Manchester
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New year, and much musing and reviewsing to look forward to for this Honorary Manc. Entering my 24th year as a resident in this beautiful little city, and more in love with it than ever, let’s kick-start 2024 with a dark and dastardly thriller at the theatre. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin… Well…
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I’m not really into ‘over sentiment’, as a rule. Nostalgia is a different story. I can lament about the good old days of last Tuesday with a wistful sigh, but in the moment, I can’t do twee. I feel awkward, embarrassed and also awkward again. But Little Women was truly hand-claspingly, heartwarmingly lovely. It just…
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At the top of the world lives the Snow Queen who is supposed to control the weather.But the seasons aren’t behaving. The world is getting warmer. And it hasn’t snowed for years….Lumi gazes up at the stars and worries about the world. The adults don’t seem to have noticed that the seasons aren’t behaving, or…
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I’ve done it. I’ve completed the holy trinity of moving, animal-based theatre. A triptych, if you like, of creature tear-jerkers which, for those who know me, will also know that that is my Everest. It all started with Watership Down, with a stop along the way to Born Free, with frequent accidental visits to Attenborough’s…
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I’ve had a rather Shakespearean run over the last few weeks. Bard-heavy, you might say? I say, that with productions of Romeo and Juliet and Falstaff in Manchester (and a quick return visit to Shakespeare country, Stratford-upon-Avon itself), it’s been a joy to immerse myself in texts which are classically brilliant in their origins but…
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Fairytales are scary. Wicked stepmothers, witches and wolves at every turn… They teach us important life lessons at an early age. What would you choose? The promise of adventure or the safety of the path? Written by Kevin Dyer, Little Red is a retelling of a fairytale for the age. With any retelling of a…
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A fairly frequent visitor to the Lake District and Cotswolds, each time my plus 1 and I are ambling down a country lane, gingerly (me. him- confidently) crossing a stream, roasting ourselves in front of an open fire in an aggressively cosy english pub, we ponder But why, the hecky peck, don’t we relocate and…
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I write this swathed in aptness as I prepare for a return to Shakespeare country; Stratford-upon-Avon this weekend. The weekender was originally intended to be more Butlins, Black Grape and Boo Radleys, and altogether less Bard, but when flooding takes out your chalet, substituting a Shiiine indie festival for Shakespeare felt the obvious move. But…
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Ohhh. I’m conflicted. Well I’m not, I know what I need to say, I’m just not comfortable saying it. This blog post isn’t going to go how I thought it might. We were going to get my oft-said unnecessary and tedious proclamation of how on the whole I don’t really enjoy musicals. But how I…
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I mean it’s a staple. We studied it in school, I’ve seen it performed ‘traditionally’, in Heaton Park that involved a travelling M&S picnic and a good few thousand steps. My plus 1, both in theatre-going and life, even saw it in this very theatre, the Royal Exchange, in Manchester back in 1992, and featuring…
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In a week where this was a snapshot of my search terms, it was time to get me off my phone and back out to the theatre. And this was a production I’d been particularly looking forward to. This is the story of how we met, fell in love, and f*cked it up. But it’s…
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In part 2 of a blog series I’m calling a series of posts on shorts (well I am and it is), we’re looking at another jewel amongst so many, in the crown that was and is Bolton Film Festival. As discussed in part 1 – Bolton Film Festival -presenting a short series of posts on…
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It’s become a lifestyle genre; the obsession with and act of inhaling, true crime in all its media forms. Be it by the OGs (in my eyes) of the genre, Netflix, by book or by podcast. And if it makes me basic to be a paid up member of the true crime tribe, then crown…
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I’ve never been to Bolton Film Festival. I shamefully didn’t realise it was a thing but was thrilled to discover it was. And what a thing it is. Film festivals are such an indulgent treat and this one is no exception. I write in the present tense as after the ‘physical’ 5-day portion of the…
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The production is the cause is the charity is the cause is the production. What do I mean (I’m partially asking myself that question as I do go off into my own sphere at times and my blogs tend to be an immediate download, without discrimination, of my internal meanderings). I guess I mean it’s…
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Who doesn’t love a good old ghost story? And none more-so than one from writer, M.R. James, who some consider ‘the grandfather of British horror’. A factor that separates him from many of his predecessors is that when he started writing in this genre (his first collection published in 1904), he chose to set his…
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I know that Simon Nye is known for more than More Behaving Badly, but I really hope he’ll forgive me for bringing it up in the first sentence of this blog post (Neil Morrissey? consider this your 5 minute warning…). A 90s teenager, Men Behaving Badly (cough, the BBC years) was indeed a jewel in…
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It’s meta, Innit. Watching a musical set in Salford, in Salford. The Lowry, to be specific. To be even more specific, the Quays Theatre, that lovely little venue tucked round the back of the Lowry. Whereas the majority of productions are hosted by the larger Lyric Theatre, which most of us will be familiar with,…
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It all became a bit massively meta on Thursday night. It didn’t stop at going to watch a play about a pub which took place in a pub. The play talked about the evolution of the pub, taking in the changing landscape and gentrification along the way. I sat in the pub on WhatsApp remarking…
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Wasteman was. a. riot. And to think I nearly missed it? For some reason I’m terrible with Instagram direct messages. I seem to have a blind spot in even seeing them but thank goodness I finally found Joe Leather’s invitation to check out the show. This morning I signed upto Threads so let’s see how…
honorary manc 