MUSICALS dominate the new season announced by the Liverpool Empire.

They range from traditional favourites and major revivals to brand new shows.

Ex-Brookside actress Claire Sweeney stars in one of the newest, Shout! a show opening on February 18 celebrating female singers.

Five characters visit “swinging London” and discover the fashions (lots of mini skirts) and music of an era including numbers by singers like Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield and Lulu whose hit song Shout gives the show its title.

Liverpool producer Bill Kenwright’s favourite Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat returns for a week-long run from February 25.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose first musical this was, is also represented by his romantic musical Aspects of Love in a new production from June 10. Kenwright and Lloyd Webber combine again for a new production of Evita which will opens its tour at the Empire from May 22.

Returning from March 19 will be the compilation music- al, Dancing in the Streets, cel- ebrating the Motown Sound.

Classics being restaged include the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, featuring Dave Willetts, while Liverpool’s own Joe McGann takes the Topol role of the milkman Tevye and father of five in a new production of Fiddler on the Roof from April 22.

Bernie Nolan has one of the leading roles in Our Benny, the musical by local writer Anne Dalton, which has already had a success at the Empire under its original title Her Benny, but has been re- vamped for Capital of Culture Year, opens on November 12.

Away from musicals, Irish comedian, actor and writer Brendan O’Carroll returns in drag to play one of the favourites of Liverpool audiences, the foul-mouthed Irish mother Mrs Brown.

Opera and ballet producer Ellen Kent, another Empire favourite with her East European productions, is staging Tchaikovsky’s ballets Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker from February 4 and Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly from February 14.