Between an artful blend of British Sign Language (BSL), live captions and the odd spoken word, a language barrier soon becomes a language of love between neighbours Katie and Alana, who quickly build a life for themselves following their first awkward meeting at a house party.

Through their mouthed words and awkward games of charades, it’s no wonder Alana, who is hearing, initially struggles to win the favour of the profoundly deaf Katie. It’s the unshakeable connection between the pair that leads Alana to learn BSL, and it’s endearing to watch the two go from stumbling through conversations to dancing through them.

The play continues in snapshots, practically peering through the windows as the pair grow from bounding young sweethearts to rooted family. Katie flourishes as a teacher in a primary school for deaf children, while Alana pursues journalism, more socially aware than ever, but never quite enough to take a hard stance against the ableism fuelling their colleagues’ stories. Through it all, the ups and downs of life never cease to lead them, eventually, back into each other’s arms, and it isn’t long before dreams of a set of keys meld into dreams of a baby to call their own.

But the NHS is crumbling, the school is under threat, and with a well-meaning partner who will never quite ‘get it’, Katie quickly feels like the only anchor in an increasingly untethered world. The second act sees any rosiness quickly wither as Katie faces discrimination on all fronts that only she feels able to see, and the play points to real legislation and institutions as being among the roots. Now pregnant, struggling, and feeling more misunderstood than ever, it isn’t long before her whole world falls apart. You’re left to wonder at what point it all went wrong. You quickly realise things have been wrong since before you set foot in the theatre.

The brilliance of Barrier(s) rests in its unwillingness to centre its hearing audiences – and it’s exhilarating. With the majority of the show in BSL, something as small as Alana answering a phone call feels unfamiliar and strange, and the live captions on the background screens keep no walls between the deaf and hearing audience members. Em Prendergast’s performance as Alana deserves particular praise as a deaf actor who convincingly played a hearing character.

Katie (Zoë McWhinney) presents far from a victim, and in many ways is better off for it. Cheeky, cynical, and prone to swinging wildly between evasiveness and explosion in conversation, she keeps her independence held tightly in her fist even as she remains at the centre of Alana’s universe. Alana’s fatal flaw lies in their inability to truly listen to Katie as a deaf person, despite idolising her as a partner. Together they play a pair both magnetically attracted and repelled, and it makes for electric viewing.

There is room for the writing to grow in Barrier(s), much of the play is told rather than shown, and an over-commitment to being technical sometimes results in moments that feel more lecture – or the writer’s personal rant – than real dialogue between two developed characters. Beyond that, Barrier(s) promises a production like no other – and an ending worth sitting in anticipation for.

Deafinitely Theatre’s production of Eloise Pennycott‘s Barrier(s) is at Home, Manchester from 6-8 November 2025. Age recommendation 14+ The play is also touring to The Rep, Birmingham, before ending its run at Camden People’s Theatre in November.

Read our interview with Zoë McWhinney

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Let it never be said that you don’t get your money’s worth from an Ockham’s Razor production. The energy, skill, daring, stamina and sheer brute strength of the performers (five women and two men) are, quite understandably, rewarded with a standing ovation at the close of a performance which runs at approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes, including an interval.

Against these positives must be set certain shortcomings of dramatic structure and adaptation. Lots for the eyes and ears to enjoy, but the heart is never quite drawn out.

When the local pastor jokes to Tess Durbeyfield’s drunken, good-for-nothing father about the family being related to the noble, powerful and wealthy D’Urbervilles, the first domino falls in a chain that will carry the decent, caring and, at that point, naïve Tess via accident, exploitation, bereavement, injustice, dishonour and rejection, onwards towards the gallows.

Her sottish, ne’er-do-well father being in no fit state to transport beehives to market (a financial necessity for the family), weary Tess volunteers for the task. Sadly, she falls asleep at the reins, with disastrous consequences. In desperation, her mother prompts her to try to claim kin with the rich D’Urbervilles.

The show opens with Hanora Kamen, as the older Tess, stepping down from the gibbet to narrate to us her sorry personal history. Kamen’s voice is clear and well-articulated, but the overall effect of this device (a storyteller, off to one side of the action) is to pull our focus away from the physical  actions being portrayed, and thus to undermine the emotional impact of unfolding events.

Ballet often works by keeping to simple, well-known storylines. Tess’s biography is complex and no doubt challenging to get across without narration. It might help, however, to have our narrator, the older Tess, more connected physically to her younger self, perhaps even seeking, albeit vainly, to intercede on her behalf, or to urge her (and those around her) to act differently, to try to alter the unalterable past. Put the audience close up to where it hurts, rather than drawing them aside and away.

This lack of emotional engagement is especially regrettable given that there is so much else to admire.

The wit and daring of a scene in which the cheeky milkmaids compete to flirt with and capture the attention of Angel Clare (Nat Whittingham) – the love of Tess’s life  – is a joy, concluding with a breathtaking ‘tower of women,’ which draws a spontaneous round of applause. A scene in which Angel gallantly helps the four women across a flooded stream is inventive and hilarious, yet also touching in the way he and young Tess (Lila Naruse) respond and bond. 

Tess’s first encounter with the villainous Alec D’Urberville (Joshua Frazer) is another powerful interlude. Alec’s adroit mastering of a human-sized ring is physically menacing and replete with sexual overtones, and the way in which Tess unwittingly finds herself encircled is visual storytelling at its finest. More of this in future productions, please.

There is a lot of balancing on planks, as the cast ruggedly construct and dismantle elements of the set. Lauren Jamieson, Victoria Skillen and Leah Wallings are all outstanding here; most memorably, when Tess’s world is literally turned upside down, their physical contortions are unforgettable.

I leave it with you. You won’t be moved to tears, though you may be brought to your feet.

Ockham’s Razor TESS is at Home, Manchester from 5-7 June 2025.

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With gender-swapping roles and a rich takedown of toxic masculinity, this sly adaptation of Shakespeare’s tale is shrewdly upturned to reveal the misogyny and thrusting violence of its male characters.

Of course, as this is burlesque we have to have extravagant numbers and Her Productions doesn’t fail to deliver, the first salvo being a raucous introduction by each member of the cast in turn mocking male lust and braggadocio.

As with any Shakespeare plot, it takes a while for the story to settle down and decide on its main theme: that wild at heart Kate and her sister Bianca are to be married off by their father Baptista and ‘tamed’, who is inveigled by a troop of suitors into agreeing to give away his daughters. We get a glimpse of Kate’s tempestuous character when she is first courted by Petruchio – in their verbal jousting she is as quick-witted and savage as her rival. Kate – or Katerina – is brilliantly played by Mia Gibson who gives us a full flavour of her chaving against male dominance.

Ciara Tansey in drawn-on moustache gives us a Petruchio pumped full of bombastic self-importance, sure of his own allure and self-importance. She brings a knowing comic touch to the role, reducing him to a figure of fun as much as he wants to be taken seriously as the male overlord.

The versatility of the cast is astonishing and it’s clear the production is driven by a desire to upend long-cherished values now seen to be rotten at the core. Sarah Legg is Gremio, a doddering old fool who sees himself in with a chance to marry Bianca against the younger advances of Hortensio. Legg gives us a Gremio straight out of the Fast Show, high-class slurring vowels and misplaced self-confidence in what is a fantastic performance.

Other roles are taken up with whirlwind gusto by Ocean Cage, Emily Spowage, Hope Yolanda, Shady Murphy, Nicole Keri, Megan Holland, Mia Gibson, Naoim Albans, Jakki Moore and Leah Eddleston.

‘Kiss me, Kate’, says the self-absorbed Petruchio sure of his own attractiveness to women yet sure to fall prey to his own vanity in the end.

A show not for the fainthearted. 

The Taming of the Shrew is at Home, Manchester from 27-31 May 2025.

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From where he was living at the time, artist Imran Perretta could see the smoke from the burning buildings. Friends of his were caught up, in various capacities, in the rioting. A Riot in Three Acts, originally installed at Somerset House in London, now recreated for the gallery space at HOME in Manchester, is Perretta’s attempt to grapple with the personal, political and social fallout from the events of that August.

The installation, occupies the entire ground floor gallery. It’s on a good scale for the location – not so small as to appear insignificant, nor so large as to overfill the space: “uncomfortable in a brilliant way,” as Perretta describes it. Each of his skills, as artist, filmmaker and composer, is put to work.

The main visual element is a scenic backdrop of Reeves Corner, location of House of Reeves (a local furniture store, owned by the same family for over a century).

We enter looking at the back of the construction – wooden struts and blank canvas – so that the artifice is immediately apparent, but also the viewer must make the choice to proceed. We have to move towards the installation and around it, in order for the subject to be revealed.

This store survived the riots, but the Reeves family’s other establishment was burnt to the ground. Video of this fire is shown on loop, using Perretta’s Blackberry phone (the sight of a Blackberry with all those lovely buttons all but brought a tear to my eye). There is so much to unpack in this – the transience of “cutting edge” technology; the beginnings of so-called ‘citizen journalism’; accounts that BlackBerry Messenger service was used by looters to organise attacks; the interesting decision of an artist who views himself primarily as a filmmaker to use just this one, tiny moving image.

It is, I think, a wise choice. The point of an installation is to invite the viewer to ‘be here, now.’

Immediately facing the image of House of Reeves is a 3-D recreation of the site of the store that was destroyed (and, despite plans, never rebuilt) – pitted concrete columns, concrete planters with the size and appearance of underground drainage pipes, containing sickly, spindly bushes whose only “leaves” are the detritus of city litter. Walking across the gravel base creates a sound effect to compete with the music (a modern classical quartet, composed by Perretta and performed by members of the Manchester Camerata*). It is one of several significant juxtapositions.

Having arrived at Ai Weiwei’s impressive Sunflower Seeds installation (Tate Modern) just after health and safety had (with good reason) withdrawn permission for visitors to walk on the one hundred million porcelain seeds, it was a relief not to be denied a key auditory aspect of the experience.

The litter and disarray is not overplayed – a can and a bottle here, some cardboard there – and the weeds are Manchester’s very own, handpicked by the artist. What Perretta offers us is less shock and horror, more an enduring sense of puzzlement, regret and lack of resolution.

Three years on from the financial crash of 2008 and with the new coalition government’s austerity measures just beginning to bite, poverty, racial tensions and long-standing grievances with policing all contributed to these riots, although political and press reactions tended to focus on sheer criminality. No Scarman-style inquiry was commissioned. Hence, one feels, the sense of unfinished business and unanswered questions layered through this installation.

The effect is emotionally involving and thought-provoking. How many of us (not just politicians) had all but entirely forgotten these riots (a mere 14 years ago)?

It’s worth reminding yourself about those events in August 2011 (especially at Reeves Corner) prior to visiting A Riot in Three Acts. Allow yourself time to take it all in. As with any worthwhile installation, it’s not to be rushed. Walk, sit, look, listen, and think. Is act three truly completed?

Imran Perretta: A Riot In Three Acts is at Home, Manchester from 22 February to 8 June 2025. The gallery will host live performances of Imran Perretta’s specially commissioned piece for string quartet, A Requiem for the Dispossessed, on Friday 28 February and Wednesday 9 April 2025.

On 10 April the venue is hosting Imran Perretta and Dhanveer Singh Brar in conversation chaired by Rahila Haque.

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The bare facts: on 16th March 2022, Russian forces committed a war crime (as designated by Amnesty International) by deliberately bombing the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol (known colloquially as Mariupol Drama). At the time of the attack the theatre was sheltering non-combatants and the Russian word for ‘Children’ was displayed in two places in letters large enough to be seen by pilots.

Throughout the one hour event, dialogue is, appropriately, delivered in Ukrainian with English surtitles.

From the outset, with the pre-recorded message from President Zelenskyy, it is wise to consider ourselves spectators at a public inquiry, rather than a conventional theatre audience. Four people (three adults and one child) come on stage, dragging travel luggage. Their aim is to bear witness to the horrors they lived through for, although their words have been worked into performable text by Oleksandr Gavrosh, these four (Olena Bila, Ihor Kytrysh and their son, Matvii, along with Vira Lebedynska) are telling their own stories.

The adults all worked at the theatre, but had very different attitudes towards Mariupol the city. Olena and Ihor “love it” and save 20 years on their meagre wages to buy a flat. Vira hates it – the industrial city is “dirty, the air is dirty,” sullying her clothing. Mariupol is the home of iron and steel works, and Matvii needs to use an inhaler.

Hundreds of people, most with no connection to the theatre, had retreated there for sanctuary from Russian bombardment (Vira is horrified to find them tearing out seats from the auditorium to use for comfort or fuel). When Vira herself relocates there, she dons her best fur coat so that, if the worst happens she can die like a “real lady.” Meanwhile, in a typical clash between childish and parental priorities, Matvii has a sulk because his favourite plasticine figures (Superman, Batman and the Joker) are left behind. For the most part, as Ihor tells us, even when war is nearby, “you live your normal life – work, sleep… fall in love.”

Recalling her panic attack in the darkness of the theatre’s basement – “It’s too dark to breathe!” – Olena pleads with us to turn on the torches from our phones (lights shine out across the auditorium). The army arrives with fridges from bombed out businesses and sets up a field kitchen – but mostly there is neither lighting nor heating and temperatures, even in March, dip to minus 10.

Key to the experience is not losing sight of the fact that these four human beings are not acting so much as voluntarily reliving their personal trauma. How touching to watch Olena’s phone video of a younger, smaller, happier Matvii running through a multi-coloured ornamental fountain just outside the theatre.

As the situation deteriorates, the maternity hospital is bombed and soon one floor of the theatre building is home to heavily pregnant women, and mothers with newborn babes.

And then, at around 10am on 16 March, the theatre suffers two direct hits. By this time, Olena, Ihor and Matvii have left to take their chances on the road. Vira remains, clambering out through the dust and rubble, stepping over the dead and the wounded.

The tears and the standing ovation are our tribute to human resilience (the courage of the four performers), and also the sharp, bitter tang of, “There, but for the grace of God…”

Mariupol Drama is a necessary reminder that the majority who fall victim to modern military violence are non-combatant civilians. These people didn’t ask for war, and yet suffer the brunt of its devastation. Thanks to Vira, Olena, Ihor and Matvii, tonight we feel this as well as think it.

Mariupol Drama – A True Story Told By Those Who Were There s at Home, Manchester from 14 -18 January 2025. Age recommendation 16+

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The musical version, although it was first staged on Broadway in 1963, is less familiar. It was penned by Meredith Willson whose 1951 song, ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,’ features in the show. This production at Home takes Willson’s adaptation and gives it a Mancunian twist with the young girl at the heart of the story, Susan starting out in Manchester and entering through a big red door into a world of New York candy canes and popcorn.

Ciarán Bagnall immerses us into this world with a set that transforms from a single door to an eye-popping set that fills the whole stage – you can only imagine the fun it must have been choosing the toys to fill the floor to ceiling shelves of the famous department store. A live four-piece band is on stage too and visible during the whole performance, under an arch that looks like it could have captured them in a child’s snow globe.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in staging a show like this is finding the right child to lead it. It is a big ask for a young actor. They are on stage virtually the whole time, and the script demands they take the audience with them on this magical journey that has them laughing out loud one minute while tugging on their heart strings the next.

For this production it feels like the team at Home has pulled off its own Christmas miracle in finding not one but three young children with already a string of top acting credits behind them. On Wednesday we saw 10-year-old Karis, who some might recognise from her recent role as ‘Young Elphaba’ in the new Wicked film starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

Having a young child take centre stage in this way is a real winner for young audiences because you could almost see their imaginations running to picture themselves in her place.

The adults do a fine job too, particularly Adam Vaughan as Kris Kringle whose rich vocals bring a genuine warmth that gives the show the festive lift everyone is looking for.

Setting up the scene and the characters can often be a bit slow, and the first act suffers a bit for this. However, the pace picks up speed after the interval and the court room scene has enough surprises to keep everyone entertained. There is even a chance your letter to Santa could be read out during the show. It’s a definite festive winner.

Miracle on 34th Street is at Home, Manchester from to 6-31 December 2024. Age 8+

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The story has been adapted for the stage by Mark Stanfield, Richard Short and Barry Sloane from Stanfield’s screenplay of the same name, which explores what might have happened during the pair’s final meeting in 1976. The concept is the same, but the play confines the action to Lennon’s New York apartment with one brief rooftop scene.

Amy Jane Cook has created an impressive set design, which although static creates interest and movement through its open plan layout, realistic furnishings and large windows looking out onto the Manhattan skyline. From the opening scene it feels like you could walk in and set up home there – is it any wonder John Lennon has decided not to leave?

The show opens with a montage of interview clips that set the stage for a fractious relationship between the two. McCartney is flying high at the top of the US charts with his new band Wings, with wife Linda, whereas Lennon has become something of a recluse as a stay-at-home dad for his 6-month-old son, Sean with wife Yoko-Ono.

Ahead of Wings’ gig at Madison Square Gardens McCartney turns up unannounced at Lennon’s apartment. The rest of the play imagines what might have happened behind closed doors.

In this respect it feels an overstretch to call this, as it does, a dramatisation of real events. But that aside, it works well as a drama, particularly exploring male friendships.

Barry Slone (co-writer) plays Lennon as a nervous, complicated soul full of contradictions, whereas Jay Johnson’s McCartney is much more self-assured and stable. Their on-stage chemistry is visceral and pulls the audience into the story from the start. Both actors have mastered the accents and mannerisms, but their sarcastic banter which switches from joking and gentle ribbing to irritation in seconds takes their performances to another level in us believing these are two friends with a long and involved history.

The conversations cover some history of the band as well as touching on their relationships with their wives. But mostly it focuses on friendship, love, loss and the pains of growing apart. While there are certainly uplifting and genuinely funny moments, overall, we’re left with a feeling of melancholy. Like The Beatles final track ‘Now and Then’, which we hear snatches off through the show, it gives us a glimpse of what might have been and fans’ imaginations will always add to that what they will.

Two of Us is at Home, Manchester from 26-28 September 2024.

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It’s about girls and women and how just getting on with having a good life is a fight. But it also holds a message about waking up to signs around us of a dominant force that needs to change. And change it does in the story within a story when the characters realise their power lies in standing together.

I absolutely love Emma Rice’s work. I love the mix of glittered back street cabaret- a dark tale told ornately. If I see a metal rig and mirror balls awaiting before the show begins then I know it’s going to be a good time. The wonder is that a cast of eight, (as Stu Baker musician and composer and MD is included}, can give the impression you are watching a cast of twenty. It’s filled with theatrical delights – screens, tricks and costume surprises but the main attraction is the versatility and accomplished performances of the cast. I’ve decided that I would quite like to just watch this cast do every show I go to in the future. There were just fantastic. Worth the price of the ticket, worth their wages and for keeping theatre alive and well, Emma Rice and her caravan of accomplished actor/musicians are worth their weight in gold.

It’s that rich in metaphor, in relatability and experiences of women – I don’t know where to start. So I’m just going to concentrate on the ‘three rings’. Before mobile phones, the three rings was a way of communicating to family or friends that you are at your expected destination. When you’re young and you use it, it’s about letting your carers know you are safe without appearing childlike. When you’re older and you used it, it’s because we know the world is unsafe and we worry about it each other. Many of us will have a counterpart- friend or relation, that will still ask us to let them know when we get in. Many of us are the person who asks. As a metaphor it is a manifestation of fear, a declaration of safety and relief. But also in the show – a dramatic tool in the show to kickstart a rescue.

We were hit hard by the end. We had been through a lot and I think if you have experience of the themes, then it’s the right mix for you when it comes to what I might call traumedy. To be able to laugh in the face of perpretrators is a great start for future change.

A Wise Children, Birmingham Rep, HOME Manchester, Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and York Theatre Royal co-production presents Blue Beard at Home Manchester from 13 to 24 Februrary 2024. Age guidance 14+

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So, would this performance and adaptation by Anne-Marie Casey, directed by Brigid Lamour with a cast of eight, allow me to laugh and cry with Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy in this coming-of-age tale packed with adventure, drama, love and loss?

The book, published in 1868, was inspired by Alcott’s experiences growing up with her three sisters, I wonder who she identified with? For me, I identified with Jo – or more exactly I wanted to be Jo – and in this production, Rachel McAllister’s portrayal of Jo was everything and more. Jo is intelligent, bright, hot headed also articulate – which is more that can be said for her spoilt sister Amy, whose use of words out of context deliver interesting as well as endearing moments, beautifully executed by Julia Brown. Who could not envisage that Amy would certainly be seen and heard in adulthood?

Ruari Murchison’s set of trees is pure magic, and in no way detracts from intimate feeling of the context of hearth, heart and home, then seamlessly becoming the back drop of a cold winter’s night in the forest.

Would Meg, the eldest daughter, a chip off the Marmee block, find the romance that she appears to alternate between, one moment longing for and then dismissing. Jessica Brydges takes us with Meg, quietly and steadfastly on her journey to womanhood.

Conversely Marmee, Kacey Ainsworth does share with Jo during one of Jo’s outbursts, that she too once had a temper and had learned to curb the rage. How can this be when Marmee with utmost grace is the steadfast level-headed cog in the March family wheel? Talking of March family, no one is allowed to forget about Susan Twist’s Aunt March, her heart of gold seems a little harder to find, but her appearance on stage, makes us all sit up a little straighter.

Beth March wears her heart on her sleeve and I for one appreciated Meg Chaplin taking Beth to the piano, a moment as other moments, when sensitive Beth, neither by precociousness nor bickering, leads her sisters to be better people. As the four daughters begin to step into their own respective new worlds, they are joined by their new neighbour, the rich, Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence (Daniel Francis-Swaby), bringing with him, a superb energy to the stage while his penniless tutor, Prof Bhaer (Tom Richardson), brings a serene but strong presence to the stage.

In Laurie, Jo sees a playmate, the boy she always wanted to be, her sisters see a brother or do they? What will the enigmatic Prof do to win one of the girl’s hearts or will he?
For now, Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth, sit by the fire, as they struggle to survive in New England during the American Civil War, awaiting your arrival. You have until 23 December 2023 to visit. You will find them at HOME Manchester.

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Other than serving as a modern ‘opiate of the people’, what might drama be for? I think there are two distinct, yet conjoined, purposes. The first has me sitting in the dark, staring at a stage or screen, seeing some version of myself and hence feeling less alone. In the second, what I see is more novel (to me), unfamiliar and perhaps challenging – I regard events in the lives of people very different from me. And yet, beyond this visit to the Human Zoo, provided the contract between performers and spectator is honoured on both sides, what endures is not the exoticism of the zoo, but the humanness of it all; not the distance between us, but the inescapable connections. Empathy, you might say, is the constant homestead that awaits the dramatic voyager.

And so – a fairly well-educated heterosexual white man, pushing seventy – here I sit in the dark watching five talented actors perform a play about muslim women of African heritage. It is, moreover, a play inspired by another play, written almost ninety years ago, by a Spanish homosexual, soon after to be murdered by fascists. It has nothing and yet everything to do with me.

Yusra Warsama, who wrote and directed “Of All the Beautiful Things in the World”, has transplanted Federico Garcia Lorca’s great poetic drama, “The House of Bernarda Alba” to a terraced street in Manchester in 2023. It’s a clever move.

Matriarch, Ugdoon (Marcia Mantack) having escaped war in Somalia many years ago (“You don’t know this woman who still smells death,” we are told later) is mourning the death of her second husband. To assert her authority, now that she is mother and father, to observe tradition, and to still wagging tongues, she confines her three grown-up daughters to the house, forbidding them to leave until her first born, Mariam (Sara Abanur) marries the man to whom she is betrothed. Warsama follows Lorca in that, while masculinity hangs heavy over the house, no male actor ever appears on stage.

This imprisonment of three lively, loving but feisty sisters, raises the domestic temperature (literally and figuratively).

Before the action starts, we hear an extract from the 1982 documentary on the life of Eartha Kitt (“All By Myself”) in which Eartha laughs bitterly at the interviewer’s suggestion that love might involve compromise. In what follows we shall see there is much love but little compromise in this home.

As the action begins, Mrs F.A. (Flo Wilson) the housekeeper, a refugee given a home by Ugdoon, walks in to discover middle daughter, Aalyah (Cora Kirk) lying on the sofa, masturbating. Neither pauses her activity, until Mrs F.A. observes that she now understands why the furniture is still wrapped in “plastic”.

It’s a bold and funny opening with perhaps a deeper significance (given this family has Somali roots; a country still troubled by “cutting,” more commonly known in the West as FGM). The action also introduces Aalyah as the transgressor, the interrogator, the secret smoker; filled to bursting with anger and a sense of injustice at her family, the country, the world and its history. Much given to what my mother would have called, “effin’ and blindin,’” Aalyah is a stirrer, but also loving. Despite her sometimes spiteful outbursts, Cora Kirk succeeds in making us care for her.

Eldest daughter, Mariam, had a different father (one who left her the dowry the other two lack). The money that will come to her only when she marries causes friction, especially with Aalyah. Nevertheless, Mariam shows herself loving when she takes the blame, for the “crime” of reading their mother’s business accounts, in order to protect Aalyah from punishment.

Youngest daughter, Suhela (Xsara-Sheneille) charming, sensuous, naive, complains of constant headaches, but does she harbour a guilty secret?

Lorca knew his audience would recognise Bernarda without the need to reveal her inner world. In contrast, Warsama wants us to know what drives Ugdoon and gives her an “interior” monologue, but with the words spoken through a microphone by Flo Wilson’s Mrs F.A. (almost like performance poetry). It’s an important moment, but might have worked better integrated into the drama (as an exchange, for example, between Ugdoon and Mrs F.A.)

The daughters want choices, love and, indeed, passion, but their mother fears not only the gossips, but a dominant culture that would have her children dying “from the inside out.” The incarceration cannot end well.

The title of the play (and what a good title it is) comes from a telephone message recorded by young Suhela. It’s a beautifully written monologue though, again, it might carry more force delivered directly to other characters, rather than in playback.

Tom Leaha AKA Werkha adds commendable musical support, though as he is visible, stage left, throughout, it’s an effort not to be thrown by this male incursion into a female domain.

Ellie Light’s split-level set functions well. The upper level shows two bedrooms (for the daughters) open to our view, separated by a landing and a (mostly) closed door (the bathroom?) Stage level is a single living room, opening directly onto the “street” – a layout familiar to many who have lived in such terraced properties. The sense of claustrophobia offered by the set, is not yet quite manifested by the production.

As a collaborative art form, it is often one of the most difficult and yet rewarding aspects of drama to pass control to your fellow creative artists. I would be very interested to see how another director might articulate Warsama’s text. There are the makings here of something exceptional. Thus far, I don’t think it has quite taken shape. Even so, you should go and see, “Of All the Beautiful Things in the World;” there is plenty to admire.

Lorca in Levenshulme? Why not?

Of All The Beautiful Things In The World is at Home, Manchester from 24 March to 6 April 2023. Age 14 +

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