In Nether Edge’s leafy avenues sits the small gem of the Lantern Theatre. Originally built as a private theatre for Victorian industrialist William Webster, it later fell into disrepair until the enterprising actress and drama teacher Dilys Guite took it on in the 1950s. It’s been a home to the amateur dramatics players who bear her name ever since. However, last year the theatre’s ambition went beyond enthusiastic hobbyists to put on their first professional season which included their own home-grown production, a claustrophobic tail of obsession Order, as well as a variety of visiting shows.
Such was the success of the Lantern’s foray into the professional theatre world, they are back with a new season featuring a tasty menu of music, comedy and drama this spring and summer. Kicking things off this Friday is Michel Pinchbeck’s The Beginning, counter-intuitively his follow-up to The End which played at the Lantern last year. The End was a charming, witty, playfully meta-theatrical rumination on the final curtain in life and in art and The Beginning promises to reverse the polarities and question what it might mean to start something.
Another dramatic highlight is Hull Truck Theatre’s Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë classic story of dignified plain Jane and her tortuous love affair with the brooding Mr Rochester, adapted for the theatre by Laura Turner. I’m intrigued to see how the Lantern’s intimate stage can encompass the red room, Thornfield Hall and the Yorkshire Moors but all credit to them for snaring a company of such a reputation that you might expect to see them on the Lyceum stage.
There’s live music as well as live drama with Ethan Johns playing next month. Better known as a producer, having worked with the likes of The Vaccines, Kings of Leon, Ray LaMontagne, Laura Marling, and Ryan Adams, Johns has found time to work on his own tunes and presents debut album If Not Now Then When? Personally I’m looking forward to Fake Thackray in March where John Watterson will pay tribute to the inestibable Jake, a Yorkshireman with a sly wit and a sharp tongue who’s songs are funny, sweet and sad. There’s also a return from former Bluetones frontman Mark Morriss who sold out the Lantern in November.
If it’s laughs your after then poet, stand-up, Perrier nominee and proud redhead Owen O’Neil brings his show Struck by Lighting to Sheffield in February. In March deadpan funnyman Alun Cochrane brings a show that will allow him more license to follow his comic meanderings than his appearances on TV panel shows usually allow. In April there’s Matt Parker who has been released from BBC Radio 4’s infinite Monkey Cage to tour his unlikely brand of stand-up mathematics in The Number Ninja.
If you’re a Sheffield culture lover there’s no excuse not to check out this small but perfectly formed theatre especially now their programming is finding a place for the cute, quirky, innovative and intimate work which wouldn’t have previously had a home in the city.