Theatre and performance in Greater Manchester & other places.
Review of WRESTLELADSWRESTLE at HOME, Manchester. “I’m Jennifer Jackson… and tonight I’m going to show you how to remove someone from a house party.” And she’s not messing around - with the help of Simon Carroll Jones (playing a “drunk uncle”), she does just that. It’s one of several moments in WRESTLELADSWRESTLE where Jennifer Jackson [...]
Review of Around the World in 80 Days at Bolton Octagon. Continuous squiggly lines adorn Bolton Octagon’s walls and floors, drawing the eye ever deeper into the building. All routes lead to the auditorium where the irregular twists and curves continue - splashing across the walls, forming dangling neon clouds overhead and weaving across the [...]
Review of Too Much World At Once at HOME, Manchester. At the heart of Too Much World At Once is a family struggling to communicate with one another, in a world edging ever closer to catastrophe. It is Noble’s fifteenth birthday, and he’s wrestling with his feelings. He is missing his older sister Cleo who [...]
Review of Spring and Port Wine at Bolton Octagon. It is 1966, and The Who’s ‘My Generation’ rocks out rebelliously in the opening moments of Bolton Octagon’s production of ‘Spring and Port Wine’. On stage, the Crompton’s tidy and ordered traditional family home speaks of an earlier era - there’s a cloth on the table [...]
Review of A Christmas Carol at Bolton Octagon. Kate Ferguson and Susannah Pearse, the writing team behind Bolton Octagon’s new musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol, have already been confirmed as the creators of the theatre’s 2023 festive offering (Around the World in Eighty Days). Quite a vote of confidence, considering that their latest show [...]
Review of The Jungle Book at Oldham Coliseum. Although the stories may be well-known, the setting for Jessica Swale’s adaptation of The Jungle Book is refreshingly unexpected. Instead of dense undergrowth, a graffiti-swathed urban playground provides a world of ramps, ropes and climbing frames for Rudyard Kipling’s characters to jump, slide and swing their way [...]
The Lowry at The Welcome Inn, Salford. News that an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, would undoubtedly focus the mind. Whether, as the end of the world approaches, most people would choose to channel that heightened state of mental alertness into pondering some trivia questions down the pub is certainly open to [...]
Bolton Octagon at Bolton Library Theatre. 30 October 2019. Nina and Con are a couple. Masha has feelings for Con, but is in a relationship with Simon. All four of them are at university together and in a band called Seagulls. They're about to enter a Battle of the Bands and the world seems full [...]
26 September 2019. Box of Tricks at The Lowry, Salford. "We're not friends okay, and that's fine, more than, but could you just . . . I don't want to talk, alright?". Paul's desperate plea to Michael to be left alone isn't the most obvious indication that a friendship is about to form, and yet [...]
Oldham Coliseum. 26 February 2019. Summer is on its way out, and rays of sunshine are in short supply in Martin McDonagh's darkly comic play set in a small community on the west coast of Ireland. There's plenty of heat generated by the endless chatter between gravedigger Mick, his assistant Mairtin, stoney-faced neighbour MaryJohnny and [...]
Circles & Stalls 