Theatre and performance in Greater Manchester & other places.
The Lowry, Salford. 18 October 2017. Under glass, in the dark, spotlit, on display and moving. Clod Ensemble exhibit seven performers within glass jars and display cases. On their previous visit to The Lowry, the company took us on a journey around the vast spaces of the main theatre with 'An Anatomie in Four Quarters' [...]
53two, Manchester. 17 October 2017. Anna Jordan's 'Stay Happy, Keep Smiling' is a collection of shattered fragments - six lives upended following a terrorist atrocity. It opens with everyone on stage, almost frozen to the spot. Scraps of stories, jumbled feelings, they make little sense. Witnesses to something deeply shocking, they are still processing what [...]
13 October 2017. Waterside Theatre. Manchester. A Sleepwalk Collective production with the participation of Theatre and Performance. It's autumn outside in Manchester but in an unnamed provincial town in Russia it is spring. Olga and Irina remember their father's funeral a year before and yearn for the Moscow of their memories. As the two sisters' [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 2 October 2017. While in the Royal Exchange's main theatre Sarah Frankcom's production of 'Our Town' cleverly plays around with place and time, in the studio next door Jackie Hagan's new play 'Cosmic Scallies' firmly sticks a pin in a map to locate us in the here and now. Welcome to 44 [...]
Presented by Word of Warning, STUN + Z-arts. 30 September 2017. 'Emergency', Word of Warning's annual "day for the curious", features various performances, installations and experiences all in the space of 11 hours. This year there were 27 shows to choose from and it was more or less non-stop from the off. What's so likeable about [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 19 September 2017. The Royal Exchange's stage is crowded with people sitting around tables, chatting and waiting for something to start. Everyone is dressed as if they have just walked in off the street and it isn't obvious who are the audience and who are the cast. The setting is so mundane [...]
Contact, Manchester. 21 September 2017. After developing the concept of a 'football opera' with fans in Belgium, and then recreating it in other European cities, the directors of We're Not Really Here (Yahya terryn, Oliver Roels and Gilles De Schryver) bring the show to Manchester for its English premiere. In each city they work with [...]
HOME, Manchester. 13 September 2017. Gary McNair takes us back to a time when the Sugababes and Girls Aloud were in the charts, the second Star Wars trilogy was unfolding and he was the proud owner of a mobile phone with 60 minutes of free calls and 90 free texts. Finding himself increasingly isolated and [...]
Oldham Coliseum. 12 September 2017. A 'musical entertainment' from the 1960s casting a satirical eye over the First World War and done in the style of old music hall theatre could sound like a dusty museum piece of a show. However while the Great War is now a century ago, as tensions simmer in Korea [...]
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 [...]
Circles & Stalls 