This year, HOME’S Orbit Festival explores the ‘prevailing divide’ between people and how it can be conquered. I doubt that there’s a show in the programme that could be more joyfully effective at bringing an audience together than Paul O’Donnell’s...
I was so looking forward to Macbeth at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. A female, Lucy Ellinson, was going to be playing the lead, and I thought that this would provide an exciting perspective on the play. I have seen many productions of...
9 to 5 the Musical tells the story of three workmates pushed to boiling point by their sexist and egotistical boss. A 9 to 5 film or production would not be complete without our irrepressible Dolly Parton herself and we are treated to a visual link...
Circa – Humans is the brain child of Yaron Lifschitz. Creator. Artistic Director. Empresario. A native of Australia, this is his Salford helping of jaw-dropping, mind-numbing, acrobatic excellence. Tonight’s offering sees his troupe of skilled...
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is definitely flavour of the month. She’s an award winner. She has writing credits on the fantastically successful Killing Eve. Fleabag is now a hit BBC TV show in its own right and she’s co-written the next James Bond film, No...
At the opening of his Mythos trilogy, Stephen Fry welcomes the audience and informs us that what we are about to watch is not a play, it’s not a show, it’s something much older – it’s the ancient art of storytelling. Of course, in 2019 there are a...
It’s hard to create new work – sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s brave for theatres to commission new work – sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s hard to review a piece written/devised to honour a dear friend...
The struggle of the Luddites against mechanisation fuelling the Industrial Revolution is often used to teach us, change is inevitable and resistance to it is futile. Both statements have their truths. But is there another truth we still often...
I feel lucky to have been at the debut performance of Wolf Hours, Minute Taker, aka Manchester-based Ben McGarvey, superb soundtrack to a series of short-film clips, made by a variety of film makers. The show is designed to give a depiction of the...
Manchester’s claim to Nico comes towards the end of her short life, when during the 1980s she made the city her home. Like her earlier, almost nomadic existence, Nico’s time in the city was a chaotic one of sofa-surfing and heroin addiction...
Georgina Wells
Liz Ratcliffe
Lorraine Worsley-Carter
Moses Kabunga
Carmel Thomason
Martin Thomasson