Alongside musicals and thrillers, farce remains one of the great mainstays of commercial British theatre. Why? The 1950’s Whitehall farces largely set the mould, wherein misunderstanding always trumped character and believability. And it’s a formula...
Structurally, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has more than its fair share of problems. As Gore Vidal perceptively noted, the first act should not work: it is long and drawn out and relies heavily on exposition. And at more than three hours long, the play...
At first glance, David Eldridge’s Beginning seems like it would be more suited to an intimate studio theatre than the expansive, in-the-round main stage at the Royal Exchange – a space that has previously played host to revolving catwalks...
It does my Christmas spirit no good at all to be writing a less than warm review about a Maxine Peake project. The star of Dinner Ladies, Silk, and the rightly acclaimed post-Hillsborough docudrama, Anne (plus a glittering array of theatrical...
Gore Vidal’s nickname for Tennessee Williams was Bird, because of the way his characters were always in flight from something, usually reality. This is nowhere more in evidence than in The Glass menagerie, his first work which is being staged at the...
Steve Timms finds Nora: A Doll’s House to be a bold, impassioned piece of work and the most thrilling Exchange production he’s seen in a long time. Patriarchy is a word most people are familiar with, though may struggle to describe. So let’s...
Augmented is an intimate one woman play, written and performed by Sophie Woolley, about her experience of hearing loss during her 20s. Trailer It opens in a near future; Sophie sports a blonde bob and is dressed head-to-toe in silver. As she begins...
Don De Lillo’s mid-80’s novel ‘White Noise’ featured a married couple who were as happy as two people can be. Yet both had a distressing secret neither felt brave enough to share with the other; they were terrified of death. Super Duper...
SoulPay is a Manchester-based collective of creatives from Nigerian and Ghanaian British descent, who seek to provide, through theatre and the arts, an alternative view of what it’s like growing up African in the UK. The evening’s performance is set...
It’s a cold, dark night on the moors in director, Bryony Shanahan’s new production of Wuthering Heights at The Royal Exchange. Adapting Emily Brontë’s sweeping 19th century novel for the stage is always ambitious, not only because of the scale of...
Steve Timms
Dave Porter
Georgina Wells
Martin Thomasson
Moses Kabunga
Carmel Thomason
