Theatre and performance in Greater Manchester & other places.
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 1st June 2017. Let's first of all acknowledge how much fun the foam party is and then just move on. That such an orgy of hedonism should occur in a Jane Austen adaptation has left a lot of people frothing at the mouth with excitement. Yet there is so much more to [...]
Contact, Manchester. 24th May 2017. Kes falls in love with Jools and they split up. Kes experiences the joy and pain of a first love. But this is different - Kes was born a girl, and is beginning to identify as a boy. She develops a masculine persona online, meets Jools there and forms a [...]
HOME, Manchester. 19 May 2017. Kieran Hurley's one man show is an incredible rallying cry foretelling the end of the word. Its seeming simplicity hides a complex narrative and a compelling vision. A big table, laden with lights and a control panel. A chair. He takes a seat and puts a match to a candle [...]
Bolton Octagon. 16 May 2017. This is not a review, just some interim (and possibly random) thoughts on 'Winter Hill'. I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket unexpectedly to see it very early in the run. However I'd already booked to see it in the final week so I reserve the right to [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester 15th May 2017 In the middle of a blue-green floor, adrift on an island of sand, a rickety timber construction looms overhead. Upon this island Viola is washed ashore after a shipwreck in which her brother is presumed to have died. She disguises herself as a man and confusion and intrigue unfold. [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester 11th May 2017 Look - no hands! From this unlikely premise writer Alan Harris draws us in to the story of two lonely people discovering one another through telephone sex line chat. Jimmy works in a drive-through doughnut restaurant and Kitty is a voice at the end of an adult chatline. Beneath [...]
HOME, Manchester 5th May 2017 This review was written for a one-off exercise to the following brief - Write a creative, non-conventional response to Tank. Try pushing yourselves outside your comfort zones and see what happens. Some of this is known. In 1965, Margaret Lovatt lived with a dolphin for 10 weeks as part of [...]
HOME, Manchester 4th May 2017 Rosie Kay's new work MK ULTRA is a fantasy world away from the harsh realities of her last piece the intense and intimate 5 Soldiers. However it shares the same collaborative ethos and immersive approach that makes her work so distinctive. And if the British Army wasn't a big enough [...]
Bolton Octagon, 27th April 2017 As Brigid Larmour's new production of Dodie Smith's much-loved novel begins, 17 year old Cassandra is writing her diary both sitting in and singing in the kitchen sink. The story of two sisters growing up in an impoverished and chaotic Bohemian family in the 1930s has not just been pulled [...]
HOME, Manchester 21st April 2017 This review was written for a one-off exercise to the following brief. 'It should be descriptive and analytical - commentary but not a synopsis. And no personality or opinion'. If it's managed to achieve that but you are still interested in my view it is summarised in a very brief [...]
Circles & Stalls 