Theatre and performance in Greater Manchester & other places.
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 [...]
Flare Festival at HOME, Manchester. 7 July 2017. By Massive Owl as part of Flare International Festival of New Theatre. Massive Owl create an evocative new piece of work by plundering small details from the film 'Stand By Me' and Stephen King’s novella 'The Body' on which that film was based. Set in the same [...]
Flare Festival at HOME, Manchester. 7 July 2017. By Simon De Winne/Tibaldus as part of Flare International Festival of New Theatre. Out of the darkness, the outline of Simon De Winne dancing comes in to focus. We can hear the effort in his amplified breathing and he moves around the space expansively and with abandon. [...]
The appearance of an over-sized yellow catwalk cutting across Piccadilly Gardens is another visible sign that this year's Manchester International Festival (MIF) is getting ever closer. When it was announced, new Artistic Director John McGrath's first programme seemed a touch underwhelming. A bit dull even, when compared with previous MIFs under Alex Poots' reign. Admittedly [...]
HOME, Manchester. 9th June 2017. Your phone pings. It's a text. "OK... Make eye contact. Instructions to follow". From now on in you are part of the performance. Even people who've been to immersive theatre previously may not be prepared for what Blast Theory and Hydrocracker have created. It's a sign of how much of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 