Royal Exchange Theatre
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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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It feels a treat. Plays at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester feel like they’re not there by accident. They’re there by design. I know what I mean and I’m sure frequent flyers of this theatre’s offerings will do so too. By the time you’re sat in the round looking down, ready to see how
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The football pools. I was too young to partake at their peak but that doesn’t take away memories of the pools man knocking on the door every week and the parental mad dash to find the coupon, and random shouting out of numbers, each corresponding to a fixture that weekend…each a prediction of a score
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A sweeping state-of-the-nation play that embraces huge political and economic ideas in a magnificent gritty social drama. Nottage’s stunning writing pits friend against friend as social and racial tensions, once buried by a sense of solidarity, soon rise to the surface in this breathtaking drama. Divide and conquer. If it wasn’t for the accents, I
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I’m sat writing this looking out on Salford Docks. Well strictly speaking Salford Quays. Well strictly speaking, one of the Basins, with all its accoutrements; bridge(s), birds, runners, dog-walkers, lanyard bedecked workers, high-rises… But not the high-rises that one would have come to expect from Salford. A whole different shinier, floor-to-ceiling windowier animal. And yet
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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
honorary manc 