Orlando, Royal Exchange, reviewed by Sarah-Clare Conlon Subheaded “a magical comedy about love and time travel” and featuring former Coronation Street actress Suranne Jones (who trod the boards very persuasively for the first time here in 2009’s Blithe Spirit), Orlando is likely to get plenty of bums on seats whether this and other reviews […]
Theatre
The Seagull, The Lowry, reviewed by Emma Rhys
The Seagull – a play for writers, actors and lovers; and the Manchester Library Theatre Company’s final production before becoming part of the exciting new arthouse venue HOME, opening in spring this year and located at First Street North. The purpose-built venue will include a 500-seat theatre and five cinema screens, and promises to continue […]
1984, Liverpool Playhouse, reviewed by Simon Haworth
1984, Liverpool Playhouse (Headlong Theatre), tour continues Sherman Theatre, Cymru 5th – 9th November 2013, West Yorkshire Playhouse 12th – 16th November 2013 and Almeida Theatre, Islington 8th Feb – 29th Mar 2014 by Simon Haworth If rats in a trap ultimately await Winston Smith in the white walled, clinically lit personal hell […]
All My Sons, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Simon Haworth
All My Sons, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Runs till 26 October 2013, Tickets from £10-36 Talawasa Theatre Company’s version of All My Sons, directed by Michael Buffong, is very much in classical style. Arthur Miller’s script is treated with great respect. All those perennial Miller themes – fate and the human urge to control his […]
Macbeth, Manchester International Festival
Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth is performed in a deconsecrated church in the back end of Ancoats, between empty office blocks, multi-storey car parks and the Toys’r’us superstore. The audience, of around 220, was called out in batches from the ticket office to the venue. Looking down from the 8 banked boxes, the audience can initially make […]
The Heretic, The Lowry, reviewed by Amy Kilvington
The description of Richard Bean’s The Heretic as a ‘hilarious comedy’ rings true in The Library Theatre’s current production. Eccentric characters, clever scripting and an original angle all contribute to the success of the play, which received much audience appreciation throughout. Telling the story of Dr Diane Cassell, the black sheep of the science department […]
Country Wife, The Royal Exchange, reviewed by Naya Tsentourou
The Country Wife – Royal Exchange, Manchester Naya Tsentourou It’s not often that Restoration comedy arrives in Manchester. When it does, however, the genre’s poignant social critique, its unconventional values, and its celebration of playhouses find in the city’s culture a perfect fit. Polly Findlay’s production of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, first performed in […]
The Daughter-in-Law, The Lowry, reviewed by Howard Booth
Lawrence’s play The Daughter-in-Law is widely held to be one of the most important British plays written between the 1890s and the 1950s. Productions are not exactly ten a penny, so this one by Library Theatre at the Lowry was very welcome. Though excellent in some respects it did show that we still don’t have […]
The Wind in the Willows, The Lowry
When I told my friends that I was going to see The Wind in the Willows, a few asked with disdain, “Is it a Christmas production?” They warned me that ‘tis the season for haphazard affairs thrown together for children who don’t know better and their desperate parents. I went to The Lowry with rather […]
King Lear, The Lowry
Two or three thin, reedy notes are looped through the Lyric Theatre’s sound system prior to the evening’s performance of the Donmar’s King Lear, they alternate, sometimes create intervals with each other like strange, invisible wind chimes. Audience members are expectant but seem perturbed, no doubt the desired effect of this pre-performance touch. Two middle-aged […]
Glengarry Glen Ross, The Library Theatre
In Mamet’s coiled spring of a play, four real-estate agents are locked in a battle for survival. Each month as they compete to sell plots of undesirable land, the man with the biggest sales wins a Cadillac and the man with the smallest gets the sack. This month’s man on top is Ricky Roma (Richard Dormer). Slick […]
Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Royal Exchange
Having counted George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four among my favourite books since the age of 13, I was concerned that over-familiarity might mar my enjoyment of Matthew Dunster’s new stage adaptation. After three hours’ immersion in this powerful and affecting show, however, I was overwhelmed by empathetic exhaustion, sadness and resignation, alongside deep admiration for the […]
No Wonder, Claire Urwin, 24:7 Theatre Festival
Manchester’s 24:7 theatre festival, which showcases new writing, directing and acting talent, is now in its fifth year, this time staging an impressive 21 hour-long performances across its seven days. For writing and directing team Claire Urwin and Guy Jones it represents a second opportunity to stage their single act play No Wonder in Manchester […]
A Number, Caryl Churchill, The Library Theatre
Caryl Churchill, A Number, The Library Theatre until May 9 Caryl Churchill’s 2002 play deals with a contentious issue, human cloning, but is as interested in making cloning into a metaphor as it is in ethics and science. The play’s success depends on a difficult balance between argument and feeling, exploring ideas and manipulating […]
Macbeth, The Royal Exchange
Taut, precise and horrifically exacting; an up-to-the minute rendition of this bloodiest of plays, where the weird sisters are the ghosts of young women raped and murdered in the opening scenes and McDuff’s Nintendo playing son is slaughtered, real time, over the kitchen sink as his mother watches. She fights and screams as we know […]
The Pillowman, Leicester Curve
“Writers stopped telling you stories but instead told you how their stories would be told; architects made buildings where all the plumbing was on the outside,” so observed Martin Amis recently concerning postmodernism’s tendency to draw attention to its own artifice, “this turned out not to be such a productive side road for literature.” […]
Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tom Stoppard, The Library Theatre
Rock ‘n’ Roll by Tom Stoppard dir. Chris Honer Manchester Library Theatre 13th Feb 2009 – 14th Mar 2009 Max is an old-school Marxist intellectual. Jan is his rock-loving PhD student, returning to his native Prague in ’68 just as the Soviet invasion rolls in. Rather than protest or consent to sign his mates’ […]
Yesterday, Jasmin Vardimon Dance Company, Peacock Theatre, London
I don’t like dance performances which require you to read the programme in order to understand what’s going on. I didn’t buy a programme (mostly, to be honest, because the drinks were so expensive at the bar I didn’t have any cash left). So when the lights came up on a girl towering above a sea […]
Antigone, The Royal Exchange
Antigone may not share the fame of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, but it forms a worthy close to the trilogy of Theban plays; whereas Oedipus is, to some extent, the unwitting plaything of the gods, both Antigone and Creon, Oedipus’ successor as king, find themselves locked in a human-manufactured dilemma. After a battle in which both […]
Three Sisters, The Royal Exchange
Three Sisters, as with so many works of the Russian literary canon, is so interminably long and inwardly orientated that it’s difficult not to feel that Chekhov’s intention in writing the play was to create some kind of elaborate, theatre based practical joke. The Royal Exchange’s new production, employing Michael Frayn’s excellent translation, always […]