Preview of Llawn04 Llandudno Arts Weekend

Llandudno Art Festival – Llawn04 – returns this September, a whole weekend of free events along the promenade and across various venues and spaces in the North Wales seaside resort.

There'll be performance, street games, music, robot-making, dance, visual art, film and the unexpected, all inspired by this year's theme of Hide/ Seek.

It opens with a few treats on Friday, September 23rd and then there's a weekend full of events on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th. Days and exact timings will be announced in August, but for now you can browse all the activity that will be coming and start to plan what you'd like to see.

Whatever Happened to LaLa Shockette? (Pontio, Bangor)

Way back in 1979, when punk and disco were the musical movements dominating nightclubs and Top of the Pops, a small nightspot called the Blitz Club opened up in London's Covent Garden. It's well known how instrumental the Blitz was in shaping the direction British music took over the following few years, inventing the subculture that became known as New Romanticism.

It's also well documented that a pre-fame Boy George worked on the coat-check stand at the Blitz, but nobody ever wonders who took his job on when he handed in his notice and swanned off to seek stardom and fame with Culture Club. Well, Whatever Happened to LaLa Shockette answers that question, as well as many other questions you'd never thought of asking, and would be surprised by the answers to.

It's a cabaret extravaganza dreamed up by Welsh actress and singer Lowri-Ann Richards, who as well as being recognisable from various Welsh language soaps such as Pobol y Cwm and Rownd a Rownd, was also at the very epicentre of the New Romantic explosion more than 35 years ago. You probably won't have heard of her - as Lowri-Ann or her pop alter ego LaLa Shockette - but she was most definitely there, as her slideshow of celebrity snaps attests.

Preview: Wales at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2016

This feature was first published by Arts Scene in Wales on July 13th, 2016

Wales is sending a formidable army of unique and talented productions to this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, ranging from Roald Dahl to Carry On, from children's theatre to stand-up.

There are over 30 shows on the Fringe billing from Wales-based companies and artists, so let's take a whistlestop tour through the list of theatre, comedy and music to see what Cymru is offering Alba this August.

Block (Pontio, Bangor)

Pic: Dan Tucker

There's something uniquely exhilarating about seeing spectacle through a child's eyes. Children are transparent, they don't hide their thoughts and feelings. So when they think something's good, you know about it. The audience for Block at Pontio on Sunday afternoon was almost entirely made up of young families, with most of the onlookers under the age of 10. And the wonder, excitement and fun these children were having watching this mix of dance and circus was electric.

Block is a collaboration between Wales's own circus performance outfit NoFit State and Leamington Spa-based dance theatre company Motionhouse, and fuses the aesthetics and disciplines of both into one thrilling 45-minute show.

It's designed to be performed in the open air, taking as its theme the city and its changing face. Using 20 oversized prop blocks, the seven performers portray various inner city and urban scenarios which connect with the human experience. The city can be many things: threatening, daunting, dangerous, exciting, celebratory, busy, empty. You name it.

To Dream Again (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

Dorian Simpson and Hannah Hutch as Robin and Sophie

At the end of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the characters of Helena and Demetrius are very much in love, despite the trials and tribulations getting to that point. One of the principal agents in the couple's game of 'he-loves-me/ he-loves-me-not' is Puck's magical love potion, which forces one to love another pretty much against their will or comprehension. It is a spell; the only natural thing about it is the love-in-idleness bloom from which it comes.

So Shakespeare left the audience with a dilemma: if the only reason Demetrius loved Helena was because of a love spell cast upon him, would that love last? Was it true love? Was it even fair for them to be together if one was blinded from the truth?

This is where Toby Hulse picks up the quill in To Dream Again, a co-production between Theatr Clwyd and Polka Theatre in Wimbledon, to where the play will transfer in March 2017. The play is aimed at children aged seven and up, and imagines the consequences of Demetrius and Helena's enforced romance. Set in the modern day, it plays out through the eyes of nine-year-old Sophie, who has a growing awareness of her parents' disintegrating marriage. Her parents are modern equivalents of Shakespeare's lovers, and it seems that the love they had when they first met has well and truly withered on the vine.

Alternative Routes 2016 (The Dance House, Cardiff)

Giving young dancers an opportunity to create choreography of their own, National Dance Company Wales's Alternative Routes strand is an important platform to nurture and encourage blossoming talent. And it's interesting to see how the training these young dancers have soaked up by performing the choreography of more experienced artists informs their own latent talent.

AltRoutes2016 comprised three new works by NDC Wales's company dancers, plus one work by a former Company dancer and another by current Artistic Director Caroline Finn. It made for a pot-pourri of styles in what was a delightful presentation of where NDC Wales is in 2016, and the fact the new work is forged in collaboration with design students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama made it all the more refreshing.

Before I Leave (Sherman Cymru, Cardiff)

Melanie Walters and Martin Marquez as Dyanne and Joe

Each May for the last decade Wales has held the Gwanwyn Festival, celebrating creativity in older age, which provides an opportunity for older people to get involved in different forms of the arts, whether visual, musical or literary. Last week I saw one of the many productions that have formed part of 2016's festival, Karin Diamond's play Belonging from the Re Live organisation, and this new production from National Theatre of Wales tackles the same topic of dementia.

But where Belonging was a small, intimate, thoughtful study of the emotional effects dementia can have on those living with the disease, Patrick Jones's Before I Leave takes a bigger, brighter, more bombastic approach. That's not say it's without its emotional side, but by taking the magic of music as its door into the subject, the production automatically adopts a brasher, more West End feel.