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...
“Mothers tell their kids this is a special day … on this day you’ll become a woman. All you have to do is – be brave.” Cuttin’ It by Charlene James is that very rare event that takes a multitude of subjects and condenses them into meaningful and...
For a show listed among the greatest American Musicals, Gypsy certainly doesn’t get staged nearly as often as it deserves. After an absence in the West End for 43 years it was famously revived in 2015 with Imelda Staunton as Mama Rose, a role that’s...
Recalling his first meeting with Sarah Frankcom, almost 20 years ago, playwright Simon Stephens reveals he felt the then literary manager for the Royal Exchange was setting him a challenge, daring him almost, to fall in love with the exposing, in...
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...
The comedic trope of the domineering father, who needs to learn that times have moved on and the world is no longer his to command, served two Lancashire writers –Bolton’s Bill Naughton and Eccles’s Harold Brighouse – well in the 20th century...
West Side Story, loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, has been among the greatest musicals for more than 60 years. But while Shakespeare’s original is constantly re-imagined, in all this time, no-one has tinkered with Jerome Robbins’ choreography –...
Salford-born actor, Emmanuel Ighodaro is gearing up for the north west premiere of Inua Ellams’ critically acclaimed new play, Barber Shop Chronicles. Expect barbed comments, telling truths, pre-show haircuts, live DJs and a day trip around the...
Manchester-based writer, performer and director, Jude Christian returns to the Royal Exchange Theatre, where she recently directed Parliament Square, with one-woman show, Nanjing. She talks to Quays Life about her personal response to the...
Moses Kabunga
Carmel Thomason
Liz Ratcliffe
Martin Thomasson