manchesterbloggers

  • It’s been a month of quiet contemplation. Not to go too deep on a Thursday and stray away from the task in hand, but seeing friends deal with losses and feeling their pain both personally and empathetically, leads to existential thoughts. There are both positives and negatives to this, the former being strength and resilience

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  • Right I’m going to hang myself out to dry here. But it’s for the greater good. I don’t know why, I don’t know how. But I missed IDEAL the first time around…. Johnny Vegas stars as Moz, Manchester’s longest serving weed dealer, in a dope opera of epic proportions. Starring some of the hit BBC

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  • Or Aviva Studios. But Factory International above all else. So I’m going to go in on this straight off, as I tried it out, once. Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The gig is that there’s an incredible synchronicity in theme, tone, tempo and narrative if player out simultaneously. Completed

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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

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  • Thank goodness I’m getting older. The days, weeks and months fly. And so do the years. Most of the time this freaks me out and delivers me into my latest existential crisis. But sometimes it works to my advantage and it feels like no time at all since the last Manchester International Festival, whereas it

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  • I’ve said before, love me a bit of Theatre 2 at HOME Mcr. The smaller the stage, the greater the magic for me. Wednesday night offered another hey presto moment with Ad Infinitum’s If You Fall. Margaret is a pillar of her local community. Norson is a brilliant cook. He loves cricket and fishing. She

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  • We are never one thing, we are human.This play is dedicated to the immigrant women who have been here for decades, who are pushed into the shadows…I see your grace. Yusra Warsama- writer and director Of All The Beautiful Things In The World takes the Lorca classic The House of Bernarda Alba as inspiration, exporting

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  • As Opera North say, La Traviata is perfect for opera newbies as well as diehard opera fans. And I would wholly support this. I guess I would be placed in the middle lane in that I really do enjoy opera, have seen a respectable number of different productions but have yet to reach double figures.

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  • Cocktails have been enjoying their time in the sun once again and any respectable joint worth their salted rim will offer you a cocktail list. And whilst they come in a variety of shapes and sizes (it can be a bit of a Russian roulette experience as to what’s coming and whether it presents in

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  • It’s the most wonderful time of the year…. Fringe.Is.Back. And not just any old Fringe. Greater Manchester Fringe. All that creativity, talent and in all those exciting and unique spaces around Manchester. The Greater Manchester Fringe Festival returns for its 11th year, in its original summer slot from Friday 1st until Sunday 31st July. Over

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  • I’m a misery when it comes to children’s literature, films, television (although my wonderful young whirlwind of a niece is changing that – Hey Duggie is my ride or die. I’m ageing myself but I’ve never read or watched a Harry Potter. I’ve not watched a Disney film that wasn’t made post 80s and I

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  • Everybody’s talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. It’s being recommended to me, I’ve been asked if I’ve seen it, asked if I recommend it… Yes In short. In long, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, is an award-winning ‘feel good musical sensation,’ which debuted in the West End and has opened its UK tour at The Lowry.

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  • I like to think that I have a fairly good grip on the entertainment zeitgeist. ‘Think’ and ‘fairly’ being the key words. As although I am aware of the theatre production The Play That Goes Wrong, I wasn’t aware of the television show ‘The Goes Wrong Show’, until asked by a friend whether it translated

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  • Only a few days earlier, I’d enjoyed the wonder that was the Damon Albarn gig, as part of the very special Manchester International Festival. Friday it was back to GMEX (am I being tedious refusing to get upto date with this? Such a mouthful) and the space had been transformed into a very different place.

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  • I was going to use a terrible title for this blog post – Purezza: Vegan Sparkle – a very terrible play on words involving Meghan Markle. But given I’ve had to explain it and it’s beyond cheesy, I haven’t. Speaking of cheese, and I so often do, when invited to the soft launch of Purezza,

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  • You will be familiar with Manchester’s very own People’s Choice Wine Awards, an annual event where we, the happy, passionate consumers get to lend our opinions, alongside the professionals of the wine world, in order to crown the year’s top tipples. You can read more about my own experience of being a judge and attending

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  • What do you mean there’s nothing to look forward to, we have no future, 2020 has nothing to offer us mancunians actuary, honorary or passing through (controversial – stick to your own tiered up towns, we’ve got enough problems). Retro rock and roll band, The Electric Stars, are bringing their brand new album, Velvet Elvis:

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  • 2020 heralds 75 years since the liberation of the Nazi death-camps. On Monday 27 January, Manchester Jewish Museum will mark Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), with two premieres of musical and theatrical performances, staged at Manchester Central Library. Songs of Arrival During the afternoon, music by acclaimed Israeli composer Na’ama Zisser,the first to introduce cantorial music into

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  • NQ Jazz is one of my favourites things. Yes we have Matt and Phred’s and I give thanks to the gods of live jazz that we do. But Manchester needs even more and NQ Jazz gives us that more in a gloriously dark, underground befitting location that is The Whiskey Jar. To speak in New

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