This Diverse Cast Gives Shakespeare’s Love-Tragedy a Vibrant, Funny Retelling Romeo and Juliet | Shakespeare North Playhouse | September 16th – October 5thReviewed by Joseph Hunter A group of extras gather in a waiting room, to be summoned by an impersonal, dystopian PA system when it’s time for them to deliver a single line to […]
Theatre
Much Ado About Nothing | Shakespeare’s Globe | Reviewed by Paul Knowles and Sam Cassells
Comic barbs fly between Benedick and Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Globe’s contemporary version of Much Ado About Nothing, which handles the fine line between comedy and tragedy with aplomb. Much Ado About Nothing | Shakespeare’s Globe | Reviewed by Paul Knowles and Sam Cassells On a blazing day, in mid-August, we found ourselves in the hallowed […]
The Talleyrand | How To Beat Up Your Dad | reviewed by Fran Slater
The Talleyrand | How to Beat Up Your Dad | October 16th, 2019 What did you get up to last night? My evening started with a band that resembled the twisted lovechildren of Flight of the Conchords and recent Arctic Monkeys, and ended with a barely clothed man standing over his bleeding father on the […]
Macbeth, Royal Exchange 13 Sept – 19 Oct, reviewed by Ronan Long
Macbeth | The Royal Exchange Macbeth has, at this point, been reshaped and diverted in so many different ways, it seems impossible for a director to find something new and explorable in its enduring characters and story. In directing this modernized incarnation, Christopher Haydon definitely gives it a good shot. The play opens with a […]
A Taste of Honey | The Lowry | reviewed by Peter Wild
A Taste of Honey | The Lowry | Saturday 21st September Subdued is the word. We’re looking at a noirish basement. An underground nightclub, perhaps. A jazz trio – airbrushed drums, double bass, piano – serenade us. A brassy looking blonde starts to belt out a song as people move about the stage, draping her […]
Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi at The Lowry, reviewed by Marsha Courneya
Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi | The Lowry: March 8, 2019 Jeanguy SAINTUS’ choreography rose to meet the relentlessly challenging score of The Rite of Spring. Although it stayed true in some moments to Stravinsky’s initial vision of ritual sacrifice, wherein ‘a young girl danc[es] herself to death,’ to honour the […]
Opera North’s Katya Kabanova at the Lowry, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Opera North’s Katya Kabanova | The Lowry: Thursday March 7th Thursday night’s performance of Katya Kabanova by Opera North at the Lowry was set in a bleak, grey-green world. Director Tim Albery’s decision to play all three acts together with no interval was an excellent one that allowed the intensity of Katya and the cruelty […]
Opera North’s The Magic Flute at the Lowry, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Opera North’s The Magic Flute | The Lowry: Tuesday March 5th Tickets Available for Saturday March 9th at 7:00 Opera North held their press night for The Magic Flute this Tuesday night at the Lowry. The Magic Flute is meant to be one the more accessible and light operas, this was a determinedly dark and […]
Mother Courage and Her Children | Royal Exchange | reviewed by Imogen Durant
Mother Courage and her Children | Royal Exchange | 8 FEBRUARY 2019 – 2 MARCH 2019 Mother Courage and her children are transported into the future in a new co-production from the Royal Exchange and Headlong. By setting her adaptation in 2080, Anna Jordan breathes new life into Brecht’s acclaimed anti-war play, demonstrating its 21st […]
Forest | HOME | reviewed by Marsha Courneya
Forest | HOME | January 24th, 2019 Created and performed by James Monaghan, Directed by Leentje Van de Cruys I am an audience member. I don’t have to say anything. This was a mental loop during James Monaghan’s performance of Forest that I repeated to remain present. It can be easy to tune out during […]
The Hidden Pinup | HOME | reviewed by Marsha Courneya
The Hidden Pinup | HOME | 13th January, 2019 The Hidden Pinup is a seven-minute performance that could be unpacked for hours. The piece moved like a slow zoom from a burlesque fantasy in to the complex history of the black pinup and the ongoing fetishization of women of colour. The theme of beauty giving […]
Everything that happened and would happen, Manchester International Festival, Oct 10-21, reviewed by Ronan Long
The latest product of German avant-garde impresario, composer and director Heiner Goebbels premiered at the recent Manchester International Festival preview. Everything that Happened and Would Happen was held in the cavernous, derelict Mayfield Station, the performance telling a history of sorts, an esoteric, chaotic history of Europe. This absurdist compression of the 19th and 20th […]
National Theatre’s Macbeth | The Lowry
Macbeth | The Lowry | October 4th, 2018 Macbeth, like many of Shakespeare’s tragedies, is known for its brutal deaths. Rufus Norris’s National Theatre production of Macbeth, which has started a UK tour this week in The Lowry, Salford, after a run in London earlier this year, gives the audience its fair share of brutal […]
The HandleBards’ Twelfth Night | Ordsall Hall | reviewed by Laura Ryan
The HandleBards’ Twelfth Night Ordsall Hall, Salford | July 26th Two words in particular tend to strike fear into the heart of any introverted theatre-goer: audience participation. It was hinted before the commencement of the first act of this rather raucous rendition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that some of us would be called upon to […]
War Horse | The Lowry
War Horse | The Lowry | 16 – 30 June 2018 After 8 years in London’s West End and several sold out tours across the UK, the National Theatre’s production of War Horse has undoubtedly become a British phenomenon. Part of the story’s charm is that it relies on a heavy dose of nostalgia for […]
The Drill | HOME
The Drill | HOME | 15–16 June 2018 Do you know how to save a life? Do you know how to administer CPR when all around you are losing their heads and blaming it on you? Whether a rehearsal or the real thing, The Drill serves as a reminder that it may take more than […]
Happy Days | Royal Exchange | Samuel Beckett
Happy Days | Royal Exchange | May 25th – June 23rd We find ourselves in the Royal Exchange, in the company of Maxine Peake again, having seen her Hamlet, her Miss Julie, her Skriker, her Queens of the Coal Age. For Beckett’s Happy Days, we find her buried, at first, up to her middle, and […]
Swan Lake / Loch na hEala | Lowry Theatre: Week 53
Week 53 | The Lowry | Swan Lake / Loch na hEala | Michael Keegan-Dolan & Teac Damsa Swan Lake / Loch na ehEala won the Irish Times Theatre Award in 2017, and came to the Lowry as part of the 12-day Week 53 ‘Festival for the Curious’. Michael Keegan-Dolan is considered a leader in […]
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, reviewed by Sima Imsir Parker
Long Day’s Journey Into Night | HOME The famous first sentence from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina has perhaps been repeated too many times already, ‘”Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Nonetheless, it is almost impossible not to remember when thinking about Eugene O’Neill’s prime work, Long Day’s Journey into Night. Perhaps due to autobiographical details of […]
Miss Saigon at Palace Theatre
Miss Saigon / The Palace Theatre / Manchester Miss Saigon is well known for its gigantic set-pieces and Manchester’s Palace Theatre stage does not disappoint in delivering a large dose of razzle dazzle for this revival tour production. Big numbers. Great songs. Fantastic costumes. Impressive lighting and set design. Miss Saigon has a lot to […]
Opera North’s Un Ballo in Maschera
Un Ballo in Maschera at The Lowry, Salford Saturday, March 10th I had first seen Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) during the hedonistic days of my Erasmus year in France, spookily almost exactly five years ago to the day. For a student, the cost of a night of culture in the faded […]
Opera North’s Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni at the Lowry, Salford Wednesday, 7 March 2018 Opera North’s staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni is a charged mixture of moving parts, pared down scenery with dramatic lighting and comic puppetry. Madeleine Boyd’s set plays with stages within stages and frames within frames that create movement, depth, and distance that leaves just enough […]
Opera North’s Madame Butterfly
Madame Butterfly at the Lowry, Salford Tuesday, March 6th Opera north staged Madame Butterfly at the Lowry Theatre this Tuesday as part of their ‘Fatal Passions’ season. The award-winning company has been performing Madame Butterfly since 2007, and Tuesday’s performance saw the return of Annie Sophie Duprels in the titular role of Cio-Cio-San, Peter Savage […]
Darkest Hour, dir. Joe Wright, reviewed by David Hartley
Joe Wright’s biopic of Winston Churchill comes along at a sticky moment for this troubled isle as we slip slowly but assuredly towards the uncertain shadows of our post-Brexit landscape. Our national identity, such as it is, feels thrillingly buoyant for some, and never more soulless or hollow for many others. So, how might our […]
Metamorphosis, The Lowry, reviewed by Simon Haworth
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Splendid Productions/Kerry Frampton), The Lowry, 16 November 2017. Nobody is sure whether the performance has started. The house lights are still on. There is generic light jazz muzak playing through the sound system at a tasteful volume. The three actors, if they are the actors, are waving and pointing at the […]
Uncle Vanya, HOME, reviewed by Laura Ryan
Uncle Vanya, by Andrew Upton, directed by Walter Meierjohann; November 8 2017. Walter Meierjohann’s production of Andrew Upton’s translation of Uncle Vanya forms part of HOME’s season of art, film and theatre inspired by the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution: A Revolution Betrayed. Anton Chekhov’s late play was in fact first written and performed […]
Hedda Gabler, The Lowry, reviewed by Tristan Burke
Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Patrick Marber and directed by Ivo van Hove; The Lowry, 31 October 2017. Productions of Ibsen often recall the paintings of the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi. These mysterious paintings depict uncanny, bourgeois interiors, white panelled walls, isolated items of furniture that inhabit the paintings with the presence of […]
Parliament Square, Royal Exchange Theatre, reviewed by Sascha Stollhans
Parliament Square by James Fritz, directed by Jude Christian; Royal Exchange Theatre, 20 October 2017. One morning, Kat (Esther Smith) kisses her husband and daughter goodbye and leaves the house. But instead of going to work, she gets on a train to London. She is led by an inner voice; a voice that encourages her […]
Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness, Hope Mill Theatre, reviewed by Fran Slater
Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness, by Anthony Neilson; Hope Mill Theatre, 10 October 2017. It feels only fair to start with the positives, so that’s what I’ll do. Because People Zoo did do a good job of providing all the elements needed to make up an enjoyable theatrical performance. As is always the case […]
Aziz Ibrahim: Lahore to Longsight, HOME, reviewed by James Chonglong Gu
After a brief pre-concert talk with Aziz Ibrahim and his friends, the hugely anticipated big show finally started at 7:30 sharp with a bang. Teaming up with Manchester Camerata (‘probably Britain’s most adventurous orchestra’), Aziz, a proud Manchester native, wowed big time in front of an electrified Mancunian crowd on HOME soil. Special guests of […]
The Kite Runner, The Lowry, reviewed by Imogen Durant
The Kite Runner, based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini, directed by Giles Croft; The Lowry, 4 October 2017. Set against the backdrop 1970s Afghanistan, The Kite Runner tells a deeply emotive tale of a brotherly relationship torn apart. Opening in Kabul in 1974, the play successfully subverts the Western audience’s expectations of life in […]
Our Town, Royal Exchange Theatre, reviewed by Peter Wild
Our Town by Thorton Wilder, directed by Sarah Frankcom; Royal Exchange Theatre, 19 September 2017. First premiered on Broadway back in 1938, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a play with a long history of being done wrong – whether that was as a result of overt sentimentalisation (as was the case at its debut), by […]
Manchester International Festival: Returning to Reims, reviewed by Imogen Durant
Returning to Reims, dir. Thomas Ostermeier; HOME, July 11 2017. Thomas Ostemeier brings a work of creative non-fiction by Didier Eribon to life in this thought-provoking performance. A personal memoir with a political focus, the 2009 book by the French sociologist which gives this performance its title offers a penetrating examination of the social forces […]
Manchester International Festival: Holly Herndon and Yael Bartana, reviewed by Luke Healey
Dark Matter: Holly Herndon, Gorilla, June 30; Yael Bartana, What if Women Ruled the World?, Mayfield Depot, July 5, 2017. In a blog post dated 9 March, 2017, Manchester International Festival’s Director John McGrath framed the contents of this year’s edition as ‘a picture of the world today’. While McGrath maintains that ‘We don’t set […]
Lucha Libre, Albert Hall, reviewed by Luke Healey
In 2015, the multi-Emmy award-winning television producer Mark Burnett, brains behind such reality shows as Survivor and The Apprentice, launched Lucha Underground, a weekly episodic professional wrestling show realised in partnership with Hollywood director Robert Rodriguez. Bringing wrestlers from the American independent scene and Mexico’s AAA promotion together with supernatural storylines and a pulp-cinematic production […]