A Lollipop for E.P. Stuck a Chupa Chup into the ground Beside the grave of Ezra Pound Then jumped aboard the vaporetto To lose myself in the Jewish ghetto Looking for the synagogue That kept moving in the Venice fog Like an apparition in the crowd Where Jews were sometimes allowed. […]
Making Guava Jelly
The girls had been eating guavas for weeks. Guava jams, juices, stews, tarts with latticed pastry, every day the kitchen was misty with the perfume of guava. It was the largest crop in years, the branches obscenely laden, bending under the fruit. Nana always believed the dead came out at night to eat guavas. Guayabas, […]
Three Poems
Key To A Map The stammering footpaths pull your eye across the dyslexic geometry of fields, around blue chip meres and spilling woods. A séance tap of dead lanes turning up as potato cobbles under the plough or leaping the M6 levee between hamlets and barns. All day the fast lane hums with ghost herdsmen, […]
A Son in Iraq
After Edith Wharton’s A Son at the Front and Heinrich von Kleist’s The Marquise of O “We both know you’re cynical,” my son Danny says. We’re in my studio, tenth floor, big corner of what used to be a factory warehouse. I’m painting his portrait. C-SPAN on my beat old TV with sound down […]
Three Poems
Guitar, Hanga Roa, Easter Island Eight-stringed and night-long strummed, you prove yourself a necessary accompaniment on these longest of evenings. Bigger than a fishscale, smaller than the sky, how do your songs describe you? Wider than a sardine, narrower than the sea. Sing to us of how, in this world of untimely things, a man […]
1922 – Charles Bemis Dies
Polly poked the dead colt with the toe of her boot, lifting and twisting the neck. Shock, most likely. A weak heart in a working animal was rarely discovered until it dropped dead. She knelt down in the wet grass. Scavengers had exposed two of the vertebrae and a solid, tooth-white hip on the left […]
Two Poems
Nostalgia I too lived somewhere. Life had shape I dream of now: journals and Schweppes, candles stubbed in empty bottles of wine, a painted plank on two wrapped bricks lined with midnight blue vials of liniment and balms for her pulverulent arm skin, mornings spent in the afternoons reading L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune. I […]
Two Poems
Rouen The sky is milk in a late Corot at the Beaux Arts. Khaki and mustard reeds fringe a cackling stream. A peasant with a basket in her arms walks out of wetlands that part for her. When the sun comes out, the volume of the crowd appears to rise as if light were sounded. […]
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 […]
Austin Smith and Robin Robertson, reviewed by Lucy Burns
Austin Smith, Almanac (Princeton UP, $12.95) Robin Robertson, Hill of Doors (Picador, £14.99). Austin Smith’s debut collection with the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets is an impressive testament to rural life in north-western Illinois. Almanac is arranged concentrically around the family dairy farm and its surrounding landscape, reaching as far as Virginia, South Dakota and […]
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 […]
Colin Harper, Bathed in Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond (Jawbone Press) £14.95
John McLaughlin is a guitarist who for many, I would suggest, rose with little trace in the 1960s, until the complete revelation which was his debut album Extrapolation¸ in 1969. McLaughlin’s next move was to conquer America and dominate a particular style of jazz-rock guitar, in the seventies and beyond. In seventies, McLaughlin played with […]
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 […]
New Collections from Gerður Kristnỳ and Sigurður Pálsson, reviewed by Ian Pople
Gerður Kristnỳ Bloodhoof, trans. Rory McTurk (Arc Publications) £9.99 Sigurður Pálsson Inside Voices, Outside Light trans. Martin S. Regal (Arc Publications) £10.99 If Icelandic literature means much to the sometimes translation resisting readership in the UK, it means the Sagas. More recently, however, Icelandic writers have contributed to the vogue of Scandi-Noir in the novels […]
#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, […]
David Gray: The Lowry, Manchester
Rewind fifteen years and you’d find David Gray enjoying something of a heyday. White Ladder was well into platinum sales and, after three previous albums that had performed disappointingly, this small singer from Sale was suddenly something of a superstar. He was at every festival. On every television show. The album was one of those […]
Love Supreme Jazz Festival, reviewed by Ian Pople
Love Supreme Jazz Festival: Glynde Place, 4 – 6 July Love Supreme, now in its second year, promised bigger and better and, in some ways, delivered. The weather forecast wasn’t promising, and the driving drizzle that swept over the campsite on Friday night/Saturday morning didn’t bode well. Fortunately, Saturday was comparatively clear and the sunshine […]
MR12 Editorial
Welcome to the twelfth issue of The Manchester Review. This issue features our usual blend of top quality work from new and established poets and fiction writers. We are delighted to publish wonderful new stories and poems from our old friends James Robison, Peter Fallon, Ian Pople, Gerard Fanning and Rebecca Perry, and we are […]