Writer: Enid Blyton Adaptor and Director: Emma Rice Enid Blyton’s works may be decades old, but they are well and truly living on – the pages now being read by new young avid readers and being adapted widely for both stage and screen. Directed and adapted by Emma Rice, this latest production of Malory Towers is being hosted at the beautiful HOME Manchester – creating a wonderfully intimate and immersive performance for audiences of all ages. The show transports some Gen Z school kids back in time to the 1940s – retelling some of the moments from the iconic books…
Author: The Reviews Hub - North West
The Reviews Hub - North West
The North West team is under the editorship of John McRoberts. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.
Writer: Virginia Wolf Adaptor/Director: Jen Hayes This is a truly mesmerising, profound, original, and deeply moving production. Adapted from the classic novel by Virginia Woolf, and directed by Jen Heyes, co-created with and starring Olivier Award-winning artist Kit Green, who effectively plays over a dozen demanding roles including Virginia Woolf herself. Simon Kenny’s deceptively simplistic stage design, consisting of three huge projection screens, with a baby grand piano on one side, and a solitary green chair on the other, looks magnificent. The lighting by Phil Saunders creates a wonderfully cinematic atmosphere, working beautifully with the filmed sequences by Monika Koeck.…
Performer Le Gateau Chocolat working with musical director/pianist Allyson Devenish and singer/songwriter/art historian Dr David McAlmont has brought his latest show Spirituals to the Lowry. With an Order of Service reading like a Sunday Service, Spirituals is an ode to the two sopranos Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle. Back in 1990 the two did a show at New York’s Carnegie Hall called Sing Spirituals. Le Gateau Chocolat here performs a selection of the songs performed at that concert. Dominating the stage in a glittered black suit, Le Gateau Chocolat has a wonderous deep baritone voice which he uses to full…
Writer: Eugene O’Neill Director: Jake Murray Long Day’s Journey into Night, regarded as one of the greatest plays of the 20thcentury, presents a number of challenges for acting companies with a lengthy running time and long heavyweight speeches. Elysium Theatre Company also copes with making a change in cast at short notice. In 1912 the Tyrone family holiday in their seaside cottage in Connecticut. All is not well. Patriarch James Tyrone (Edmund Dehn) is unable to forget his poverty-stricken childhood so watches every penny and, hating himself, for wasting his acting talent in a crowd-pleasing but artistically unfulfilling role, drinks…
Writers and directors: Polly Hoban and Jake Butterworth Plays like Macbeth and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? demonstrate that dinner parties in theatrical productions are more often sources of conflict and confrontation than relaxation and enjoyment. Dinner With The Wolves, co-written and directed by Polly Hoban and Jake Butterworth, continues this tradition opening as a social satire/domestic drama before veering off into unexpected territory. Dinner With The Wolves is set amongst the globe-trotting wealthy elite. Emily Wolfe (Eloise Webb) organises a dinner party to welcome her husband Arthur (Zak Richards) back from his business trip to Japan. Guests include Emily’s…
Gricers, a brand-new spontaneous play at the Unity Theatre, provided a masterful conclusion to the opening night of the Liverpool Improvisation Festival. It is a exceptional example of “theatre of nothing.” On the surface, the premise is as stagnant as a rusted rail: two men waiting for trains. Yet, beneath that stillness, the performance excavates the full gamut of life, love, and the human condition within a brisk, 50-minute runtime. Much like the DNA of Waiting for Godot, the two characters, Mark and Mike, exist in a state of perpetual anticipation. They never see a train, but they fill the…
Writer: Natalie Beech Director: Connor Goodwin Man or Bear? As a woman, which would you rather be stuck alone in the woods with. Such was the question posed in a viral TikTok video back in 2024 and the answer was resoundingly – in what was perhaps surprising to some – “bear”. It is this very question over which blood-soaked feminist Jen (Jenna Sian O’Hara) compulsively obsesses after committing an undisclosed violent act with her partner Jake (Jordan Akkaya). Thus begins a surreal, high-octane two hours which is safely unlike anything you’ll have seen in the theatre of late. A wonderfully…
Writer: Hilary Mantel Adapter: Alexandra Wood Director: John Young Hilary Mantel’s controversial short story was inspired by a real-life moment in 1983, when she glimpsed Margaret Thatcher leaving hospital after eye surgery from an upstairs window in Windsor. The result is a tense stand-off between an IRA gunman and the woman whose flat serves as a perfect sniper’s vantage point. Difficulties in pairing the two characters meant it remained unpublished until 2014, after the former prime minister’s death. Alexandra Wood’s first-ever adaptation for the Everyman explores the condensed lyricism of the original, developing the uncertain relationship into a gripping psychological duel. The…