Hindle Wakes, Bolton Octagon, 19th February-21st March 2015 ‘Nowt so queer as folk’ might sum up Hindle Wakes; or, at least, ‘nowt so queer as womenfolk’. It’s 1912 and the disenfranchised fairer sex is becoming more demanding, much to the woe of their male counterparts, and to some of the older ladies in Northern England. […]
Archive by Author
My Brother’s Country, The Lowry, reviewed by Emma Rhys
My Brother’s Country, The Lowry, Salford Quays, Manchester, 26th–27th February 2015 My Brother’s Country portrays the tumultuous life of Fereydoun Farrokhzad, an Iranian singer, TV presenter, poet and political activist who was forced into exile after the 1979 Revolution and ultimately, it is believed, murdered by the Iranian Islamic State in 1992. The play spans […]
Stewart Lee at The Lowry, reviewed by Peter Wild
Stewart Lee, The Lowry, February 13 2015 John Coltrane performing ‘My favourite things’ (his take on The Sound of Music classic), is not one of my favourite things. John Coltrane performing the full 13 minute and 47 second version of ‘My favourite things’ is very definitely not one of my favourite things. John Coltrane’s 13 […]
Susan Calman at The Lowry, reviewed by Sarah Jane Vespertine
Susan Calman, The Lowry, February 22 2015 In ‘Lady Like’, Susan Calman proves that she’s an old school stand up with a carefully honed performance, making much of frequently addressing the audience as ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ and working with no distractions on stage, simply herself and a microphone. It’s such an assured and professional set […]
Ross Noble at The Lowry, reviewed by Sarah Jane Vespertine
Ross Noble, The Lowry, February 21 2015 Ross Noble’s new tour is called ‘Tangentleman’, and there are few more appropriate titles for a performance that veers off in so many directions that neither Noble nor his audience are quite sure how they got to any given point. He summed up his own style beautifully when […]
Togara Muzanenhamo, Gumiguru (Carcanet Press) £9.95, reviewed by James Horrocks
A long line runs through Togara Muzanenhamo’s Gumiguru. It is not just the “experiences of a decade” that makes the narratives of this book, it is the lines of the poems on the page, reaching across from margin to margin. The focus of this book is certainly the stories which are largely based in or […]
Owen Lowery, Rego Retold (Carcanet Press) £12.99, reviewed by Charlotte Rowland
If Paula Rego’s art is, first and foremost, about the body, Rego Retold, containing Owen Lowery’s poetic responses to this idea, are themselves separate nods to portraiture. Romance, though somewhat of a distilled notion for Rego, whose subjects are often portrayed as brawny, animalistic, or openly distressed, is utilised by Lowery to draw out the […]
Scuttlers, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Fran Slater
Scuttlers, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 5th Feb-7th March 2015 Inspired by the gangland style riots that disturbed the streets of Manchester back in 2011, Rona Munro decided to go further back in time to investigate some of their precursors. Focusing on the areas of Ancoats and the Northern Quarter that took the brunt of the […]
A-Bomb on Broadway, Nexus Art Cafe, reviewed by Emma Rhys
A-Bomb on Broadway, 1121 Collective, Nexus Art Cafe, Manchester, 2nd-7th February 2015 A-Bomb on Broadway is a performance-art piece carefully crafted and brought to life by the 1121 Collective – a new theatre company based in Manchester. With A-Bomb, this new amateur group have created a professionally staged and passionate piece of dynamic theatre and […]
Light, The Lowry, reviewed by Fran Slater
Light, Theatre Ad Infinitum, The Lowry, Manchester, 3-4th February 2015 A dance show without dancing, a play without words, or silent film brought to the stage? It’s difficult to define exactly what Theatre Ad Infinitum and George Mann’s Light exactly is, but that is not necessarily to its detriment. It is definitely something hugely original. Told […]
Spur of the Moment, HOME, reviewed by Fran Slater
Spur of the Moment, Deaf Dog Productions, HOME, Manchester, 15-17 January 2015 For the last few years the Re: play festival has sought to bring the best local fringe theatre of the previous 12 months back to the stage. Manchester’s thriving theatre scene features so many small venues and up and coming theatre companies that […]
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Lowry, reviewed by Fran Slater
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, National Theatre, The Lowry, Manchester, 18th December 2014 – 10th January 2015. It isn’t often that you can say that the stage itself stole the show during a theatre production, but in the case of The National Theatre’s adaptation of Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident you could […]
She Stoops To Conquer, The Lowry, reviewed by Sarah Jane Vespertine
She Stoops To Conquer, The Lowry, Manchester 9th-13th December 2014 The Northern Broadsides production of She Stoops To Conquer is, quite frankly, adorable. It’s a little bit Blackadder the Third crossed with Two Pints of Lager, largely camp and enormously entertaining. The ‘northernisation’ that Northern Broadsides do so well, moving the setting from the West […]
Slava’s Snow Show, The Lowry, reviewed by Peter Wild
Slava’s Snow Show, The Lowry, Manchester, 9th-13th December 2013 A shock haired man in a mustard coloured onesie stands gazing sadly out at the audience. The capaciousness of his outfit allows him to seemingly grow and shrink, albeit with possibly the saddest expression on his face ever worn by a man. Minutes pass. The man […]
People Zoo Pint-Sized, The Kings Arms, reviewed by Fran Slater
People Zoo Pint Sized, The Kings Arms, Salford, 4th-5th December, 2014 For their debut production, Manchester theatre company People Zoo chose to present three short plays from local writers. Each of Jumbo Shrimp, Let them Eat It, and Captain Awkward shared similar themes of awkward relationships, but other than that, the audience was treated to […]
Wuthering Heights, Contact, reviewed by Fran Slater
Wuthering Heights, Contact Theatre, Manchester, 26th-27th November 2014 I could start by saying that if you’ve ever wanted to see Wuthering Heights narrated by a horse, then this is the play for you. But I won’t. That would make very little sense to anyone. I could start by saying that fans of long, uncomfortable, and […]
The Bartered Bride, The Lowry, reviewed by Sarah Jane Vespertine
The Bartered Bride, Opera North, The Lowry, Manchester, 18th and 20th November 2014. The first and most striking thing about Opera North’s new production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride is the stage setting. For a reasonably small space, the backdrop of gentle white clouds in a serene blue sky gives a feeling of space and […]
A Farewell to Arms, The Lowry, reviewed by Fran Slater
A Farewell to Arms, imitating the dog, The Lowry, Manchester, 13th-15th November 2014 Imitating the dog posit themselves as a theatre company that ‘tests theatrical conventions and brings high-end design and technical and thematic ambition to audiences at small and medium-scales.’ This was all on display during their adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 novel A […]
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Emma Rhys
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Royal Exchange, Manchester, 30th October – 29th November 2014 Taking our seats around the stage, our eyes immediately settled upon the awaiting scene of Maggie and Brick’s bedroom: the setting of the onstage action for the duration of the play. As I took in the beautifully lit and sumptuous white […]
Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, The Lowry, reviewed by Peter Wild
Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, The Lowry, November 4-8 2014 What-ho! Welcome to this review of Perfect Nonsense, a play(full!) adaptation of PG Wodehouse’s third Jeeves and Wooster novel, The Code of the Woosters, that draws attention to itself as a manufactured entertainment for a large audience as seriously as anything Bertolt Brecht ever […]
The Dumb Waiter, The King’s Arms, reviewed by Fran Slater
The Dumb Waiter, Ransack Theatre, The King’s Arms, Salford, 6th-15th November 2014 As soon as the ticket collector led us down a narrow staircase and into a candlelit cellar, there was a sense that this adaptation of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter (1959) might just be a little bit special. Waiting for us in a […]
Othello, The Lowry, a preview by Fran Slater
Everybody knows the story of Othello, right? ‘The green eyed monster’ and ‘the beast with two backs?’ Often seen as one of Shakespeare’s big four, this tale of jealousy, paranoia, and otherness features themes that have become no less relevant throughout the ages. In fact, almost exclusively among the Bard’s many plays, it could be […]
Secret Theatre: Show 6, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Fran Slater
Show 6, The Lyric Hammersmith Secret Theatre Company, Royal Exchange, Manchester, 30th October – 1st November 2014. It’s difficult to really provide a plot outline for The Secret Theatre Company’s Show 6. In many ways, it was difficult to fathom exactly what the plot was. But I’ll try. Two ‘users’ of an unmentioned drug have […]
Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), The Lowry, reviewed by Peter Wild
Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), Royal Shakespeare Company, The Lowry, Manchester, 21st-22nd October 2014 You find us in The Lowry on consecutive nights watching the RSC’s production of Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 (the RSC currently in the midst of a six year journey through all 36 of Shakespeare’s play, their latest outing […]
The Events, HOME, reviewed by Fran Slater
The Events, an ATC Production, dir. David Greig, HOME (Number 1 First Street), Manchester, 22nd-25th October, 2014 Following the massacre of her multicultural church choir, village priest Claire (Derbhle Crotty) is struggling to deal with a multitude of mixed feelings and unanswered questions. Having witnessed a particularly brutal killing in the church’s music room, survivor […]
Iris, Three Minute Theatre, reviewed by Fran Slater
Iris, Manana Productions Three Minute Theatre, Manchester, 9th-11th October, 2014 Iris is the first play from Manana Productions, a new theatre company founded by writer and actress Rebecca-Clare Evans and director Natalie Kennedy. Based on real events, it is a hard-hitting and unflinching consideration of the effects of domestic violence that is likely to leave […]
Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby, The Lowry, reviewed by Iain Bailey
Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby, a Royal Court Theatre and Lisa Dwan production in association with Cusack Projects Ltd, at The Lowry, Manchester, 23rd-27th September 2014 This trilogy of late plays by Beckett is organised around three striking images. Not I has its lips, teeth and tongue isolated by a narrow horizontal column of light. […]
James Acaster, Recognise The Lowry, reviewed by Jonny Rodgers
James Acaster, ‘Recognise’ (with support from Stuart Laws), The Lowry, September 21 2014 At first, the flyer for James Acaster’s new show ‘Recognise’ unnerved me. From his solemn look you could be forgiven for mistaking him for a brooding solo musician rather than a stand-up. Aren’t successful comics supposed to smile on their flyers or […]
Romeo & Juliet, HOME (Victoria Baths), reviewed by Fran Slater
Romeo & Juliet, a HOME production at Manchester’s Victoria Baths, 10th September-4th October 2014 From the very second the show began, it was clear that this would be no bog-standard Shakespeare adaptation. Taking place in the one-hundred-and-eleven year old setting of Victoria Baths, Walter Meierjohann’s take on Romeo and Juliet really did make the most […]
Hamlet, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Peter Wild
Hamlet, Royal Exchange, Manchester, 11th September-25th October, 2014 To begin with: an admission of my own ignorance. When, some months ago, I first espied the poster currently glorying the Royal Exchange, Maxine Peake, that brilliant, severe, intelligent actress last seen here by us as Strindberg’s Miss Julie, staring out from beneath a frowning forehead above the […]
The Best British Short Stories 2014, ed. by Nicholas Royle (Salt Publishing) £9.99, reviewed by Sarah-Clare Conlon
The fourth in this now popular annual anthology series, just out from 15-year-old independent publishing house Salt, rounds up 20 stories by different authors, offering an insight into how varied the short fiction landscape in Britain is right now. The task of editor Nicholas Royle (author of the critically acclaimed First Novel, about a lecturer […]
Rhys Darby at The Lowry, reviewed by Peter Wild
Rhys Darby, The Lowry, July 18 2014 Still best known as Murray from Flight of the Conchords, Rhys Darby has, in recent years, been making something of a name for himself outside of Australia as a stand-up – and his comedy is as affable, as gentle, as cosy and warm as you suspect Rhys himself […]
War Horse, The Lowry, reviewed by Fran Slater
War Horse, adapted by Nick Stafford, in association with the Handspring Puppet Company (The Lowry, 23 July – 20 September 2014) After a previous successful appearance at The Lowry, The National Theatre’s adaptation of War Horse began a nine week run at the venue on Wednesday July 23rd. Based on Michael Morpurgo’s 2007 novel of […]
#micropoem14 competition
#micropoem14 competition “‘Tis moonlight, summer moonlight” Emily Jane Brontë Poetry in 140 characters? What would Brontë have made of tweet poems? Following the success of last year’s micropoetry competition, the Centre for New Writing and the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at The University of Manchester ran a micropoem14competition. The competition, which was themed around the […]
Icarus, The Lowry, reviewed by Fran Slater
Icarus, produced by Square Peg Theatre and directed by Michael White (The Lowry, 3-4 July 214) Icarus is the second production from physical theatre company Square Peg. They have a close relationship with The Lowry following their entry for the Pitch Party competition at the 2013 re:play Festival. Although they didn’t win on that occasion, […]