Wansteadium

Wanstead Theatre Company, which is bringing the farce Breakfast With Jonny Wilkinson to the Wanstead Fringe this week, has an extra sprinkling of star dust on its production. Fiona Gordon writes:

We like to bring the West End to Wanstead but for this show we’ve travelled even further. All the way to Australia, in fact! 

One of our cast members is the utterly delightful Sophie Dillman, [pictured above in rehearsals] who plays series regular and fan favourite Ziggy on Home & Away. 

She is super talented and joins our equally brilliant cast who between them have thrilled you in numerous well known shows and films, including Marvel’s Secret Invasion, Eastenders, Coronation Street, Spooks, Liverpool Narcos, Alan Partridge, London has Fallen, The Wind that Shakes the Barley to name but a few.

All of the cast are hilarious in this very British romp of a farce!

Tickets for all performances are available here via the Wanstead Fringe website. The first performance is on Monday.

Breakfast with Jonny Wilkinson

It looks like Redbridge has done a U-turn on plans to close Wanstead Youth Centre. A statement issued by the council says it is to be turned into an “education and youth hub”, with additional youth services and hirable spaces. It will also be renovated.

The statement comes just days before the council’s cabinet is due to decide on the future of the centre on Elmcroft Avenue. As we reported on Wednesday, campaigners were planning to demonstrate outside the council meeting in Ilford.

The council’s document will be pored over by campaigners to see exactly what the plan involves, specifically whether groups who have hired the facilities in the past will still be able to do so.

The council’s full statement reads:

To come: Comment from Save Our Wanstead Youth Centre Campaign.

After an unpredictable summer, the weather forecast for this Saturday’s Wanstead Kinema – the Fringe’s open-air cinema – is about as good as organizers could have hoped for.

This year’s film is Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, starring Emma Thompson with lyrics by Tim Minchin. The screening is again taking place in the gardens of Christ Church – which may feel a bit different following the untimely death of the massive cedar tree which previously stood there. The church believes last year’s drought was to blame for the tree’s death.

But the Kinema will go on – and as before there will be chicken on the rotisserie, a pop-up from the Wanstead Tap, and a great family atmosphere.

Tickets are selling fast (and sold out completely last year) so don’t miss out. You can get them here.

Kinema 2023: Matilda the Musical

Residents campaigning against Redbridge’s plan to close Wanstead Youth Centre have stepped up their action and are planning a demonstration outside the Ilford Town Hall next week while the council makes its decision.

Campaigners took to the street over the weekend to make their case that youth centres play a vital role for the community.

The campaign says: “The Council’s Cabinet will make its decision on the future of Wanstead Youth Centre on Thursday 14 September.   Before that, on Thursday 7 September, the Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee will be carrying out ‘pre-decision scrutiny’. Despite the Council’s own Constitution stating that reports for this purpose should be available five working days before Committee meetings, the ‘Wanstead Youth Centre Recommendations’ paper has not been made available to the public via the Committee agenda page.  As of Tuesday 5 September this is not available.”

The campaign has submitted a paper to be considered alongside the Council’s recommendations paper, outlining its concerns about the consultation process which it says has been flawed, questions about how the centre has been run in the past, and challenges to the council on how it plans to meet its obligations to run youth services.

The campaign website is here.

This year’s Wanstead Fringe has hugely increased the amount of music on offer, with eight recitals and concerts, many featuring local performers or composers.

It starts with the annual celebration of local acoustic singers upstairs in the Bull, featuring Ali MacQueen, Thomas Caulfield, Chloe Juliette, Jane Lowery and Zac Hurst.

The Freak Flag Flying

It then takes a different turn with international opera star Lucy Crowe and husband Joe Walters curating an evening of classical, folk and experimental music with a range of local musicians.

To a Skylark: Classical, folk and experimental music

Events continue right up until the end of September, concluding with a concert by local composer Simone Spagnolo with Low Strings Drama, a combination of “chamber music and mystery drama soundtrack”, and then on the last day of the Fringe, Dark Isle – a new musical written by Wanstead actor and writer Katherine Tripp.

Free relaxed Songhaven concert

A Journey into the World of Guitar – with Peter Black

Jazz Vespers

The Dukebox presents Adam English – Hospitality special

Showtime – with Redbridge Brass plus guests

Theatre classics and more, with Lydia Gerrard

Concert: Low Strings Drama

Dark Isle: a new musical

This year’s Wanstead Fringe will be featuring FOUR plays – more than it has ever had before. It’s part of the Fringe’s attempt to bring regular theatre to Wanstead, even outside the normal September dates.

The four plays are:

Breakfast With Jonny Wilkinson, a revival of Chris England’s comedy – itself the sequel to the smash hit An Evening With Gary Lineker. The Wanstead Theatre Co, which has previously performed Two, and Bazaar & Rummage will be staging the play at Eton Manor RFC – again finding the right location for the right play.

Catapult Theatre’s All Girl Band will be a celebration of “feeling fun, flirty and fabulous” as the evening celebrates musical theatre hits from the last 50 years. It will be upstairs at the Bull.

The Room Upstairs – appropriately named since it too will be at the Bull – will be an atmospheric show which features on the relationship between and mother and daughter, and highlights the ‘invisible illness’ ME. It’s brought to the Fringe by the Baloney Theatre Company which last year staged A Non-Emergency.

Robot Penguin is a bizarre, irreverent comedy through the lens of an undercover robotic penguin. It too will be in the Bull. Double bill tickets – no pun intended – are available with The Room Upstairs.

Giles Wilson, chair of the Wanstead Fringe, said: “Regular Fringe supporters will know how much we pride ourselves on being able to bring theatre to Wanstead, and for the tenth Fringe we’re going further than we’ve ever been able to before.

“And thanks to the support of our ticket-buyers and sponsors over the years, this year we have been able to invest in new lighting which we hope will be in use for many years to come as we continue our mission to bring more cultural activities to Wanstead.”

Tickets for all the plays are available via the Wanstead Fringe website or directly here on Wansteadium.