Road- The Royal Exchange, Manchester

Writer: Jim Cartwright

Director: Selina Cartmell

Jim Cartwright’s Road is the first production in the Royal Exchange’s 50^th anniversary season so there is a determination to make a strong impression.

Director Selina Cartmell designs close to a promenade production. The foyer of the theatre is littered with shabby props – a van that has seen better days, a shambolic garage- and the theatre’s Rivals Bar is converted into The Millstone Pub complete with 1980’s style glitter curtains and a cockeyed nameplate. Members of the cast perch on seats erected high above the floor and greet patrons as if they are old friends. Audience members are issued a roadmap to the updated foyer to ensure all features are viewed and appreciated.

During the interval the actual theatre module is converted into a disco with a foul-mouthed DJ demanding audience participation while, in the foyer, Lesley Joseph staffs a chip shop and other cast members hold court above the pub. The overall effect is to demonstrate that Road is not so much a place as a state of mind; a community discarded and forgotten by wider society and with a bleak defeated outlook that will continue unchanged after the curtain falls.

Inside the theatre module Leslie Travers has designed a set like a decaying junkyard. Cables hang loose around the stage and TV sets show flickering images of programmes from the 1980’s. Continuing the promenade theme a ladder ensures all levels of the theatre can be accessed by the cast and Shobna Gulati is seated in an armchair high above the stage looking like a malevolent spider. The name of the street has been snapped off the direction sign so it reads starkly ‘’road’’.

Jim Cartwright’s script is an acknowledged classic but is relentlessly downbeat and features characters who are unpleasant and show little inclination to tackle their dire condition. The opening sets the scene perfectly – a bawled argument between mother and daughter which has a ritualised quality as if it is occurs so regularly as to have lost meaning. Shobna Gulati sets the grim theme of the play with the hopeless observation it is a long life. Director Selina Cartmell emphasises the point (and other key observations) by broadcasting filmed images of Gulati’s dead-eyed delivery onto the TV sets that surround the stage.

This early use of the TV screens eases the audience into the filmed appearance of Tom Courtney giving a bittersweet recollection of life in the community in past decades and wondering who is to blame for the decline. Courtney is unquestionably theatre royalty and was in the first production at the Royal Exchange in 1976 so his appearance links to the anniversary celebrations although the film does necessitate the audience facing a darkened stage for the duration of the monologue.

The first act of the play is basically a collection of short stories. There is no overall connection between the tales so Johnny Vegas’s Scullery is less a narrator more a demonic master of ceremonies introducing the unsavoury characters with sadistic relish. Scullery is the only character to have left the road (it is implied he served in the navy) and his tragedy is that he returned.

The play is set in a feral dog-eat-dog environment in which a community, failed by the authorities and overwhelmed by dismal circumstances, are willing to turn on each other.  There is humour in the play but its nature is cruel- the audience is laughing at, not with, the characters. One woman is so desperate for a drink she allows Scullery, standing on the balcony, to pour booze direct from the bottle into her mouth. Lesley Joseph’s damaged Molly sings a beautifully fragile version of The Parting Glass folk song which would have made a good end to the first act. Instead there is a story that one might expect from J G Ballard of a pair of young lovers whose options are so limited they experiment with starvation just to see what happens.

In act two the stories have a theme not so much of love but more the crude mating rituals on the Road. A would-be predatory woman embarrassingly attempts to seduce a solider so drunk as to be incapable of movement let alone passion. A mutual seduction is interrupted by the appearance of a teenage daughter and degenerates into a foul-mouthed argument that extends to all three levels of the theatre. The concluding story draws the inevitable conclusion that the environment in which the Road is situated is beyond repair and cannot be improved so the only hope is escape.

The opening for the Royal Exchange’s 50^th anniversary is a very high-quality production with a first-rate cast. Audiences should, however, be braced for an unflinching examination of a community many people would prefer to ignore.

Runs until 14^th March 2026