Author: The Greater Manchester Reviewer

Reviewing theatre and performance - all over Greater Manchester!

Out Of Order

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HOME Theatre, Manchester; Wednesday 13th November, 2019

 

Someone’s gonna cry

If you say goodbye

Someone’s tears will fall in vain

They’re gonna fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, like rain

And who’s tears will they be

Someone’s gonna cry

 

-Val Martinez

 

But not me. There is no fucking way I’m gonna cry this time. I’ve been in several abusive (performance <-> audience) relationships before, no matter how many times they play that song on loop I WILL NOT CRY.

It’s a nice enough song, quite catchy. But by the third or fourth time it’s looped around, you just want it to stop – and exactly the same can be said for the whole performance.Read More »

Seagulls

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The Octagon Theatre at Bolton Library and Museum; Wednesday 30th October, 2019

Seagulls_1

 

We are Seagulls – not “The Seagulls”, just Seagulls, without the word “The”. We are scavengers: we will pick up the scraps of human life and turn them into musical art.

Seagulls by American writer Beth Hyland is a coming-of-age saga that follows four university students who harbour aspirations of fame and stardom. Coming together to start a new band, their hard work sees them rapidly develop into an exciting musical prospect: very quickly they find themselves winning local talent competitions, could they really be on the road to fulfilling their wildest dreams and making it big?Read More »

Light Falls

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The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester; Tuesday 29th October, 2019

08 RET LIGHT FALLS - L-R Lloyd Hutchinson, Witney White, Rebecca Manley, Katie West &amp; David Moorst - Image Manuel Harlan

 

Please stay in touch with me

In this contactless society

Anywhere that you may be

The northern star leads back to me

Christine has met her end. She saw it all play out and has the precise details of how it happened: it was a Monday, in February, 2017, it was twelve minutes to five in the afternoon.Read More »

Nuclear Future

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The Lowry, Salford; Thursday 24th October, 2019

NuclearFuture_4

Is the future nuclear? Or are we in the nuclear age already? It’s all so hidden away and elusive, we only ever seem to hear about it when it goes badly wrong. But what about the bit that is really (and deliberately) hidden away: what will actually happen if a nuclear bomb were to be detonated?

Nuclear Future by Gameshow Theatre is a mysterious solo show that sets about exploring a very peculiar philosophical paradox: how can something be so small that you can’t even see it – yet also be capable of instantaneously unleashing something so big that your mind can’t even imagine it.Read More »

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran

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HOME Theatre, Manchester; Wednesday 23rd October, 2019

RichKids_4

Two years ago, writer, director and performer Javaad Alipoor dived deep undercover into the darkest corners of the internet in a bold quest to understand what was driving the online radicalisation of young men. 

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran is the second part of what will eventually become a theatrical trilogy – one which seeks to assess the impact of humanity’s head-first tumble into the digital age. Read More »

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Or Much Ado About Nothing

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The Waterside Theatre, Manchester College; Thursday 10th October, 2019

BlahBlahBlah_1

 

“Hi, my name’s Caitlin Mollie Jane Marsh and tonight I’ll be playing the role of Ryan Lea”

From the very beginning, it was clear that Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Or Much Ado About Nothing was going to be wild. The programme notes hinted something strange was afoot, the introductions by the cast confirmed it: they were all going to be playing each other – not playing roles from *hakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing but actually playing each other.Read More »

It’s True, It’s True, It’s True

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HOME Theatre, Manchester; Tuesday 8th October, 2019

ItsTrue_4

The year is 1612: in a packed courtroom in Renaissance Rome an aspiring young artist barely out of her teens is giving evidence against a man twice her age – she claims that he forced himself upon her, he vociferously denies any wrongdoing.

Artemisia Gentileschi is today revered as a Baroque master but her early life and her subsequent work was dominated and defined by the rape allegation against a man who was supposed to be her art tutor.Read More »

Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum With Expats

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HOME Theatre, Manchester; Friday 27th September, 2019

STDRWE_1

 

Two years ago things seemed to be going extremely well for esteemed international performance artists Sh!t Theatre – somehow they blagged a cheeky holiday to America to stalk their idol Dolly Parton and ended up coming back to Britain with a fully-fledged mainstream crossover hit show.

But recently, in true showbusiness style, things seem to have gone a bit awry for the normally effervescent duo – both are now economic migrants who have been forced to leave their homeland: one says she’s feeling lonely on a canal boat and the other is grafting it out in Leeds, a small town just north of London.

But the Sh!ts are an irrepressibly intrepid theatre making proposition – instead of banging on about how sh!t it all is on Twitter they’ve done what they’ve always been good at: made a new show about it. Read More »

The Accident Did Not Take Place

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HOME Theatre, Manchester; Friday 27th September, 2019
TheAccidentDidNotTakePlace_1

 

<<BREAKING NEWS>> : somewhere on the other side of the world a plane is falling from the sky. YesYesNoNo Theatre have the latest reports: they say that information is scarce and that all contact with the doomed aircraft has been lost.

Suddenly, from the front row of the audience, a hero emerges. In an inventive twist on staging convention, every performance of The Accident Did Not Take Place involves YesYesNoNo inviting a guest actor to take the lead role each night – but we’re told that this actor knows nothing about the plot or the script, this will be a hero who has to fake it to make it.Read More »

Under Three Moons

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The Lowry, Salford; Thursday 26th September, 2019

UnderThreeMoons_1

 

What do you do when your mate always needs to have a chat? When they’ve clearly got something going on but then they don’t actually come out and say it? Just how long can you continue to be there for them?

Under Three Moons by Daniel Kanaber delves inquisitively into the murky world of strained emotions and one very erratic friendship – a reflective hour that demands the invasive exploration of two reluctant individuals in the hope that the fractious interaction between them can somehow be deciphered. Read More »