Macbeth, A HOME, Young Vic and Birmingham Repertory Theatre co-production in association with Lucy Guerin Inc., HOME, February 2-6 By the time Macbeth (John Heffernan) learns that his wife has died, he is already slumped against the wall. The rest of the cast stand in the shadows upstage, panting after a frenetic sequence of hypnotic […]
Archive by Author
A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, The Lowry, reviewed by Peter Wild
A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, Quay Theatre, The Lowry, February 4 2016 The debut novel by Eimear McBride was a literary cause celebre when it was first published back in 2013, having first been rejected by a number of publishers. McBride has said it took six months to write and nine years to […]
Site redesign
Welcome to the new Manchester Review site! Apart from refreshing the design and generally cleaning things up, we’ve moved a few things around. Along with the current issue, you’ll now see our latest reviews on the home page – and the Reviews link in the main navigation bar will take you to a new comprehensive […]
barbarians: A Trilogy by Hofesh Shechter, HOME, reviewed by Tristan Burke
HOME, Thursday 28th January Hofesh Shechter’s barbarians is a postmodern work in the strict sense. Its dance and music are constructed by bricolage and pastiche and these serve as the hyperactive, playful backdrop against which he explores anxieties about the possibilities of making art and particularly about the difficulty of depicting love. This intellectualism is […]
Sarah Corbett, And She Was (Pavilion) £9.99, reviewed by Annie Muir
Sarah Corbett, And She Was (Pavilion, £9.99), reviewed by Annie Muir Whether it’s used as the refrain in the titular Talking Heads song or as the central narrative device of Genesis, the word ‘and’ holds the English language together like braces worn by teenagers to close the gaps in their teeth. In Genesis, as […]
The Revenant (2016), dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, HOME, reviewed by Fran Slater
When you went to see a film at The Cornerhouse you could feel secure in the fact that it had already received an important seal of approval. The Cornerhouse didn’t just show any film. It had to be considered a little bit special, and a little bit different, to make it onto the silver screen. […]
The Hateful Eight (2016), dir. Quentin Tarantino, HOME, reviewed by Fran Slater
The Hateful Eight, dir. Quentin Tarantino, HOME, January 17 2016 Few films receive the levels of interest and attention that a new Quentin Tarantino release does. Over the last couple of months you’ll have seen the images everywhere. Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell standing in the snow with their guns firmly grasped in their […]
Roseacre, HOME, reviewed by Peter Wild
Roseacre, HOME; January 15-17 I find myself in HOME: Manchester’s newest theatre-cinema-eatery, the bolder and brasher stepchild of that cultural staple, the Cornerhouse. I am sitting on the kind of chairs you find arranged in a school hall before the latest iteration of the Nativity (and it’s a full house, to the extent that we […]
Mona Arshi, Small Hands (Pavilion Poetry) £9.99, reviewed by Ken Evans
Mona Arshi’s debut collection Small Hands won the Forward Prize for best first collection, and her relatively short poetic CV is a comet-tail of successes: Magma Competition prize 2012, joint winner of the Manchester Poetry prize 2014, an award in the Troubadour – she has traced a brilliant trajectory in a short time. Having heard her […]
Daniel Sluman, the terrible (Nine Arches) £9.99), reviewed by Ken Evans
A blood-spatter or tainted x-ray? The vivid front cover of Daniel Sluman’s second collection from Nine Arches, the terrible, (even the title sounds cut from its meaning), alerts you that this volume deals with what Sluman describes as the ‘dark underbelly of our relatively comfortable lives.’ If the endlessly dividing cell that is contemporary poetry […]
The Revenger’s Tragedy, The Lowry, reviewed by Annie Dickinson
The Revenger’s Tragedy, dir. Anne Thuot, The Lowry, 19-21 November Produced and performed by the Belgian physical theatre company FAST ASBL, The Revenger’s Tragedy is less a performance or even an adaptation of the Jacobean revenge tragedy of the same name than a stark anatomization of its treatment of women. The 1606 play, now generally thought […]
Ben Aitken, Dear Bill Bryson (Not Bad Books) £9.99, reviewed by Callum Coles
Ben Aitken’s Dear Bill Bryson (Footnotes from a Small Island)* follows the titular American’s 1995 tour of this fair Isle’s quaint villages, towns, cities, pubs, roadside cafes, bus terminals and Wigan. It is, in the words of its author, a “less funny version of the original.” As a fan of Bryson myself, I confess that […]
Pomona, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Fran Slater
Pomona, dir. Alistair McDowall The Royal Exchange (October 29 – November 21) Pomona is now a famous part of Manchester. An inexplicable wasteland in the space between Manchester City Centre and Salford Quays, accessible from only a few choice entrances, it has become a place that certain people in this city are willing to fight […]
An Ape’s Progress, Manchester Literature Festival, reviewed by James David Ward
Dave McKean, introduced tonight as “the man who wears many hats”, is a constant collaborator, working with everyone from Grant Morrison to Heston Blumethal, and is best known for his longstanding partnership with Neil Gaiman. He has produced accomplished pieces across a number of art forms, from his graphic novels, to his painting, to his […]
The Oresteia, HOME, reviewed by Peter Wild
The Oresteia / HOME / 28 October 2015 2015s third production of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia (there have been productions at the Almeida and the Globe in London) sets itself apart by running with Ted Hughes’s adaptation, which clocks in at some two hours less than the original and propels its audience through what can only […]
Moya Cannon, Keats Lives (Carcanet) £9.99, reviewed by Annie Muir
Just as Keats himself is more famous for his untimely death than the events of his life, Keats Lives is a book primarily concerned with the continuance of lives after death. Published this year, Cannon’s fifth collection of poetry begins with a sonnet: ‘Winter View from Binn Bhriocáin’. The title immediately presents a highly symbolic […]
1984, Northern Ballet at The Palace Theatre, reviewed by Elizabeth Mitchell
1984, Northern Ballet, The Palace Theatre, October 15 2015 As a cultural colossus of a novel, reworking 1984 will never be easy in any media. With modern ballet being better known for its abstract movement than defined storytelling, it must be one of the hardest. Although doing a better job than many others before him, […]
Golem, HOME, reviewed by Emma Rhys
Golem, HOME, First Street, Manchester, 7–17 October 2015 Memorable tunes, exquisite performances, and stunning visuals the likes of which I’ve not seen in theatre before. Produced by performance company 1927, whose speciality is combining performance and live music with animation and film, Golem is a wonderful spectacle – entertaining and funny with a subtext of […]
La Mélancolie Des Dragons, HOME, reviewed by Fran Slater
Aging rockers hiding in a trailer, a headbanging competition in a broken down car, floating wigs, ski slopes and fake snow, a bubble machine, and some strangely impressive and multifunctional inflatables. In an extremely bizarre way, La Mélancolie Des Dragons kind of had it all. In other ways, this almost insane mix of components, along […]
Dark Arteries, Rambert at The Lowry, reviewed by Elizabeth Mitchell
Rambert, ‘Dark Arteries,’ ‘The Three Dancers,’ ‘Terra Incognito’ at The Lowry, September 30 2015 A word of warning: ever since I saw Mark Baldwin’s ‘Eternal Light’ aged 15, I have dreamt of being in the Rambert. There was just something about the so cleverly choreographed and very balletic Contemporary dance, with the huge side of […]
So Here We Are, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Şima İmşir Parker
So Here We Are, dir. Steven Atkinson, The Royal Exchange Pidge (Sam Melvin), Pugh (Mark Weinman) and Smudge (Dorian Jerome Simpson) are sitting on a container representing a Southend sea wall, trying to remember who wrote Peter Pan. Is it Walt Disney or Barry someone? Or perhaps Walter Barry? This is right after the funeral […]
Welcome to Night Vale, Albert Hall, reviewed by James D Ward
Welcome to Night Vale Albert Hall, Manchester, 24/09/2015 Podcasts are simply radio for our on demand times, so it’s appropriate that one of the more popular shows purports to be the broadcasts from a community station situated in an otherworldly part of the American Midwest. Welcome to Night Vale, with its mix of […]
The Crucible, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Jon Greenaway
The Crucible, dir. Caroline Steinbeis – The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester First performed in 1953 Arthur Miller’s play has quickly become a cultural touchstone, becoming a fixture of GCSE and A-Level syllabi and beloved by undergraduate and repertory theatre companies for its wide casting and political themes. Therefore, the challenge or any new production is to […]
Swan Lake, Birmingham Royal Ballet at The Lowry, by Elizabeth Mitchell
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake, The Lowry, September 23 2015 With Swan Lake being such a classic, it ways runs the danger of being a safely enjoyable but slightly dull way to spend an evening. However, David Bintley has once more pulled it out of the bag with his energetic direction of Peter Wright’s masterpiece. […]
Petite Noir, Deaf Institute, reviewed by Marli Roode
Conventional wisdom has it that Manchester is a city dedicated to telling and retelling its own story. That every weekend, countless clubs play music made in the city – made by the city, it starts to feel like – and everyone dances like Ten Storey Love Song hasn’t been on the playlist every weekend for […]
The Room, Joshua Brooks, reviewed by Emma Rhys
The Room (by Harold Pinter), Joshua Brooks, Princess Street, Manchester, 28–30 September 2015 I would highly recommend you take 50 minutes out of an evening next week to scratch your head and hold your breath at the absurdity and intensity of a Pinter play. This depiction of The Room has been thoughtfully considered and excellently […]
By Far The Greatest Team, The Lowry, reviewed by Fran Slater
By Far the Greatest Team – The Lowry Mixing football and theatre is an interesting but risky move. On paper, the high drama of both forms of entertainment should lend themselves to an exciting combination, the opportunity to bring two of our nation’s favourite pastimes together to create something original and hopefully at least half […]
Interview with Luke Norris, So Here We Are, The Royal Exchange, by Şima İmşir Parker
So Here We Are is the recipient of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2013, the biggest national competition for playwriting. It is a play by a young writer, Luke Norris, who pens plays and scripts in addition to his bright acting career. Goodbye To All That was his debut play in 2012, which was first […]
Interview with Rachel Redford, The Crucible, The Royal Exchange, by Jon Greenaway
With Caroline Steinbeis bringing a new production of ‘The Crucible’ to the Royal Exchange Theatre in the centenary year of Arthur Miller’s birth, The Manchester Review took the chance to talk to Rachel Redford, up and coming actor and RADA 2013 graduate about her role in the play, dealing with a character who is “so […]
Show Me the Money, People’s History Museum, Manchester, reviewed by Emma Rhys
Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present, The People’s History Museum, Manchester, 11 July 2015–24 January 2016 After viewing this excellent exhibition at the People’s History Museum – containing a wide variety of dynamic works by artists from the eighteenth century to today, as well as economic artefacts and enlightening […]
David Bowie Convention, King’s Arms, reviewed by Fran Slater
Bowie and beer. That should be pretty much all I have to say, shouldn’t it? There can’t be many combinations more promising than a day dedicated to music’s most prolific genius and some dedicated ales brewed specifically for the occasion. There’s a fair few reasons that I can’t just stop there, though. Not least because […]
Sema Kaygusuz, The Well of Trapped Words (Comma Press) £9.99, reviewed by Şima Imsir
The receipent of the English Pen Translates! Award 2013, The Well of Trapped Words by Sema Kaygusuz is a collection of short stories previously published in her various short story collections in Turkish. The stories in this book have been translated by Maureen Freely, the translator of prominent Turkish writers including the nobel laurette Orhan […]
The Stars are Made of Concrete, The Kings Arms, reviewed by Fran Slater
The Stars are Made of Concrete, Kings Arms, Salford, 26th & 27th July 2015 Anyone who has spent much time on the dole or in the job centre would have cracked a wry smile as they made their way into Salford’s most interesting theatre for The Stars are Made of Concrete. Carol (Jo Dakin) was […]
Shaun of the Dead, The Dancehouse, reviewed by Fran Slater
Shaun of the Dead , The Dancehouse, 22nd – 24th July 2015 It could be argued that you should know what to expect when viewing a stage version of Shaun of the Dead. This would be a different trip to the theatre than many. There were unlikely to be any pretensions, soliloquys would be at a […]
The Skriker, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Peter Wild
The Skriker, Royal Exchange, 1st July – 1st August 2015 Firstofall:imaginewordssoclosetogetherthatyoucan’talwaystellthemapart. You’re in the Royal Exchange, a space transformed, adorned, made out, played out like a Siberian fighting pit, your humble bumble of a reviewer one floor up looking down on a lot of anxious, middle-class people sat at benches wondering, perhaps, what they have […]