Road is a bleakly funny – and ultimately tender – portrait of human resilience in the face of chronic poverty. First produced at the Royal Court in 1986, Jim Cartwright’s classic play feels depressingly apt for 2022, as people face a ‘heating or eating’ crisis, and a recent report claims that UK deprivation levels are … More Road – Oldham Coliseum
In the first scene of The Glass Menagerie, mother (Amanda) and son (Tom) engage in a brief argument over dinner. In Atri Banerjee’s production, this exchange takes place not at a table but seated at solitary chairs placed at opposite sides of the circular stage, facing outwards. This simple piece of staging tells us, from … More The Glass Menagerie: Royal Exchange
In Electric Rosary, sci-fi collides with religion against a backdrop of climate crisis and social upheaval. Artificial intelligence is introduced into a convent and, although a ‘robot-meets-nuns’ scenario would seem to invite caricature, this production actually presents us with a genuinely interesting interrogation of what makes us human. The action takes place in a struggling … More Electric Rosary – Royal Exchange
The Royal Exchange seems to have thrown everything into the mix for their new Christmas show. Politics and panto, rap battles and Irish dancing, Bohemian Rhapsody and Beethoven, kitchen-sink-style social commentary and wildly surreal visual parody. It’s often sharp-witted, sometimes utterly bonkers and occasionally a little flat. But it’s difficult not to be seduced by … More Betty! A Sort of Musical – Royal Exchange
Writer David Greig must have been in a particularly fertile creative place when he conceived The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart. It is ripe with wild contrasts: from Kylie and football chants to a post-structural analysis of folk ballads; from an Asda car park to the depths of Hell; from drunken group vomiting to tender … More The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart: Royal Exchange
A bare bulb illuminates a sleeping man and a woman, tied back-to-back to wooden chairs. We don’t know who they are, where they are, why they are there or whether they even know each other. As they regain consciousness, it emerges that they are as clueless as the audience… Spinach is not exactly a musical … More Spinach: The Edge
Bloody Elle is a joyous experience – engaging, funny and warm-hearted. At its core, it is a fairly slight story of first love, but writer and performer Lauryn Redding gives it substance with a lesbian theme and a message about the importance of authenticity in a challenging world. But I’d hazard that it wasn’t the … More Bloody Elle – Royal Exchange Theatre
Seventeen year old Jack is a boy with Potential. His devoted, liberal parents, Di and David, have brought him up ‘properly’, sent him to a ‘good school’ and are confident of the bright future that lies ahead for him. They then discover that a sex video of Jack with his girlfriend, Cara, has appeared online … More Four Minutes Twelve Seconds – Oldham Coliseum
Shangri-La is the wonderfully ironic name of a faded seaside boarding house, where the lights don’t work properly, breakfast is a ham and beetroot sandwich, and the landlady boosts revenue by telling fortunes and hosting swingers’ parties at the weekends. The three permanent residents are as jaded as the wallpaper but a new guest arrives … More Welcome to Shangri-La – Hope Mill Theatre
Everybody loves a good musical at Christmas, and the Royal Exchange seasonal production is always eagerly anticipated. In 2017, we saw the wonderful Guys and Dolls given a jazzy Harlem twist, and in 2018 we were treated to The Producers – that delicious celebration of irony and bad taste. This year the Exchange has gone … More Gypsy – Royal Exchange
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