HOME Theatre, Manchester; Thursday 19th September, 2019

Tommy used to work on the docks. Union’s been on strike: he’s down on his luck, it’s tough.

So tough.

Gina works the diner all day. Working for her man: she brings home her pay, for love.

For love.

Paul O’Donnell is a genius, he’s got a great idea: he’s going to put on a musical – a full-scale theatrical extravaganza with gratuitous deployment of jazz hands, sparkly fingers, confetti cannons – the works. There’ll be a cast of thirty five musicians and dancers, it’ll be two-and-a-half hours long with an interval of twenty minutes – huge sell-out crowds will flock to the West End to see it.

There’s one big problem though: no one’s stumping up the cash to make it happen.Read More »

HOME Theatre, Manchester; Thursday 12th September, 2019

Originally published as a book in 2010, Red Dust Road is Scottish Poet Laureate Jackie Kay’s autobiographical account of the life-long search for her biological parents: a Scottish mother who worked as a nurse in the 1960s and a Nigerian father who was studying at Aberdeen University.

Tanika Gupta’s stage adaptation is an assembly of multiple scenes that span fully five decades from the 1960s onwards. The random sequencing is such that these scenes aren’t delivered in chronological order. Hence, as the show progresses, what slowly begins to form is a fascinating, jigsaw-like rendering of the Jackie Kay story with all its attendant intrigues.Read More »

HOME Theatre, Manchester; Wednesday 11th September, 2019

Six very angry looking men are sat on stage, staring down the audience. This is a war of attrition, who will back down first? Each one is oozing arrogance, evidenced by the outrageous manspreading on display, as well as a nonchalant leer which suggests that these guys are just not arsed.

The six men are prisoners – inmates of HMP Wandsworth – but this is no ordinary story of life behind bars; The Jumper Factory is arguably much more about the drawn-out agonies of disconnection from the outside world.Read More »

Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester; Tuesday 13th August, 2019

It ain’t easy being me:

billions of voices,

making all the wrong choices;

then turning around and blaming me.

Nearly three decades have passed since The Jerry Springer Show burst off American cable channels and became a massive and instant TV hit across the world. The simple formula for creating entertainment out of ordinary people airing their dirty laundry in public still holds an elusive X factor that imitators have never quite matched.Read More »

The King’s Arms, Salford; Thursday 8th August, 2019

Welcome to the community centre, a very Mancunian community centre: this is the gentle, beating heart that quietly ticks away; the lifeblood that unites an extravagant community of assorted characters.

Written by soap star and comedienne Nicola Gardner, The Community Centre depicts a day in the life of a fictional hub where visitors can come to simply pass the time away, and it appears that the under-worked staff can do the same too. Read More »