gift of art, a piece of dance, live music or poetry. We ran creative workshops, recorded people’s stories, wrote about heaviness, but also about the beautiful things we hold too. 

This led to a show which invites audiences into the community to stand in gratitude at what we are able to carry rather than in judgement, and feel connected in both our suffering and experiences of beauty. For a moment, in the theatre, we can see one another with soft eyes, not hard eyes. We set the show in a local pub, a place where you often go to chat things through, or to get something off your chest. The landlady became the bearer of the burdens, with a variety of characters each feeling weighed down in their own unique way, and in each show, the audience are included in a collective carrying of one another and our burdens. Transformations arrive, having moved through the joy and the sorrow.

Making the type of work that requires vulnerability and digging deep into our experiences, as well as being cathartic, can be an emotional slog, so we have a company psychologist Joy Griffiths who joins us in each of our projects and works alongside the company and the communities to offer support. She does group work, visualisations, needs audits, and gives us tools to use. She has one-to-ones throughout the project, and she holds our spaces with care, which allows us all to be brave. The boundaries are clear; it’s always an invitation and there will be continuous consent checks. Some like to bare all, and others like to keep things for themselves, and often I find we learn that about ourselves as we go along. These art collaborations are full of remarkable moments of self-achievement and pride. The joyous parts for me are seeing in someone grow in confidence, because you have believed in them, and encouraged them to step into new experiences. The community friendship that is built between a group of people through being vulnerable and really seeing one another, is a privilege to witness.

These communities are built through artistic creation into something that, if sustained, will continue to be a source of joy and value. But how do we do that? What does community maintenance look like? How do we demonstrate to funding bodies that it is essential, and needs greater investment? That’s what I am thinking about now, that’s my next project. For me and our company the goal is authentic belonging for all using the arts to widen opportunities and open the doors to belonging. I refuse to live in a society where someone feels so alone that they lose hope, when they have more to carry than most. That’s when we need to step in, refuse to live without them, and do whatever we can to share the weight. That weight is ours.

Lay Down Your Burdens by Rhiannon Faith premiered at the Barbican, London in November 2023 and was recently nominated for an Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in dance.

Big Issue vendors have featured in paintings, documentaries, comics and songs.

Now, a new play will portray one of our sellers as part of an ‘exploration’ of Edinburgh’s financial history.   

Capital! by Robert Dawson-Scott is opening in Edinburgh tonight. Produced by a group of students from the University of Edinburgh, the play “follows the story of Kate, a working woman from Edinburgh who is trying desperately to help her father out of debt.”

“When she meets Lek the timeless, gender-less narrator of our tale, they both embark on a quest, to find out how it all works!”, the playwright explains.

It’s a timely plight – as the cost of living crisis drags on, some 700,000 people in Scotland are at risk of or in problem debt.

One of the play’s central characters is a Big Issue seller, Dawson-Scott adds.

“He first appears among the crowd of chuggers, Jehovah’s witnesses, dodgy financial advisers and other people after your money who assail the audience as they arrive,” the playwright says. “But when Lek, the main character, arrives to start the play and clears them all away he asks if he can stay and watch – and he is allowed to do so.”

It’s not the first time that Big Issue vendors have inspired writers. Last year, a play immortalised the story of a Big Issue vendor who found himself at the heart of the Occupy movement in London.

The improbable tale – performed at Hackney’s Arcola Theatre in December – was based on the remarkable real-life story of late Big Issue vendor Jimmy McMahon, who was embraced by the community that sprung up opposite the cathedral during the 2011 protest.

Capital! will run for three nights from Tuesday (16 April), at 7pm in 50 George Square, Edinburgh. Tickets can be found here.

A Super Tuesday is guaranteed when you get to visit the theatre mid-week, but the press night of Hamilton in Edinburgh coinciding with the biggest day of the forthcoming US election so far brought extra resonance to the show.

The phenomenon from Lin-Manuel Miranda retells the otherwise largely forgotten story of the first US Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton is steeped in musical theatre tradition, revitalised by hip-hop and deceptively simple staging. The choreography, costumes and set are clinically efficient and effective.

Frequently lauded as the most significant production of the century, that only stays true if its resonance and relevance endures and renews. The performance in Edinburgh, the first time Hamilton has gone on the road in the UK, confirms that to be the case.

The nine-week run in the capital is practically sold out so be ready to beg, steal, borrow or barter for a ticket. Of course, it’s a homecoming of sorts. The founding father had a Scottish father and no doubt the audience could make a claim that some of Hamilton’s canny determination and indefatigable rebelliousness derives from local roots. Maybe too some of his arrogance and self-sabotaging tendencies.

There may be a flawless pro-shot version with the original Broadway cast readily available, but the young and hungry (but not scrappy) touring cast are bursting with urgent energy.

Shaq Taylor is so convincing as a youthful Alexander Hamilton at 19, you initially wonder if he can carry the character through the next three decades of his life, but the transformation over the subsequent two and a half hours is remarkable. Taylor leans into the character’s defiant impulsiveness, with a charm that brings you along with him, even as Alexander succumbs to the more complicated side of his nature.

Aaron Burr provides the backbone of the show. Sam Oladeinde brings a tightly wound composure to the complex character. Maya Britto as Eliza is angelic, making her husband’s transgressions more tragic, Aisha Jawando brings sass to her sister Angelica and Gabriela Benedetti shines especially brightly as Peggy/Maria Reynolds.

In dual roles, KM Drew Boateng is mischievous and growly as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, DeAngelo Jones stirringly heartbreaking as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton and Billy Nevers effortlessly charismatic as the Maquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson.

Charles Simmons as George Washington is a stand-out, bringing stately dignity to the role, enjoying sparky chemistry with his righthand man and mentee Alexander. And Daniel Boys goes down a reliable storm as King George.

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The intensity and urgency and sheer relentless energy on show is often goosebump-raising. By the climax, a wave of emotion swells. It’s a feeling increasingly rare these days – one of hope. Hope that change can come, one person can make a difference, that we can remake the world anew.

The conceit of Hamilton is that it’s “America then, told by America now”. But America now is in flux. Maybe this has ever been the case. After the show, Super Tuesday news notifications relate that Trump has all but secured the Republican nomination and a rematch of the relics with Biden is on the cards.

When it comes to the delivery of the American dream, we’re still waiting for it. America, the great unfinished symphony, has never been more in need of the voices Hamilton inspires to rise up.

Hamilton plays at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre until 27 April then continues its tour around the UK and Ireland. For dates visit hamiltonmusical.com

Even though it’s a cult movie that seemingly everyone of a certain generation loves, nay adores, 1999’s Cruel Intentions never quite managed to repeat its winning formula, despite several attempts. Based on the 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (or Dangerous Liaisons), the Sarah Michelle Gellar film spawned two abandoned TV series (a third reboot is imminent) and a tenuous straight-to-DVD sequel.

Why, then, is Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical such a surefire hit?

From the moment you walk into the theatre at The Other Palace you’re treated to music from the 1990s serving as a pre-show warm up. It’s an indication of the evening ahead, with the Gold-certified soundtrack album giving way to some of the greatest hits of the decade. Yes, it’s a jukebox musical, featuring nearly 30 songs – or parts of them – but it’s pitched just right for an audience ready to wallow in classic pop history.

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This is an expanded version of the show first performed in the UK at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. Now there are two packed acts and a revolving stage resembling a circular marble floor, with flickering candelabras and windows showing a ‘90s New York skyline, with the Twin Towers in the distance. Platforms raised slightly around the stage serve as something of a catwalk that, along with the moving set, the cast put to excellent use throughout.

The story remains the same – the script is practically the film word-for-word. Wealthy Manhattan step-siblings Sebastian Valmont and Kathryn Merteuil are hellbent on destroying the lives of other people – and possibly themselves – in the pursuit of revenge, social standing and sexual conquest.

The show begins where the film ends, with those opening strings from The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony before segueing into the action with Placebo’s Every You, Every Me.

Those expecting to hear the iconic film soundtrack in full will be surprised to hear that these, along with Colorblind by Counting Crows, are the only numbers present. That said, Lovefool by The Cardigans didn’t make it to the soundtrack release but becomes a central part of the storyline here.

Instead, by the second number it deviates to better explain the production’s title, with songs from the ‘90s that everyone in the audience seems to know and the show plays to that nostalgia. In fact, there’s knowing laughter from the first chords, with people only too aware of how an iconic pop or indie classic is going to play into the upcoming scene.

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It’s a show that knowingly leans into its camp elements, yet doesn’t overplay them. There’s a ridiculous version of TLC’s No Scrubs, a sexual awakening to The Sign by Ace Of Base, a blinding performance of Meredith Brooks’ Bitch. Spice Girls number Wannabe was added to the show for the first time only two days prior to opening night – giving the cast just two days to rehearse. It doesn’t show in the performance and goes down a storm with the audience. In parts it feels more like a concert, with everyone knowing and loving the songs.

The cast give their all – Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky as Kathryn has a sensational voice and Rose Galbraith as Cecille is a standout in a stellar company clearly having a ball and deserving of the standing ovation and deafening applause.

It keeps up a swift pace. Characters appear on the balcony – where the band are also situated – throughout the performance to denote breakaway scenes and phone conversations. It’s cleverly done and executed well by director Jonathan O’Boyle, breaking from the drama to the pop video choreography of Gary Lloyd with ease.

That pool scene is present, with dry ice covering the stage but little else. How the final showdown – one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history – is handled is so outrageously over the top that it’s borderline genius.

It’s slick, it’s sexy – in short, it’s London’s newest must-see musical and surely destined for the same cult status as the movie.

Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical is at The Other Palace in London until 14 April, tickets available here.

I first became aware of A Christmas Carol because of the BBC animation in the late 1960s or early ’70s. I remember becoming fixated on it and obsessively drew the sequence when Scrooge returns to his office with the Scrooge and Marley sign. It was very, very atmospheric.  

It’s about duality, isn’t it? Scrooge addresses that monster side of us all. And maybe as a kid, I was aware of that. Maybe the seeds of being an actor were sown then. It was about kindness or the absence of kindness and that chimed with me as a child, because as a kid I was always questioning my conscience and whether I was good or bad.  

I watch every time there’s a version of A Christmas Carol on film or television. This time last year, I wrote to the Old Vic directly and asked them why they had never thought of me for Scrooge. And now here we are.  

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I think I bring energy and life experience to the role of Scrooge. As I’ve grown older and I’ve watched iterations of it, I’ve realised it is about a nervous breakdown. It is a condensed nervous breakdown that starts at approximately 7pm on Christmas Eve and ends at 7am on Christmas Day morning. So in the course of 12 hours, he goes through what I’ve been through in the last seven years – where I had the breakdown and I think I now feel fully recovered, if one ever can be.  

Coincidentally, this is seven years after it happened to me, and Marley comes to Scrooge seven years after he dies. And this is the seventh production of A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic. Not that I’m a numerologist, but there is a symmetry to it.  

In the films, you have different actors playing old Scrooge and young Scrooge. But I get to play both. So it’s a little bit Our Friends In The North, only you’re switching, pivoting between the two within scenes. You’re presenting the older man and the younger man – before the fall, after the fall, and then the return into innocence. So it’s the role of a lifetime. And it’s on at The Old Vic, where Charles Dickens witnessed theatre.  

I do an RP accent, which has been exciting. I’ve had to age up and age down and I’m working with actors who are nearly all 25 or 30 years younger than me. They can not only act, they can sing and dance. And I can only act – and some people would question that – so it’s really kicked my backside and kept me on my toes.  

I’ve enjoyed leading the company. You have to do that onstage and offstage, and I like that – I was a kid that was captain of our football team, I like responsibility. 

Christmas is very difficult for a lot of people. We know that domestic abuse and homelessness become all the more acute at Christmas. I’m divorced and decided last year, when I was missing my children over Christmas, that I need to be busy next time. So that’s why I wanted to work over this period.  

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I also wanted to do this for my children. They’ve seen it. When I jumped off stage to wish the audience Merry Christmas, which is a part of the play, my children and my 91-year-old mum were sat right there, so I wished them all Merry Christmas as Scrooge, which was pretty meta. My daughter said, well, for once dad, I don’t have any criticisms! 

It’s an odd experience. I’m not in any way a method actor, but you’re acting redemption every single night. Scrooge becomes, to a certain extent, Father Christmas.  

So you come off stage and your soul is adrenalised. I’m doing two shows today, so I’ll be redeemed twice – and you’ve just got to be a bit careful with your ego and your energy levels and your euphoria. Oddly, it’s easier to shake off Macbeth because you want to shake that off. With this, you really want to be the redeemed Ebenezer Scrooge – and ‘honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year’ – for the rest of your life. So it’s easy to have your permanent redeemed Ebenezer goggles on and be this relentlessly positive arsehole, which is exhausting for other people. 

I’m doing A Christmas Carol while the Covid inquiry is taking place. And I’m locating my Ebenezer Scrooge socially, culturally, and class-wise very much on that Conservative – well, you can’t call it a government, more like a private members’ club. That’s what I’m playing. We talked a lot about current Conservative politicians in the characterisation, the way he sounds, his value system. It is so relevant. It could be any one of that cabinet. Scrooge is confronted with his conscience and acts on it. But they are without conscience and beyond redemption.   

Dickens was famously inspired when he visited a poor house and that sowed the seeds for the story. It’s a bit of propaganda. A sugary confection. But at its heart is a very angry condemnation of capitalism. I’m playing capitalism on stage every night on stage. And you cannot ignore that it is absolutely bang on for now, this argument that capitalism has gone as far as it can.  

I don’t know what the numbers were when Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, but in this country there are now 12 million people living in poverty. I say that every night on stage – I make a speech at the end of the play and then we rattle a bucket and collect money for City Harvest. We have funded more than 290,000 meals already during this year’s run.  

It is beyond belief that, in a western democracy, these levels of poverty have to be addressed through charitable means rather than through governmental means. And it’s a tiny drop in the ocean.

But I don’t think an institution like The Old Vic could do a production like this and not address that issue. So we soften them up with the play then hit them with the bucket. We are making people happy and then we are asking people to cough up. 

Christopher Eccleston stars in A Christmas Carol is on at The Old Vic, London, until 6 January 2024.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

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The Wizard of Booze isn’t your average pantomime.

Yes, it’s got festive jokes, punning characters and silly sketches. But the Glasgow show is also changing lives – and helping people recovering from addiction to feel like “part of the world again”.

The cast are graduates of a 16-week program run by the charity Creative Change Collective. They’ve devised the show – a mixture of monologues, skits and spoken word – around their own experiences with substance misuse.

“When I’m describing the work to someone who isn’t familiar with it, I usually say it’s like drama therapy for people who don’t necessarily have any interest in drama or therapy,” explains project director Mark MacNicol.

“But they do have an interest in doing something that is going to have a positive impact on their mental health and emotional wellbeing.”

Creative Change Collective uses a unique “anonymous drama model”. Participants speak to one another about their experiences, but no one reveals which parts of the stories they choose to tell are fictional and which parts are based on real life.

“For example, a participant might want to talk about their mum’s alcoholism. But the delivery team would direct them to talk about a fictional character’s mum’s alcoholism,” says MacNicol.

“The anonymity protocols create a less emotionally charged and triggering environment. Using fiction and improvisations is safer and can be incredibly liberating for people.”

CCC deliver sessions in both residential and community rehab groups across Scotland, as well as programs for people in or at risk of entering the justice system. Elsewhere in the UK anonymous drama programs are facilitated by 4UM theatre. The organisation’s motto is a quote by German playwright Bertold Brecht: “Art is not a mirror with which to reflect the world but a hammer with which to shape it.”

For participants, the program certainly can be “life-changing”.

“We’re not naive – we know it’s not a silver bullet,” says MacNicol. “But people report really, really positive outcomes.”

Janice – one of the cast in Wizard of Booze – echoes this sentiment. “You learn so much. I go home happy,” she said. “It’s painful to recover on your own but joining this group I feel part of the world again.”

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The mood in the rehearsal room is positive, but the stakes are high. In 2022, more than 4,000 people in the UK died from an avoidable drug overdose.

MacNicol knows this type of tragedy intimately – he lost his own brother Jason to a heroin overdose.

“I did my best to help him, and I was unsuccessful. So being able to help people in recovery is very, very important to me,” the director explains.

“My brother lost his life, he lost his battle. Every year, hundreds of people all over the UK lose their lives. If this program can make a positive impact on even a few people… well then to say this is an obsession and a priority almost feels like an understatement.”

Bringing families together is one of the “more special” parts of running the programs.

“We quite frequently have situations where there may be audience members who, in some cases have not spoken to the person in our group for one, two or three years,” he said. “Their addiction has led to estrangement. But at these events, it’s quite common for family members to be reconciled.”

The Wizard of Booze will take place at Oran Mor on Wednesday (13 December). Tickets cost £5. They are currently sold out, but you can be put on the waiting list here.