Reviewer: Daniel Shipman Upstaged Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Royal Exchange has a solid reputation for outstanding, non-pantomime Christmas shows, and Betty (written by and starring Maxine Peake) is no exception. Described as ‘a sort of musical’, Betty follows the misadventures of…
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Since the Royal Exchange announced their new season back at the end of 2021, I’ve been eagerly awaiting this production. Adapted for the stage by Jack Thorne, Let The Right One In is everything I envisioned it could be and much more. Suitably timed for Halloween, the performance delivers – it’s brutal, jumpy and at times, quite bloody – but it’s also threaded with innocence, sweet humour and heart.
At its best, the subjective and poetic image creation in Rockets and Blue Lights at the National Theatre is both audacious and striking. At its worst, it is over-complex, confusing and overly didactic.
In collaboration with theatres across the UK, #scenechange – a community for stage designers taking action for theatre – has launched #MissingLiveTheatre, wrapping theatre buildings in a positive message of hope and visibility to the industry.
Originally produced in association with Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre, director Raz Shaw’s production of The Greatest Play in the History of the World is one of the most charming and dopamine-rich shows you could ever hope to see.
Light Falls is too Northern. It’s far, far too Northern. The grit-spreaders have truly been out in force, and it’s excruciating to swallow so very many clichés in one dose.
There were wins for Sheffield Theatres’ Life Of Pi at the 2019 UK Theatre Awards, revealed at London’s Guildhall.
This production of Macbeth receives stunning direction from Christopher Haydon and, crucially, Lucy Ellinson is magnificent as Macbeth.
Carrying on a new series, our editor Lisa Martland picks out seven of her Top Picks from the last week of theatre (2-9 June 2019). Amidst her top choices are Maryam Philpott’s journey back to a time of political optimism in The Wardrobe Ensemble’s Education, Education, Education at Trafalgar Studios.
The Royal Exchange’s latest offering is an adaptation of Harold Brighouse’s 1916 play Hobson’s Choice, with the action updated from Victorian-era Salford to Ancoats in the 1980s.
Fantastic collaboration between Rachel Bagshaw and Chris Thorpe results in the really amazing show The Shape of Pain at Wilton’s Music Hall.
Queen Margaret is an extraordinary production which combines the insight and depth of a Shakespearian history play with contemporary humour and ingenuity.
Playing at her spiritual home, the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, Maxine Peake’s play about women and the mines is both a political corrective and a highly entertaining night out.
Black Men Walking is a hugely enjoyable show which embraces its audience in a warm clinch while zapping your brain with thought-provoking ideas. It’s not one of the best black plays of the year: it’s simply one of this year’s best plays.
This Frankenstein ends up feeling a little po-faced as seriousness alone does not dramatic imperative make, especially when the material is as familiar as this.
Kat is a young wife and mother, and Fritz tells her story in three episodes. The first, called Fifteen Seconds, shows her deciding to skip off work and, instead, board a train for London where she will douse her own body with petrol in Parliament Square and set herself alight.
Kat is a young wife and mother, and Fritz tells her story in three episodes. The first, called Fifteen Seconds, shows her deciding to skip off work and, instead, board a train for London where she will douse her own body with petrol in Parliament Square and set herself alight.
You could call it the Corbynisation of new writing. In the past couple of years, a series of plays have plumbed the lower depths, looking at the subject of good people trapped in zero-hour contracts and terrible working conditions. Like Ken Loach’s dreary film, I, Daniel Blake, these plays have integrity, but very little dramatic content.
New play about casual work and disability is a thinly written Corbynesque drama.
