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 Husk at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester. Intruders spotted in a garden, a knife glinting in the darkness, unanswered questions, and a gathering storm. Thriller-style hooks draw the audience into Rubert Hill’s knotty tale of a man released from prison, with unresolved business to settle in his hometown. Husk is Hill’s first stage play [...]
Review of A Taste Of Honey at Royal Exchange, Manchester. “Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.” At times, director Emma Baggott’s sure-footed revival of A Taste of Honey feels as if it is summoning up the ghosts of Shelagh Delaney’s Salford. In its opening moments, Nishla Smith’s stylish jazz singer [...]
Review of In The Time of Dragons at The Edge. For its new musical In the Time of Dragons, The Edge artfully creates a sixties nightclub vibe - with a dressing room in one corner, piano in the other, lamplit cabaret tables along one side, and big neon sign. The Blue Angel obviously doesn’t like [...]
Review of This Town at Contact Theatre, Manchester. With its alleyways, cobbled streets, chippies, and pubs – Rory Aaron’s This Town could be one of many places in post-industrial northern England. Take your pick from “the far-off towns that nobody’s heard of”. Aaron succinctly sets the scene, while also referencing the ghosts of the past [...]
Review of Animal at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester. David is a 25 year old gay man with a lot of sexual urges – he also has a wheelchair and round-the-clock care support. David’s domestic set up doesn’t exactly lend itself to spontaneous casual encounters. When flatmate Jill isn’t around, care assistant Derek is on hand [...]
Review of Song From Far Away at HOME, Manchester. Willem, a financial trader in New York, has his working day interrupted by a voicemail. It's his mother, telling him that his brother Pauli had died. After complaining that the news has come at “a very inconvenient time”, he packs his bags, boards a flight, and [...]
Review of Beginning at Royal Exchange, Manchester. Laura and Danny lock eyes across the room at a house party, and when the last guests have all left, there they are. Just the two of them – with all the empty bottles, plates of leftovers, and a fresh cigarette burn on the carpet. David Eldridge’s ‘Beginning’ [...]
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 Let The Right One In at Royal Exchange, Manchester. Tickets for front row seats for Let The Right One In come with the printed warning “risk of blood splatter” - and wherever you sit, the Royal Exchange’s latest show delivers plenty of spills, thrills and shivers. In perhaps its most shocking twist though, [...]
Circles & Stalls 