Dave PorterEveryone loves a court room drama – at the moment on TV you can watch televised trials in Scottish courts and listen in on juries in a mocked murder trial. Tie this in with our current obsession with true crime and you can see why resurrecting 12...
Carmel ThomasonTheatre audiences can look forward to some Brazilian sunshine this spring when São Paulo Dance Company tours the UK and Ireland for the first time. The company comes to The Lowry, Salford with a triple bill of contemporary works by some of the...
Olivia HowlettSex, Sorcery, and Suckers… The tagline promises exactly what ‘Unfortunate: The Untold Story of Ursula the sea witch’ delivers. The production offers crude jokes, amateur charm, and a proper parody that pokes fun at all those clichés in your typical...
Martin ThomassonIn 1991, the artist, Cornelia Parker enlisted the help of the British army to blow up a garden shed. She and her team then collected the scorched and twisted fragments of the shed and its contents (purposefully curated to echo the horticultural and...
Cathy CrabbIn the Convent of the Three F’s, Mother Superior (Katy Owen) runs a tight ship of fun activities and a safe, if uneasy space. She tells a tail of Bluebeard (Tristan Sturrock), a dark and alluring magician who holds terrible secrets. Three characters...
Reunions rarely work, whether school reunions, band reunions or – this case – resurrection of a much-loved comedy classic. For many people the iconic series Drop the Dead Donkey was synonymous with associated with alternative programming Channel 4...
Jordon Francis“It’s such a great healing tonic for myself when I do these gigs,” Cleveland tells me, “I just find that with VocalSuite there’s a deeper kind of upliftment I get from doing it. I feel like I’m renewed again. “I’m sharing my gift...
Reece Donlan‘American Star’ is a great example of how a beautifully shot movie, with grounded acting and superb cinematography, can also suffer from minimalist substance and pacing issues. Following aged hitman Wilson (Ian McShane), as he awaits his...
Amina Hussain is Principal Flute Player with Manchester Camerata and the orchestra’s newly appointed resident Music Therapist. Last week she won an award at the Association of British Orchestras for demonstrating the unique power of music to improve...
Ellen Kent has been touring operas for donkey’s years (32 years, to be precise), and I’ve been watching them throughout that time. There are certain things you can bank on with this company. If you start out fearing opera is pretentious, an Ellen...