2024 marks twenty years since Just the Tonic venues first appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, although founder Darrell Martin had been putting on shows at the festival since 2002 and started the company by running Sunday night comedy clubs in 1994.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Darrell before the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe about 20 years on the Fringe, the current state of the Edinburgh festival season, getting into the business as a fan of comedy in the '80s, running comedy clubs around the country and about producing comedy as a decades-long act of procrastination to avoid writing material for his own stand-up act.

Just the Tonic will be hosting more than 190 shows across five venues during the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For more information about its Edinburgh programme and to book tickets online, see edinburgh.justthetonic.com—or you can also book at Edfringe.com.

You can see what's on at the other Just the Tonic venues around the UK and book tickets for them at www.justthetonic.com.

Writer-director Paul Hendy brings back three comedians through performers Bob Golding, Damian Williams and Simon Cartwright.

Every year, the Edinburgh Fringe programme features solo performances about real people, which in the past have included Bob Golding as Eric Morecambe in Tim Whitnall's Morecambe from 2009, Damian Williams as Tommy Cooper in Being Tommy Cooper by Tom Green from 2012 and Simon Cartwright as Bob Monkhouse in The Man Called Monkhouse by Alex Lowe from 2015.

Writer-director Paul Hendy brought these three performers together for a film short called The Last Laugh in 2017, which he has now extended for a stage production featuring the same cast.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke with the four of them about the play, what drove these great comics—and some of their demons—and why they have returned to playing them so many times.

The Last Laugh will be in Studio One at Assembly George Square Studios, Edinburgh at 1:20PM every day except Monday 12 August from 31 July to 25 August 2024.

For more information and tickets, go to Edfringe.com or Assembly Festival and search for "The Last Laugh".

Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland and The New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich are co-producing a new production of the stage musical Footloose, based on the '80s film of the same name that starred Kevin Bacon.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to New Wolsey Artistic Director Douglas Rintoul, who will direct the production, and Pitlochry's Artistic Director, Elizabeth Newman, about the production, other musicals that both their theatres are producting this year (Little Shop of Horrors, Beautiful: The Carol King Musical, The Sound of Music).

They also spoke about the advantages of co-productions—and when they may not be appropriate—as well as programming and casting a rep season and panto.

Little Shop of Horrors closes at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton on 18 May and then moves to Hull Truck Theatre from 22 May to 8 June 2024.

Footloose will run at various times and dates in Pitlochry Festival Theatre's season between 31 May and 26 September before transferring to The New Wolsey Theatre from 3 to 26 October.

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical will run at Pitlochry between 7 June and 28 September, and The Sound of Music will be there between 15 November and 22 December.

Sleeping Beauty, the New Wolsey panto written by Vikki Stone, will run from 22 November 2024 to 18 January 2025.

Guildford Shakespeare Company began with an outdoor production of Much Ado About Nothing in Guildford Castle Grounds in 2006.

Eighteen years on, the company is celebrating its coming of age with a production of Romeo and Juliet which mostly takes place along Guildford High Street.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the company's founders, Matt Pinches and Sarah Gobran, about the production and about the challenges, practical and financial, of mounting their style of theatre in spaces that were not designed for performance—including holding on to scenery in high winds and preventing foxes from chewing through microphone cables.

Romeo and Juliet from Guildford Shakespeare Company will take place in Guildford Castle Grounds and the town centre from Friday 21 June to Saturday 13 July 2024.

For more information and tickets, see www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk.

(Photo of GSC Co-Founders Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches in October 2022. Credit: Matt Pereira.)

The 2024 summer season at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London will open with a new production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night Or What You Will directed by Owen Horsley, an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and an Associate Director for Cheek by Jowl.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Owen at a break during rehearsals about his approach to the play, his love of Shakespeare and the perhaps unusual way he was originally introduced to the Bard's work.

Twelfth Night Or What You Will directed by Owen Horsley runs at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre from 3 May to 8 June 2024.

Actor, writer, choreographer and film-maker Lanre Malaolu's play Samskara had a sell-out run at London's Yard Theatre in 2022 and was subsequently published by Nick Hern Books.

Now, I See is the second play of what has become a trilogy which, like the first part, examines family relationships through a modern black, British lens.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Lanre about the play, his writing process, how his work comes from his own experiences and observations and his introduction to creating theatre through Anna Scher drama classes and a transformational experience through Jonzi D's Breakin' Convention at Sadler's Wells.

Now, I See runs at Theatre Royal, Stratford East in London from 10 May to 1 June 2024.

Actor Greg Hicks has played many leading roles at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company over the last forty years, as well as starring on the West End and appearing on screen in films including The Mercy and Snow White and the Huntsman.

He is about to perform a one-man show, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, based on a short story by Dostoyevsky, at the new Marylebone Theatre in London.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to him a few days before it opened about the play and how much more of himself he will be presenting to an audience than in other roles he has played.

He also spoke about some of his past roles, including performing naked in Romans in Britain for a role that nearly ended him up in criminal court immediately followed by appearing in full costume and mask for Peter Hall's famous Oresteia (he credits Hall as his mentor at the National in the 1970s).

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, adapted and directed by Laurence Boswell, is at Marylebone Theatre in London from 21 March to 20 April 2024.

(Rehearsal image of Greg Hicks in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, credit Richard James Taylor)

Danish theatre company fix+foxy premièred Dark Noon at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe which "explores one of the great American myths—the Wild West" through seven South African actors.

The production will be restaged at Manchester's Aviva Studios this spring. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to co-directors Tue Biering and Nhlanhla Mahlangu about what and whose story the play is telling and about the process of creating it.

Dark Noon will be performed in the South Warehouse of Aviva Studios in Manchester from 6 to 10 March 2024.

Following Night of the Living Dead—Remix and Dracula: The Untold Story, imitating the dog is again collaborating with Leeds Playhouse, this time on a new adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein co-created by Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick and Simon Wainwright.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Andrew Quick during rehearsals at Leeds Playhouse about the technical challenges of this two-hander for creators and performers, the state of touring shows around the UK and Europe at the moment and the company's style and creative process.

Frankenstein, featuring design by Hayley Brindle, lighting by Andrew Crofts and original music by James Hamilton, will open at Leeds Playhouse from 15 February 2024, before touring to Oxford Playhouse, Watford Palace Theatre, The Lowry in Salford, Cast in Doncaster, Mercury Theatre in Colchester, Liverpool Playhouse, The Dukes Lancaster and Northern Stage in Newcastle.

(Photo of Andrew Quick, credit Ed Waring)

For Christmas 2023, there were two new stage adaptations of stories by Roald Dahl in the UK: The Witches at the National Theatre in London and The Enormous Crocodile at Leeds Playhouse, the first to be co-produced by the Roald Dahl Story Company.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the company's Artistic Director of Theatre, Jenny Worton, about what the Roald Dahl Story Company actually is, how it develops new shows based on Dahl's books and some of the plans for the future.

The National Theatre production of The Witches runs until 27 January 2024.