Theatre and performance in Greater Manchester & other places.
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 16 October 2018. A travelling salesman no longer fit to travel. A home filled with consumer goods that break down before they are even paid for. A once green and leafy neighbourhood concreted over and crammed with new apartment blocks. Willy Loman's world has become one of increasing disappointment and insecurity, yet [...]
Royal Exchange Young Company. 15 August 2018. Closed for the summer, and largely deserted, North Manchester's Abraham Moss School seems an unlikely substitute for the island setting of Shakespeare's The Tempest. There's something happening in the hall, but it's not clear what. Are we being asked our names at the door or is a register [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 20 - 22 July 2018. CO:LAB is the Royal Exchange's annual festival showcasing works-in-progress by "the next generation of North West theatre-makers". The weekend-long event is part of the theatre's Open Exchange talent development programme and it provides local artists with an opportunity to test out their work in front of a [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 9 & 19 July 2018. After a recent stint on the Royal Exchange's main stage as a spinning Winnie in Sarah Frankcom's production of Happy Days, Maxine Peake is back again, although this time as the writer of Queens of the Coal Age. Taking us deep underground, her play reimagines the true [...]
Altrincham Garrick Playhouse. 14 June 2018. "I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game's afoot". Time and Again Theatre company premiered Greyhounds as part of last year's Greater Manchester Fringe Festival. It's now heading to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. In advance of that, Manchester audiences had an [...]
Octagon, Bolton. 9 April 2018. Set in Bolton in 1967, there's something reassuringly sweet about Kathrine Smith's tale of two men falling in love for the first time. Yet, Bobby and Ralph's romance follows a far from conventional trajectory - an anonymous fumble in a toilet cubicle, leading to a fiercely uninhibited fuck in Ralph's [...]
Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester. 15 & 21 November 2017. Manchester's musical mill is warming up another revival for a surely inevitable transfer to London. This time they're hosting the European premiere of 'Little Women - The Musical'. The musical version of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, premiered on Broadway back in 2005, views the lives of [...]
53two, Manchester. 1 September 2017. "Who run the world? Girls!". Anna Jordan's 'Freak' is a fiercely forensic examination of the pressures women face and the price they pay. It considers these issues through the lives of 15-year-old Leah struggling with her first serious relationship and 30-year-old Georgie at a crossroads after the end of a [...]
Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester. 29 August 2017. Building on its reputation as Manchester's hotbed of musical theatre Hope Mill Theatre plays host to a revival of Stephen Schwartz's 1970s musical 'Pippin'. A sort of play within a play, acted out by a wandering troupe of performers, it tells the story of a young prince (named [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 19th June 2017. Written and Performed by Pauline Mayers. By the Mayers Ensemble 'How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?' Nina Simone. Inspired by those words, Pauline Mayers' What If I Told You challenges us to reflect on our times through her own story. There is to be no [...]
Circles & Stalls 