Topic: QM2: Carmen, Squeeze & Shakespeare at sea!

Cunard have revealed some fantastic new additions to entertainment and enrichment aboard Queen Mary 2 for the transatlantic season.

Passengers will be dazzled by 3D films, interactive song writing workshops, and RADA 'street theatre' performance workshops.

In June, the opera Carmen - produced by RealD and London’s Royal Opera House – will be featured in 3D, and shown in the Illuminations theatre.



Other 3D blockbusters will be shown including Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Also new this year, Chris Difford -- double Ivor Novello award-winner and former member of the 70's band 'Squeeze', will conduct songwriting workshops with four other professional song-writers as part of the Professional Insights series.



With Difford’s songwriting programme, guests will have the opportunity to collaborate in small groups with musicians from Queen Mary 2’s performance company. The best songwriters then be able to record their songs in a studio on board to take home.

Difford and the songwriters also will be performing well-known Squeeze favourites during the voyage.

This year, RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) will go beyond the Royal Court Theatre to feature several new interactive offerings including dramatic 'street theatre' style performances throughout the ship. Guests can expect to enjoy classics such as Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing.

In the theatre itself, a different Canterbury Tale will be performed each month, resulting in the complete works over the course of two years. At the end of each performance, the audience will be encouraged to choose their favourite tale; the actors will then ask for short stories to be called The Cunard Tales to be written by members of the audience; these will then be workshopped and performed by the actors and participants in Workshop 3.

Have you ever been on a transatlantic voyage aboard Queen Mary 2? How was it?

If not, would the above kind of entertainment entice you to book?

Oh, wow. Right, not going to be able to do a crossing this year, but I need to start campaigning for it next year.

We're on QM2 24th June for a double transatlantic - can't wait!

What good programmes.
Does she have ones as good on her cruises, or are they just for the Transatlantic?
Jo.