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Theatre Reviews

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Manchester theatre reviews
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Manchester theatre reviews

Sarah Ridgeway as Alice and Christopher Benjamin as Martin Vanderhof. Photo by Jonathan Keenan

You Can't Take It With You

by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, performed at Royal Exchange Theatre, with Told by an Idiot, directed by Paul Hunter, and designed by Laura Hopkins

Reviewed by Helen Nugent December 2011


You know you’re in for something a little bit different when the only character on stage at the beginning of a play is a tortoise. In a spotlight. A tortoise in a spotlight. Yes this, as Mancunians would have it, was going to be proper different.


The omens were good from the start. The largest theatre in the round in Britain housed in what was once the largest room for commerce in the world; the Royal Exchange’s Christmas show, rarely, if ever, a let-down; and a collaboration with Told by an Idiot, a company renowned for fusing comedy with tragedy, theatricality with nuance.

 

And the choice of show? A production written by the celebrated comedy writing double act, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart who, when they created YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, engendered a Broadway hit, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play and an Oscar-laden film. And, more than 70 years after its first season, it was still drawing the crowds on a windswept winter evening in Manchester.

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Manchester theatre reviews

Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Adapted for the stage by Alan Bennett

Presented by Library Theatre, performed at The Lowry, directed by Chris Honer

Reviewed by Charlotte Starkey December 2011

 

Some people, who find animals endlessly fascinating, tend to be outward looking, always seem glad that they are still alive to enjoy the world, just like Mole; others, who do not have the same connection with animals, seem to believe the world should feel privileged that they are alive, just like Toad. This is a generalisation, of course; but I realised the limitation of imagination, when an English teacher whom I had admired, declared that ‘animal stories’ are ‘not sufficiently substantial’.

 

I never did grasp the meaning of that and promptly threw him into my trash bin, having just read Gulliver’s Travels and Animal Farm as well as having been brought up in the company of animals, wild and domesticated. After all, I had read The Wind in the Willows by the tender age of six months, or so it seems from this distance, and my love of the tale has never waned. This production is no place for the self-lover, the introvert, the angst-ridden career seeker or anyone on a mission. It is for those who find something quite mad, amusing and mysterious about creation and understand that the unpredictability of animals comes largely from their having to share a planet with a rather weird race of beings - us.

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Manchester theatre reviews

Celluloid

Celluloid by Lloyd Eyre-Morgan

Performed at Three Minute Theatre, by Dream Avenue Productions

Reviewed by Emma Short November 2011

 

Having been officially open for two months Manchester's Three Minute Theatre has emerged and stamped its mark on the ground floor of Afflecks on Oldham Street. With its intimate performance space and in house bar this comfortable venue recently hosted Dream Avenue Productions' Celluloid by Lloyd Eyre-Morgan.

 

Lloyd takes us straight into the heart of dysfunctional family life. Mum Dawn's (Janet Banford) struggle with her past is played out not only upon the counsellors couch during regression therapy but also within the family home. With the help of Josh's (played by Daniel Booth) method of escapism; a penchant for viewing life through a lens, we learn from his footage the extent and impact this situation has had over the years.

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Manchester theatre reviews

Beautiful Thing

Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey

Performed at Royal Exchange, Directed by Sarah Frankcom and Designed by Liz Ascroft

Reviewed by Dave Porter November 2011

 

A clear line can be drawn from A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney through to Rita, Sue and Bob Too by Andrea Dunbar, and on to Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey, which has just opened at the Royal Exchange.

 

All three plays take a poke through the underbelly of life and the people at the bottom of the pile who are excluded from everyday society. Beautiful Thing takes its cue from A Taste of Honey in its portrayal of fumbling gay teenagers and an overbearing, brassy mother; while the brutal demotic of council estate life in Dunbar's world clearly mirrors Harvey's south London high-rise hell.

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Manchester theatre reviews

Good by C P Taylor

GOOD by C P Taylor

Performed at Royal Exchange Theatre

Directed by Polly Findlay and designed by James Cotterill

Reviewed by Jane Turner October 2011

 

It’s a strange mixed-up fantasy, but if you fancy seeing Hitler in plus-fours and arrive at the gates of Auschwitz in a flash of light as the curtain falls feeling tense, disorientated, bewildered and yet somehow gripped, “Good” might be just right for you. I may have had a sense of humour biopsy but I think it would be “good” if history was portrayed more accurately.

 

I found it a little difficult to settle in my seat; I was un-comfortable, not because of the fine upholstery, but bothered by the four letter-word of the title – Good. A bit subjective to begin with and even more so when tackling the consequences of German Fascism. Good/evil, black/white? Most of us know that things are never that clear cut or straightforward. Who and what is good or evil, and who decides is the rather complex question taken up by CP Taylor, the author of this story.

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Manchester theatre reviews

All the Way Home

All the Way Home by Ayub Khan-Din

Presented by Library Theatre in association with The Lowry, directed by Mark Babych

Reviewed by Jane Turner October 2011

 

Award-winning playwright Ayub Khan-Din has returned to his native Salford for the world premiere of his new play All The Way Home, performed by the highly respected Library Theatre Company opening their new season in association with The Lowry.

 

Billed as a contemporary and emotional comedy-drama set in Salford that details the life of a family as they unite to face the death of their brother from cancer, it is directed by Mark Babych who has assembled a team of excellent actors from the local area. Familiar faces include, from Coronation Street, Judith Barker, Paul Simpson, Kate Anthony, Sean Gallagher and Naomi Radcliffe while actors Susan Cookson, Julie Riley and James Foster will be known to regular theatre-goers.

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Manchester theatre reviews

Thrasher by Conor McKee

Thrasher by Conor McKee

Performed at Royal Exchange Studio, directed by Wyllie Longmore

Reviewed by Emma Short October 2011

 

Conor McKee's latest production Thrasher is a potent mix of the failings and warmth of people which explores themes of faith, identity, values and responsibility. Amid the chaos that emerges through the play it knits together a rich fast paced story that both warms and disgusts. Sprinkled throughout with dark humour it captivates and entertains, taking one on a journey both familiar and uncertain.

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Manchester theatre reviews

Look Back in Anger

Look Back in Anger by John Osborne

Presented by Blackhand Productions

Reviewed by Helen Nugent September 2011


A young actor puffing thoughtfully on a pipe during the opening scene of a play usually means one of two things: a production modelled on the revue style of the ubiquitous Cambridge Footlights or a period piece that sits awkwardly in the 21st Century. Mercifully, last night’s performance of Look Back in Anger didn’t succumb to either of these two possibilities.


Thanks to the combined talents of Manchester-based Blackhand Productions, the incongruity of a 20-something youth sucking on a pipe never threatened to descend into cliche. Nevertheless, it must be daunting to take on John Osborne’s ground-breaking masterpiece. Tempting, too, to place the original kitchen-sink drama in its rightful era of the post-war, post-empire 1950s. But this edited version of the controversial classic rooted its harsh and filthy realism very much in the present. Osborne wrote his bitter polemic more than half a century ago, but director Helen Parry’s production felt like a play for today.

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Manchester theatre reviews

One Man, Two Guvnors

One Man, Two Guvnors

by National Theatre at Cornerhouse

Reviewed by Anne Ryan September 2011

 

The reviews promised one of the summer's funniest plays, 'Carlo Goldoni meets Harold Pinter in a riotous farce set to skiffle', and as summer slips away I think that's what we got.

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Samuel Collings (left) as Piers Gaveston and Chris New as King Edward II. Photo by Jonathan Keenan.

Edward II by Christopher Marlowe

Performed at Royal Exchange Theatre, directed by Toby Frow and designed by Ben Stones

Reviewed by Charlotte Starkey September 2011

 

Five weeks after the murder of Christopher Marlowe, on the evening of 30th May 1593 in Deptford, the text of Edward II was entered in the Stationer’s Register, as required by law, and it has been argued that the play itself was in existence as early as 1591 – a date recently argued for some of Shakespeare’s English history plays, too. Marlowe dramatizes the brief reign and downfall of a monarch whose dates (1284 – 1327) mark a fractious period in England with nobles excluded from power and decision-making, a weak king reliant upon favourites, civil war and a wife, Isabella, participating in the plot against her husband. Material like this was the stuff of playwrights such as Shakespeare and would continue to be so in Shakespeare’s ‘Henriad’ (Henry IV, Part One and Two, and Henry V), Richard II (so close in theme and structure to Edward II) and Richard III.

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