Stage and screen star John Barrowman, who will play a limited engagement as Albin in the Menier Chocolate Factory’s revival of La Cage aux Folles, will also star in Robin Hood: The Pantomime Adventure this winter in Cardiff.

Following his Sept. 14-Nov. 28 stint in the London cast of La Cage, Barrowman will play the title role in Robin Hood Dec. 12, 2009-Jan. 24, 2010 at the New Theatre in Cardiff.

“Join John as Robin along with his Merry Men as they battle the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in the pantomime that’s packed with comedy, music, excitement and plenty of surprises!,” according to the New Theatre’s website.

The company will also feature Don Maclean, Andy Jones, Natalia Pestova & Alexei Kislitsyn (“Dancing on Ice”), Pete Gallagher, Malinda Parris and Will Kenning.

John Barrowman is best known for creating the role of Captain Jack Harness in the first series of Russell T. Davies’ revamped “Doctor Who” for BBC TV, from which his own spin-off series, “Torchwood,” was created. He has also appeared in series 3 and 4 of “Doctor Who.” The singing actor has also been seen as a judge on BBC1′s reality TV casting shows “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?,” “Any Dream Will Do” and “I’d Do Anything” and was a celebrity skater on the ITV show “Dancing on Ice.”

He was last seen on the West End musical theatre stage doing a stint in Chicago as Billy Flynn in 2004, and prior to that was seen at the National as Billy Crocker in Anything Goes (a role he had previously taken over in the previous West End revival at the Prince Edward Theatre, opposite Elaine Paige, in 1989). He also appeared as Dumaine in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost during his National Theatre season, and subsequently made his West End straight play acting debut in A Few Good Men at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in 2005. Among his other numerous West End credits are Matador, Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast, The Fix (Olivier-nominated for Best Actor in a Musical), Hair and Sunset Boulevard. On Broadway, he has appeared in Sunset Boulevard and Putting it Together.

In January 2008 his autobiography, “Anything Goes,” which he wrote with his sister Carole E. Barrowman, was published by Michael O’Mara Books and reached number two in the Sunday Times best seller’s list, remaining in the top ten for 13 weeks.

For ticket information visit www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk.

Source

In conjunction with tomorrow’s American debut of “Doctor Who: The Next Doctor,” the first of five “Doctor Who” specials that will conclude the tenure of both star David Tennant and producer Russell T. Davies (you can read my review here), I spoke with Davies about saying goodbye to the character he helped resurrect, and about the upcoming miniseries “Torchwood: Children of Earth,” which BBC America will be airing July 20-24.

Davies called me as I was finishing up the third episode of “Children of Earth” — an exciting, epic story in which Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and his team deal with alien invaders who can make our world’s children do whatever they want — and so our discussion begins with that.

What was the impetus behind telling this particular “Torchwood” story?

The main impetus came because in Britain, we were shifting channels. We’d been on a smaller channel as a sci-fi cult show, but this is moving it onto BBC1. It’s the main primetime channel, so we needed to do something bit. Also, although I created “Torchwood,” I’d been away from it for a while. I wanted to do something new, a different type of storytelling, to give it a big kick and stretch myself as well. So all of that thinking led to a new format. They’ve been doing this (miniseries) format quite a bit in Britain, where you’ll do five shows in five nights. It’s a new form of storytelling that I loved, and when the offer came to make “Torchwood” part of this five nights a week thing, I jumped at it. I loved it.

So do you think, if BBC orders another series, you’ll stick with this format?

I think it’s hard to revert to the previous format having done this, but if BBC1 says, “We want to do 13 weeks like before,” of course we’re going to do 13 weeks. We can do all sorts of things. The six-part weekly thriller is another standard British format that we haven’t tried yet. That’s what’s nice in this digital world: the platforms change, the digital tier gives you new options, and “Torchwood”s been at the forefront of it, since we started on a digital channel.

“Children of Earth” seems more epic, both in its scope and in the production values, than anything you did in the first two series.

Glad you said so. That was the aim. “Epic” was one of the keywords that we used. And it’s quite important for newcomers to the show to know they can watch it from scratch. We’re going to give them this big huge story where they can understand everything important in the first five minutes and go from there. I love telling stories about scale, and it’s a big international story. But at the same time, even if you make things epic, no matter how big the threat is, you’ve got to have great characters, great actors at the center of it, so everything works on a personal level. So we’ve got John Barrowman doing wonderful work as Captain Jack, Eve (Myles) as Gwen Cooper, and everyone.

But when you’re making an event, five nights a week, it would be wrong to tell a small, detailed domestic story. It’s a brilliant production team, because we didn’t have any increase in budget. It just looks like we did because they simply worked like dogs. The cast have worked hard, and it’s made by people who love this, and with real passion. And the end result shines through.

You can read more at the Source

After having the same gallery layout for nearly an entire year, I figured it was time for a change. Now the gallery has a new layout featuring next year’s Tardis crew, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan!

In other news pertaining to the gallery, there are more new Torchwood: Children of Earth promos and stills. Beware of some major spoilers! And of course, enjoy!

I’ve added some images from the upcoming series of Torchwood to the gallery. They can be found here.

Unfortunately they’re not sorted by episode right now as I’ve no clue which episode/s they’re from given the new

Note: As I know there are some people wanting to stay spoiler-free, I also added some Doctor Who Confidential screencaps to the gallery so that the images from Torchwood Series 3 wouldn’t show up on the main site or in the ‘last additions’ section on the main page of the gallery. Please be aware that the Torchwood Series 3 images could still show up under ‘random files’ and will definitely show up under the ‘last additions’ section if you go to the Torchwood category of the gallery.