It must’ve been quite something to see Nina Simone live at the NIA Centre, Hulme on 2 May 1991. By then, at the age of 59, Nina Simone was an established artist whose music had recently become popular with a whole new generation of fans after My...
What Happened to Agnes is an unfolding mystery from singer and storyteller, Nishla Smith, as she spins a tale told and retold, spanning three generations and two continents. The show opens to haunting piano notes, spiralling into the atmosphere. Tom...
Plaster Cast Theatre’s Sound Cistem puts trans right at the heart of the stage. The show, at Home as part of its Push Festival, made me feel every emotion possible, and I came away wanting to see it again, and feeling I had just witnessed one of the...
Charles Dickens’s favourite of his own works, David Copperfield can be well described as an ‘autobiographical novel’, drawing heavily on events and characters from Dickens’s own life, but nevertheless a work of fiction created by the author’s...
When Queen and Slim meet for a Tinder date they are far from a match made in heaven. She has too much attitude for his liking, and she hates his taste in music and the loud noises he makes while eating. Though not from a privileged background, Queen...
There is nothing like a good story at Christmas. In Roots, Home Associate Company, 1927 brings us a dozen or so of the most weird and wonderful from around the world. Its inspiration comes from the Aarne index of folk tales, held in the British...
The Slightly Annoying Elephant is the worst and funniest house guest rolled into one.He eats all the biscuits, hogs the TV, snores loudly, gets water all over the bathroom floor, breaks your bike and your bed, invites all his friends to join him and...
If I invited you to an evening out to watch 14 plays, what would you think? Marathon? Shut eye? Breakneck speed? Well, this production of ‘The Manchester Project at Christmas’, by the Manchester-based ‘Monkeywood’ theatre company, is exactly that...
In today’s digital age societies are more connected than ever before. This hyper inter connectivity means that wifi, broadband, smartphones and tablets allow those with access to click, post, share and like at the drop of a hat. Everything is...
Bryony Kimmings is back – back with a vengeance. On stage, she’s dressed in an orange ASOS sequin dress and a blonde wig – Dolly Parton would be jealous. This is a flashback. Our protagonist fills us in on events since she last trod the boards...
Carmel Thomason
Moses Kabunga
Liz Ratcliffe
Martin Thomasson