Helen Anker
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Helen Anker
Helen Anker (born 1972) is an English actress, singer, and dancer who trained at the Royal Ballet School and Bird College. She has appeared in numerous London West End and Broadway musicals and plays, perhaps best known for originating the role of Zelda Fitzgerald in '' Beautiful and Damned''. Early life Anker's first professional role was in 1981, when she was only nine years old, playing Louisa in ''The Sound of Music'' with Petula Clark at London's Apollo Victoria Theatre. Following this debut, she trained for five years at the Royal Ballet School before transferring to Bird College to pursue her passion for musical theatre. Career Anker's theatrical career resumed after finishing three years at Bird College, beginning in London's West End. She performed in ''Radio Times'' at Queen's Theatre in London, as Vera and cover Patsy in '' Crazy For You'' at the Prince Edward Theatre, as Victoria the White Cat, Jemima and Demeter in '' Cats'' at the New London Theatre, as Thelma Fu ...
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Banbury
Banbury is a historic market town on the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, South East England. It had a population of 54,335 at the 2021 Census. Banbury is a significant commercial and retail centre for the surrounding area of north Oxfordshire and southern parts of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire which are predominantly rural. Banbury's main industries are motorsport, car components, electrical goods, plastics, food processing and printing. Banbury is home to the world's largest coffee-processing facility (Jacobs Douwe Egberts), built in 1964. The town is famed for Banbury cakes, a spiced sweet pastry dish. Banbury is located north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham, south-east of Coventry and north-west of Oxford. History Toponymy The name Banbury may derive from "Banna", a Saxon chieftain said to have built a stockade there in the 6th century (or possibly a byname from ang, bana meaning ''felon'', ''murderer''), and / meaning ''settlement''. In Anglo Saxon i ...
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Victoria Palace Theatre
The Victoria Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in Victoria Street, in the City of Westminster, opposite Victoria Station. The structure is categorised as a Grade II* listed building. History Origins The theatre began life as a small concert room above the stables of the Royal Standard Hotel, a small hotel and tavern built in 1832 at what was then 522 Stockbridge Terrace, on the site of the present theatre – not, as sometimes stated, on land where the train station now stands. The proprietor, John Moy, enlarged the building, and by 1850 it became known as Moy's Music Hall. Alfred Brown took it over in 1863, refurbished it, and renamed it the Royal Standard Music Hall. The hotel was demolished in 1886, by which time the main line terminus, Victoria Station and its new Grosvenor Hotel, had transformed the area into a major transport hub. The railways were at this time building grand hotel structures at their termini, and Victoria was one of the first. Added to this was t ...
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Contact (musical)
''Contact'' is a musical "dance play" that was developed by Susan Stroman and John Weidman, with its "book" by Weidman and both choreography and direction by Stroman. It ran both off-Broadway and on Broadway in 1999–2002. It consists of three separate one-act dance plays. Productions ''Contact'' premiered at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, on September 9, 1999 (after 1999 workshop productions of parts of the show), then moved to Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, on March 30, 2000 and played for 1,010 performances there."'Contact' on Broadway, Production and Awards"
playbillvault.com, accessed October 17, 2015
The show was received with critical acclaim and won the 2000

Donmar Warehouse
The Donmar Warehouse is a 251-seat, not-for-profit theatre in Covent Garden, London, England. It first opened on 18 July 1977. Sam Mendes, Michael Grandage and Josie Rourke have all served as artistic director, a post held since 2019 by Michael Longhurst. The theatre has a diverse artistic policy that includes new writing, contemporary reappraisals of European classics, British and American drama and small-scale musical theatre. As well as presenting at least six productions a year at its home in Covent Garden, every year the Donmar tours one in-house production in the UK. History Theatrical producer Donald Albery formed Donmar Productions around 1953, with the name derived from the first three letters of his name and the first three letters of his wife's middle name, Margaret. In 1961, he bought the warehouse, a building that in the 1870s had been a vat room and hops warehouse for the local brewery in Covent Garden, and in the 1920s had been used as a film studio and then th ...
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Parade (musical)
''Parade'' is a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The musical is a dramatization of the 1913 trial and imprisonment, and 1915 lynching, of Jewish American Leo Frank in Georgia. The musical premiered on Broadway in December 1998 and won Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Original Score (out of nine nominations) and six Drama Desk Awards. After closing on Broadway in February 1999, the show has had a US national tour and a few professional productions in the US and UK. Background and genesis The musical dramatizes the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, who was accused and convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old employee, Mary Phagan. The trial, sensationalized by the media, aroused antisemitic tensions in Atlanta and the U.S. state of Georgia. When Frank's death sentence was commuted to life in prison by the departing Governor of Georgia, John M. Slaton, in 1915 due to his detailed review of over 10,000 pages ...
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Cambridge Theatre
The Cambridge Theatre is a West End theatre, on a corner site in Earlham Street facing Seven Dials, in the London Borough of Camden, built in 1929–30 for Bertie Meyer on an "irregular triangular site". Design and construction It was designed by Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie; interior partly by Serge Chermayeff, with interior bronze friezes by sculptor Anthony Gibbons Grinling.English Heritage listing details
Retrieved 28 April 2007
The theatre is built in steel and concrete and is known for its elegant and clean lines of design. The theatre was refurbished in 1950—the original gold and silver décor was painted over in red, and candelabras and chandeliers were added. In 1987, to restore the original décor, the theatre was once again refurbished, this time by



Fame (musical)
''Fame'' is a stage musical based on the 1980 musical film of the same name, with book by Jose Fernandez, music by Steve Margoshes and lyrics by Jacques Levy. Conceived and developed by David De Silva, it premiered in 1988 in Miami, Florida, and has spawned many stagings worldwide, including an Off-Broadway production at the Little Shubert Theatre from 2003 to 2004, under the title ''Fame on 42nd Street''. De Silva had produced the 1980 film about students at New York City's High School of Performing Arts. The critically and commercially successful film was followed by a six-season television series, and the musical. The musical is significantly rewritten from the previous adaptations, with an almost entirely new score except for the title Academy Award-winning song, "Fame". The film is referred to several times in the script and in two songs. It tells the story of several students who attend the school, among them fame-obsessed Carmen, ambitious actress Serena, wisecracking c ...
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Lyric Theatre, London
The Lyric Theatre is a West End theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It was built for the producer Henry Leslie, who financed it from the profits of the light opera hit, '' Dorothy'', which he transferred from its original venue to open the new theatre on 17 December 1888. Under Leslie and his early successors the house specialised in musical theatre, and that tradition has continued intermittently throughout the theatre's existence. Musical productions in the theatre's first four decades included ''The Mountebanks'' (1892), ''His Excellency'' (1894), '' The Duchess of Dantzig'' (1903), ''The Chocolate Soldier'' (1910) and '' Lilac Time'' (1922). Later musical shows included ''Irma La Douce'' (1958), ''Robert and Elizabeth'' (1964), '' John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert'' (1974), '' Blood Brothers'' (1983), ''Five Guys Named Moe'' (1990) and '' Thriller – Live'' (2009). Many non-musical productions have been staged at the Lyric, from Shakespeare to ...
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Guildford
Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildford" is thought to derive from a crossing of the River Wey, a tributary of the River Thames that flows through the town centre. The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is from the Mesolithic and Guildford is mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great from . The exact location of the main Anglo-Saxon settlement is unclear and the current site of the modern town centre may not have been occupied until the early 11th century. Following the Norman Conquest, a motte-and-bailey castle was constructed, which was developed into a royal residence by Henry III. During the late Middle Ages, Guildford prospered as a result of the wool trade and the town was granted a charter of incorporation by Henry VII in 1488. The River Wey Navig ...
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Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre is a theatre located in Guildford, Surrey, England. Named after the actress Yvonne Arnaud, it presents a series of locally produced and national touring productions, including opera, ballet and pantomime. The theatre has two performance venues, the main auditorium and the smaller Mill Studio. History Replacing a former repertory theatre in North Street which had been gutted by a fire in 1963, the present complex was opened in 1965 in a riverside site, incorporating a restaurant and bar available to non-theatregoers. Sir Michael Redgrave had ceremonially driven the first pile in October 1962. The foundation stone was laid by Vanessa Redgrave, in September 1963, who commemorated the occasion by casting her foot in concrete. Susan Hampshire "topped out" the roof of the theatre on 11 November 1964. The company opted to dispense with traditional repertory theatre in favour of a more flexible model in which actors are cast as appropriate to different produc ...
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Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the United States and Europe, particularly in major cities such as Berlin, Buenos Aires, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Paris, and Sydney. In France, the decade was known as the ''années folles'' ("crazy years"), emphasizing the era's social, artistic and cultural dynamism. Jazz blossomed, the flapper redefined the modern look for British and American women, and Art Deco peaked. In the wake of the military mobilization of World War I and the Spanish flu, President Warren G. Harding " brought back normalcy" to the United States. The social and cultural features known as the Roaring Twenties began in leading metropolitan centres and spread widely in the aftermath of World War I. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was ...
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Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. Internationally, it is known as the National Theatre of Great Britain. Founded by Laurence Olivier in 1963, many well-known actors have performed at the National Theatre. Until 1976, the company was based at The Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. The current building is located next to the Thames in the South Bank area of central London. In addition to performances at the National Theatre building, the National Theatre tours productions at theatres across the United Kingdom. The theatre has transferred numerous productions to Broadway and toured some as far as China, Australia and New Zealand. However, touring productions to European cities was suspended in February 2021 over concerns about uncertainty over work permits, additional costs and ...
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