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...
Brecht’s classic anti-capitalist tale of war is catapulted to the end of the 21st century in Anna Jordan’s raw, new adaptation, and its bleak nihilism given bursts of colour by director, Amy Hodge’s nod to 80s punk rebellion. Originally set in...
Badly bleached beehives, tap-dancing zimmer-frames and pigeon puppets – Raz Shaw’s new production of The Producers, at The Royal Exchange, is a riot of absurdity. As if taking stage notes from one of the show’s more well-known numbers, Shaw keeps it...
Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Death of a Salesman is a great play because, like Shakespeare, it captured something universal in the human condition. When staged 70 years later it still feels piercingly relevant, but sadly this is...
After sitting through countless runs of Shakespeare’s history plays, former literary manager of the RSC Jeanie O’Hare worked out that the Bard wrote more lines for Queen Margaret than he did for King Lear. How could this be when most of us have...