Carmel ThomasonThe Manchester International Festival has made its mark by commissioning bold, new pieces of work that often blur the boundaries of different art forms. In this sense its staging of one of Shakespeare’s most popular tragedies, Macbeth appears at...
Louise is a dynamo of energy. Her mind is a whirr, her heart beats loudly and she doesn’t sleep. She lives in a frenetic, fantastical world where her bed becomes a wardrobe, coats become seductive strangers, stools dance and lamps tilt their bulbs...
What is enough? That is the question at the heart of the two new 45 minute plays by Northern playwrights, Cathy Crabb and Emma Adams, which make up, The Enough Project. For each person the answer will be different, and the contrasting yet...
The word ‘lost’, when used to describe the human condition, is rarely straightforward. And in this latest work from aerial dance company Ockham’s Razor we are presented with a number of short interactions that lend themselves to a variety of...
Jim Cartright’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice isn’t seen nearly as often as it deserves, most probably because of the ambition of the script in what it demands from its actors. Twenty years on from its first performance the playwright has got...
There is no doubt that the casting of Lesley Garrett as Elle in La Voix Humaine is the main box office draw for Opera North’s double bill of operatic heartache. It is almost a decade since the popular soprano took a stage operatic role, and...
There are always people who will try to profit from any situation, but whether anyone can truly gain from another’s misfortune is a question that hangs heavily over this anti-war play. When we first meet Mother Courage, she has driven her...
It’s almost twenty years since The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert opened in the cinema, and almost as long ago since I saw it. I don’t remember liking it very much at the time, well not enough to watch again. So, you might...
For feel-good Christmas nostalgia there is no beating White Christmas. Irving Berlin’s musical is a belter in every sense – a heart-warming story packed to the brim with memorable tunes, such as Happy Holiday, Blue Skies, Sisters, How Deep is...
Fairy tales have always had their dark side, but judging from the recent popularity of Harry Potter and the Twilight series it seems these days that children prefer their stories even darker. In this context the Royal Exchange’s new Christmas...