A comedy about a woman’s midlife crisis and her rollercoaster journey to find her voice is coming to Oldham Coliseum Theatre this October.
Presented by Rifco Theatre Company and Watford Palace Theatre, the new play comes to Oldham Coliseum from Tuesday, October 11 to Saturday, October 15.
The play is set to showcase the life of a Shirley Bassey tribute act through live music, humour and ‘a whole lotta sparkle’.
Inspired by a real-life story, Glitterball is a midlife coming-of-age comedy about motherhood, identity and finding your time to shine.
Writer Yasmin Wilde has been an actress for over thirty years, working in theatre and television in the UK.
Recent work includes shows at Birmingham Rep, Manchester Royal Exchange and Stratford East, and TV appearances in After Life, This Is Going to Hurt, Shakespeare and Hathaway, and Peter Kosminsky’s The Undeclared War soon to come to Channel 4.
Sonia’s life has always been a bit of a double act, brought up as one half of a Shirley Bassey tribute act.
Alongside her overbearing mother Gloria, she left a trail of sequins across the working men’s clubs of East Anglia.
Now, she’s divorced, battling through the middle-age jungle, wrangling unimpressed teenagers and navigating rocky friendships.
The unexpected arrival of Sonia’s half-brother Naim from Manchester brings a refreshed sense of belonging and cultural identity, as he introduces her to her Pakistani side, which she had never known before.
Sonia is excited to immerse herself in the culture and finally begins to piece together the mosaic of her life.
Audiences will find out whether Sonia can shake off the past, even with her ever-present mother keeping ‘the show’ on the road from beyond the grave.
Inspired by working with brilliant playwrights like Tanika Gupta and Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, writer Yasmin applied for the Rifco Theatre Company mentorship scheme.
Under guidance, Yasmin developed her idea for a play about dual heritage, the fracturing of identity in motherhood, and Shirley Bassey.
Glitterball is the first commission to come out of the Rifco Associates Programme, a talent development initiative to improve pathways into the industry for underrepresented voices.
Pravesh Kumar, Rifco Artistic Director, said: “At Rifco, we are committed to telling the stories of underrepresented voices and are thrilled to be bringing you our first mainstage production born out of the Rifco Associates Programme.
“Yasmin Wilde’s story felt so relevant to us because it sheds much-needed light on the mixed-heritage experience.
“It is also an empowering example of how a ‘midlife crisis’ can be a positive turning point with a strong intergenerational focus.
“We hope it will strike a chord with audiences and open up themes that are still too often missing from mainstream entertainment, while also giving them some feel-good, classic Bassey numbers to sing along to.”
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