Theatre and performance in Greater Manchester & other places.
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 16 August 2017. It starts with a few coded knocks, a secret phrase and a charming warm Polari welcome on our entrance... The Royal Exchange Young Company's latest production begins in a louche 1950's gay bar and then takes us on a journey of lives half-lived, secret stories and modern-day oppression. 'We [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Royal Exchange, Manchester. 16th June 2017. Powder Keg's new work 'Bears' is a carefully calibrated but passionate response to climate change. Taking steps in development to minimise the production's carbon footprint, the set is created from 100% recycled materials, the programme is only available as a download and on the way in the audience are [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
30 March 2017. Royal Exchange, Manchester. A doomed love affair between Zeus, a god, and Io, a woman turned into a cow, may be the stuff of Greek legend but this tale of their descendants feels as if it has been cut and pasted straight from today's news sites. Like a dispatch across the centuries [...]
Circles & Stalls 