TheMet Online’s guide of cultural things to do in Leeds this week (Monday 15th – Sunday 21st October 2012).

Theatre

Lady Boys of Bangkok  are performing their  new show ‘Carnival Queens‘ on Millennium Square. Be enticed to join the festivities by the entourage as they parade through comedy, cabaret, capers and carnival beats all under the specially erected Sabai Pavilion. Marvel at the perfect makeup, stunning costumes and fabulous choreography with added surprises.

It’s almost 60 years since the world-famous variety show The Good Old Days first aired on the BBC from City Varieties. It was a huge success and ran for 30 years; the audience would dress up in Victorian garb and have a good old-fashioned knees-up and with big name stars. The show helped to put Leeds on the world map, Friday 19th the show continues its four-weekend run bringing a host of acts that make it the legendary Music Hall experience it is famous for.

Opera North’s Don Giovanni is at Leeds Grand Theatre on Wednesday 17th. As he seduces his way across Europe, bedding 1003 women in Spain alone, Don Giovanni’s libertinism is a challenge not only to human morality, but also to God. Dark comedy vies with tense drama, and the beauty and terror of the score are evidence of a supreme musical dramatist at the height of his powers, divinely (and perhaps diabolically) inspired.

Also at Leeds Grand Theatre this week are two further productions by Opera North. Faust; a man of middle age who has grown tired of life and yearns only for sensual pleasure and for his lost youth, and The Makropulos Case; both a mystery thriller and a meditation on immortality and desire.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof continues at West Yorkshire Playhouse until Saturday 27th. Brimming with emotional intensity, family politics, greed, hypocrisy and suppressed sexuality, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer prize in 1955 and was made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.

Comedy

One of Britain’s finest comedians and broadcasters, Marcus Brigstocke, is bringing his hotly anticipated new show The Brig Society to City Varieties on Tuesday 16th and Wednesday 17th. The award-winning comedian is a firm favourite with comedy fans and The Brig Society promises to be as sharply observant and quick-witted as his much loved catalogue of work.

Danny Bhoy: Dear Epson takes the stage at City Varieties on Thursday 18th. This is a loosely-based stand up/breakdown show which revolves around a handful of letters penned out of frustration, with mixed results. It’s a show about those little annoyances. Too frivolous to be a cause. Too inconsequential to be a campaign.

Film

Cronos (19)

Directed by Giullermo del Toro

Plot: A mysterious device designed to give its owner eternal life resurfaces after four hundred years, leaving a trail of destruction in its path. Cronos asks what people will do for eternal youth and what they are prepared to sacrifice for it.

Spanish with English subtitles. This screening will be introduced by Tony Earnshaw, film critic for the Yorkshire Post and ex-Artistic Director of the Bradford International Film Festival.

Showing at: Howard Assembly Room, Leeds Grand Theatre on Friday 19th at 7:45pm

Hit and Run (15)

Starring Dax Shepard, Kristen Bell, Bradley Cooper, Kristin Chenoweth, Tom Arnold, Beau Bridges, Joy Bryant, Michael Rosenbaum, Directed by David Palmer, Dax Shepard

Plot: Comedy about a young couple that risks it all when they leave their small town life and embark on a road trip that may lead them towards the opportunity of a lifetime. Their fast-paced road trip grows awkwardly complicated and hilarious when they are chased by a friend from the past, a federal marshal and a band of misfits.

Showing at: Vue / Showcase

The Lodger – A Story of The London Fog (PG)

Starring Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, June, Malcolm Keen, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: The restoration of Hitchcock’s 1926 silent melodrama, expressionist style.  A murderer obsessed with blondes, a love triangle with accusations flying.

Showing at: Hyde Park Picture House on Tuesday 16th 6:30pm

Poetry/Literature

Central Library runs an adult creative writers group, Writers in the Rafters at 1:45pm on the third Thursday of the month between September and November. The sessions are relaxed and informal and are held in the 3rd floor meeting room, go along to discover new authors and meet like minded people.