Martin ThomassonJeremy Sams, adapter and director of this stage version of the popular 1970s sitcom The Good Life, points out how current the central clash of ideas seems to be. On the one hand, we have careerist Gerry (played here by Dominic Rowan) and his...
My dear friend, the playwright, Les Smith, once told me, the first draft of a script is to show you that you have a story (beginning, middle and end). The second draft is to find out what your story is really about. Les didnāt, at that point...
The Play That Went Wrong is a relentlessly inventive, immaculately choreographed farce. For the first time ever, I have to begin a review with a health warning: please donāt try drinking white spirit, and donāt (for a joke) put it in anybody elseās...
I couldnāt swear that the The Patience of Trees is the best thing at this yearās Manchester International Festival; I havenāt seen everything on offer. But, as an event, it has that necessary sprinkling of magic that will make it the experience I...
It is a not-quite-paradox of human life that we are all the same and yet each is so unique. One way or another, these two facts underpin all of human joy and suffering. Take, for example, grief: so universal an experience for humanity, yet so...
I always feel obliged to stick around for post-show Q and A sessions. Perhaps, just maybe, one or other member of a creative team, will release some precious nugget into the stream of consciousness triggered by the hostās (or the audienceās)...
The nice woman working security at the Lowry approaches me with her metal-detecting device.āDo you have a pacemaker,ā she asks. āI donāt think so.ā This is not to be found on anyoneās list of Sensible Answers. What was I thinking? That some rogue...
I posted a photograph on social media last night, showing the musicians starting to take their seats on stage at the Lowryās Lyric theatre. You can also make out how thinly populated the auditorium is. āSparse,ā a friend of mine commented. Indeed...
Even without the masks (which most of us are wearing) and the deliberate, careful spacing of the audience, the metallic click and breathy āgaspā of cans of cider being opened around the auditorium (thereās no bar tonight), would tell you this is not...
Martin Thomasson describes how lockdown encouraged him to rediscover his family’s past and write a collection of memoirs ‘Random Notes from Life’ When my Auntie Madge (my great aunt Madeleine) died, I was very sad; sadder than Iād...