Happy birthday Barbie

The doll celebrates her 50th birthday today. Despite reaching her half-century, she doesn’t have a single wrinkle or grey hair.

Parties will be taking place across the world to mark the occasion, and the world’s first store dedicated to the doll has opened in Shanghai. Here are 10 facts about the world’s number one doll:

In pictures: Barbie turns 50

1 She was launched by toy maker Mattell in 1959 and founders Ruth and Elliot Handler named the 11in doll after their daughter

2 She has been sold in 150 countries, with 90 per cent of girls aged between three and 10 in the US owning at least one Barbie

3 Barbie’s full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts 

4 She is from Willows, Wisconsin, and went to Willows High School

5 She has four sisters: Skipper (1964), Stacie (1992), Kelly (1995) and Krissy (1995)

6 Barbie’s first pet was a horse named Dancer 

7 The first Barbie doll sold for $3 in 1959 

8 Her first boyfriend, Ken, debuted in 1961 

9 Ken and Barbie broke up on Valentine’s Day in 2004

10 The best-selling Barbie doll was 1992's Totally Hair Barbie, who had hair down to her toes

Sadler's Wells in search of stars

LEGENDARY venue Sadler's Wells is today launching a four-year, global X-Factor-style contest to find the next big dancing star.

The winner will get the rare chance to appear on the main stage at the famed Islington theatre.

From today, all dancers and choreographers over the age of 18 can upload a short film of an original performance on to a website via YouTube.

Judges including Strictly Come Dancing's Arlene Phillips (pictured), the Royal Ballet's Zenaida Yanowsky and Turner Prize winner Martin Creed will shortlist ten entries and the public will then vote for their favourite.

Anyone in the world is invited to submit their video, with the first deadline falling on 17 July.

The public vote opens in September and the winner will perform during Sadler's Wells' Sampled season next January.

Every year until 2011 one winner will be picked - and the collective winners get to perform their works again in London during the Olympic year.

To enter and for more details go to www.globaldancecontest.com

-Alexa Baracaia
 

Josh Hartnett wins acclaim

JOSH Hartnett won decent reviews for his West End debut in Rain Man, but not exactly rave ones.
Theatregoers, though, clearly thought different.

The Hollywood heartthrob has been named best newcomer of the year at the only stage awards voted for by members of the public.

His performance as Charlie Babbitt in the Apollo Theatre revival of the 1988 film beat competition from Kinks frontman Ray Davies, for his musical Come Dancing, and acclaimed young playwright and actor Tarrell Alvin McCraney for his plays including Wig Out! at the Royal Court.

The critics accorded Hartnett modest praise fopr his performance, though he was widely felt to be outshone by co-star Adam Godley as his autistic savant brother Raymond.

Review: Spring Awakening

*****
Lyric Hammersmith

BOHEMIAN troublemaker Frank Wedekind's 1891 German Expressionist play has spent the last century being banned, cut to shreds and ignored.

Given it features teen sex, S&M, blossoming homosexuality, masturbation, abuse and abortion that’s not surprising.

What is surprising is how much of a huge hit the revamped 2006 Broadway musical version has been, scooping eight Tony awards and £35 million at the box office, despite featuring no star names and a 19th century German setting.

Well, now it's here, with a fresh young British cast - and guess what? It's breathtakingly, outrageously brilliant. It's period repression meets modern rock ethic; think Rufus Wainwright doing Grease.

David Tennant misses out on award

DAVID Tennant has failed to get a nomination in this year's Olivier Awards. The Doctor Who star, whose performance as Hamlet in the West End garnered rave reviews, has been beaten to the post by theatre heavyweights including Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi.

He was overlooked for a gong because not enough award judges were available to see his stellar performance in Shakespeare's classic tragedy.

In fact, celebrity castings are shunned completely in the nominations for the "Oscars of the London stage". Instead, it's a triumph for experience over youth.

The best actor nominees are Michael Gambon and fellow stage veteran David Bradley - 68 and 66 respectively - for No Man's Land, Derek Jacobi , 70, for Twelfth Night and the un-starry Adam Godley for Rain Man - who beat his celebrity co-star Josh Hartnett to a nomination.

The best actress nominees are another Who's Who of veteran acting talent, with Penelope Wilton and Margaret Tyzack both nominated for The Chalk Garden, Lindsay Duncan for That Face and US actress Deanna Dunagan for August: Osage County.

Gavin and Stacey star's Vagina Monologue

GAVIN and Stacey star Joanna Page is to star in the Vagina Monologues.

The Swansea-born actress (pictured), who plays Stacey in the hit comedy series, will take to the stage when the hit show comes to the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff for a five-night run.

Weathergirl Sian Lloyd from Maesteg, south Wales, will also star in the production which is now in its tenth year of performances in the UK.

Page will be reunited with Margaret John, who plays Doris, the neighbour of Gwen and Nessa in Gavin and Stacey.

Amazing night out a dead cirque!

EXTREME circus show Cirque Du Soleil is back in London, wowing audience with death-defying acrobatics and high-wire stunts.

Psychedelic and surreal show Quidam began a month-long residency at the Royal Albert Hall last night – the longest run for a Cirque show in Europe.

It tells the tale of a young girl’s adventures in an alternate universe.

You'll ‘ooh’ as contortionists dance 50 feet in the air. And you'll ‘ahh’ as tumbling acrobats balance on each other’s heads.

Click back tomorrow to read our reviewer’s verdict!

Join the mad midwinter swim at Brockwell Lido

If you think this looks cold…then you should go to Iceland. Brrrr.

But...if you can’t manage that and would still like to do something for someone in need (at sub zero temperatures) then brave the Brockwell Lido!

The pool, nestled in the corner of Brockwell Park in London's south east, is open tomorrow (Saturday 20th Dec) for the mad Midwinter Swim.

Ok, so it may not be exactly subzero, but the Met Office predicts it will be chillier than last year’s 3.2 degrees. My goosebumps have started just writing this! (or is that just the door that everyone keeps leaving open?)

Last year 73 swimmers took the plunge and this year organisers hope 100 brave Londoners will also get in on the action.

There is a gimmick too – swimmers will all wear hats (either swimming cap, woolly or any other choice)! It’s not just to keep warm but to also raise awareness of Age Concern's Fight the Freeze campaign.

Age Concern is the UK's largest charity working with and for older people – and the campaign aims to lower the number of excess winter deaths. Last year 24‚650 people died as a result of cold related issues.

If you'd like to take part, drop in to the Lido at 11.45am to sign up for a midday splash.

Entry fee is a donation (£1+) to Age Concern Lambeth.  There will be art activities, hot drinks and refreshments on offer.

For more details check out the website at www.brockwell-lido.com

Review: Loot

***
Tricycle

MORE than 40 years from its original London premiere, Joe Orton's 1965 black comedy about death, robbery, Catholicism and police brutality has lost none of its capacity to subvert.

Orton’s script zings with snappy wit - but Sean Holmes’s production too often allows them to pass by virtually unheralded.

Ex-EastEnder Matt Di Angelo makes a fetching stage debut as an amoral bisexual man more intent on stashing the loot of a bank robbery into his mother’s coffin than respecting her dead corpse, and Smack the Pony star Doon Mackichan as the mother’s nurse is hilarious with agendas all of her own.

But the show is stolen by David Haig’s Inspector Truscott, who comes to investigate and lands dazzling comic blows about the perfect reasonableness of police unreasonableness that resonate as if they were penned today.

“Under any other political system I'd have you on the floor in tears!”, he announces, after beating Matt Di Angelo’s Hal to the floor, who replies, crying, “You’ve got me on the floor in tears!”

-Mark Shenton

Review: Cinderella

****

Lyric Hammersmith

PANTO season kicks off this week, and this festive offering has already caused a fuss.

Mothers stomped out of previews over scenes of “gratuitous ­violence” and the use of un-Christmassy words. But those ladies must have been hysterical to get upset by this charmer.

OK, so an unnecessary “fat bitch” has gone, but the “slut” stays put as the good-old ­British term for a slovenly woman, and so it should.

The “gratuitous violence” ­towards Cinderella is a few stage fighting moves that are necessary for the gleefully gruesome climax: the stepdaughters having their eyes pecked out by crows.