It's showtime!
And one of Yorkshire's greatest leading ladies is waiting in the wings ready to wow record breaking audiences in her most exciting ever role.
As the curtain rises on Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture 2025, the iconic Alhambra Theatre is about to take centre stage.
Here Graham Walker, speaking to Bradford Theatre's General Manager Adam Renton and Heritage Learning Officer Penny Green, takes a look at the 110-year old and 1,400 seat venue, with its red velvet-clad seats, sweeping balconies, gilded arches and glittering chandeliers, a symbol of Bradford’s rich cultural heritage and its ambitious future -and examines its impact on the city, with a blockbuster year of top shows ahead as it aims to break audience records and welcome up to 450,000 visitors.
For more visit https://www.bradford-theatres.co.uk/
And one of Yorkshire's greatest leading ladies is waiting in the wings ready to wow record breaking audiences in her most exciting ever role.
As the curtain rises on Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture 2025, the iconic Alhambra Theatre is about to take centre stage.
Here Graham Walker, speaking to Bradford Theatre's General Manager Adam Renton and Heritage Learning Officer Penny Green, takes a look at the 110-year old and 1,400 seat venue, with its red velvet-clad seats, sweeping balconies, gilded arches and glittering chandeliers, a symbol of Bradford’s rich cultural heritage and its ambitious future -and examines its impact on the city, with a blockbuster year of top shows ahead as it aims to break audience records and welcome up to 450,000 visitors.
For more visit https://www.bradford-theatres.co.uk/
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FunTranscript
00:00What's so special about this venue? I think, ask anybody who's ever been here, it's just
00:08a magical building. I think what the City of Culture will do for Bradford is very much
00:12put us on a platform, show everybody that doesn't know Bradford what Bradford has to
00:18offer. As always, we'll play a massive part in attracting people in to experience culture.
00:24You know, with the three biggest touring West End musicals coming to the Alhambra, we've
00:29got Hamilton at the beginning of the year, and then we have Mary Poppins, and then at
00:33the back end of the year we've got Matilda. Sprinkled in between that, we've got Matthew
00:38Barnes, Swan Lake coming to us, and a new production for Bradford of Midnight Bell.
00:44We've got a South Korean dance company coming called Young May Dragons, and then I can't
00:48forget that we will both start 25 with the end of our 24 year panto, and then we will
00:55move into 25 at the end of the year with our legendary pantomime. It's fantastic for
01:01the economy, for tourism. Restaurants will be busier, bars will be busier, night-time
01:05economy will benefit dramatically. Well, it's really a palace, a beautiful palace
01:11in the centre of Bradford. From the outside, it has its domes and its arches, named after
01:16the Alhambra Palace, the Islamic palace in southern Spain, looking so beautiful and so
01:21distinctive, and then you come inside this auditorium, and it's a bit like the Palace
01:26of Versailles. It's got beautiful friezes, gilding, plaster work. You're in the most
01:31fabulous place. We've had Laurence Olivier's company, Chekhov, Sarah Bernhardt, the great
01:38Victorian actress, Laurel and Hardy, all the great comedians like Tommy Cooper, Frankie
01:43Howard, Ken Dodd. We've got our wonderful Billy Pierce doing the panto here. From the
01:49word go, it has been the home of British panto, and also involving local community
01:55like the Sunbeams, the local troupe of juvenile girls who performed here. It was created by
02:00Frances Laidler, a theatrical impresario, who had this vision of a palace of varieties,
02:06and that was in 1914, just before the First World War. It went from success to success.
02:12If I was going to use one word to describe the Alhambra Theatre, I would say exquisite.