Review: The Empathy Experiment (Rose Condo, GM Fringe)

Wednesday 10th July 2019
Studio, King’s Arms, Salford

As you’ve probably twigged from my recent series of blog posts, the 2019 Greater Manchester Fringe runs throughout July. I’m reviewing a selection of shows from this year’s festival programme for this blog and for North Manchester FM, and the next show on my list is The Empathy Experiment in the Studio at the King’s Arms in Salford on Wednesday 10th July. You can hear the radio version of this review on Saturday’s Hannah’s Bookshelf, but here’s the blog version…

The Empathy Experiment is a one-woman show written and directed by Rose Condo (with dramaturgy by Dominic Berry) about our relationship with our smartphones and mobile devices. Told through poetry and spoken word performance, The Empathy Experiment is constructed around a simple conceit: Condo has decided to give up using her smartphone for a full 24 hours in order to see if this increases her empathy levels. Now, in the final hour of the experiment, she is ready to share her findings with the audience.

The show is presented as a sort-of lecture, signalled by Condo donning a white lab coat and using title cards to announce the stages of her investigation. I say ‘sort-of lecture’, though, as the style and tone of presentation are somewhat at odds with the ‘science part’ of the content. While Condo provides some research to back up her assertions about empathy and compassion – quoting from both studies and more populist books – there is an intimacy and urgency to Condo’s delivery that makes the show feel more like a conversation with, rather than an address to, the audience.

The show combines some – surely widely relatable! – poetry about everyday smartphone addiction, including an absorbing and descriptive piece about accidentally falling into a scrolling binge late at night, with chatty musings on the nature of empathy and the way we relate to other people. Both the poetry and the running monologue are eloquent, lightly comedic and engaging throughout, though there is a bit of bite to some of the commentary on the declining quality of human interaction. Nevertheless, there is no direct target to Condo’s light-touch ire. Instead, she creates a sense of complicity through the relatability of her words: we all do this, so we’re all to blame.

The Empathy Experiment works on two levels. On the one hand, the audience are presented with some thought-provoking facts and studies about the ostensible decline in empathy, and the connection this may have to smartphone use, and with responses to an anonymous survey Condo conducted beforehand. Some of this is not really surprising, but it serves the purpose of encouraging reflection and reassessment of certain aspects of the modern world that we have come (in a few short years) to take for granted. (And a poetic piece about Facebook really underlines the speed at which these changes have occurred.) It’s the sort of factual presentation that doesn’t so much teach you something new, but rather reminds you of something you’d forgotten you already knew – like, for instance, the fact that very few people primarily use their smartphone as a phone.

However, on the other hand – and more powerfully – the show works to create an actual empathetic response from its audience through its delivery style. I found that, although I was thinking a lot while watching The Empathy Experiment, I was feeling something too.

Condo states up-front that she is a ‘friendly’ person (noting that this is because she’s Canadian), and ‘friendliness’ is a vibe that undoubtedly permeates The Empathy Experiment. In the small space of the King’s Arms Studio, the audience feels very close to Condo – and to one another. She is seated on the stage area when the audience arrives, apparently patiently waiting for them and preparing herself for the performance. When the show proper begins, she makes expert use of silence and stillness at key moments, and frequently makes direct and smiling eye contact with audience members. This style creates a warmth and familiarity that encourages a strong feeling of connection between performer and audience.

Part way through the show, Condo brings someone onto the stage with (though this isn’t really an audience participation show) for a mini-experiment based on the metaphor of ‘walking in someone else’s shoes’. Slowing the pace right down, this exchange has an incredible softness and gentleness to it, which I found really rather moving.

I don’t know if it was the research on empathy that Condo presented, or the effect of the show’s style and delivery, or just a heightening of innate compassionate responses, but I did feel a strong emotional response to some parts of the show. In particular, there’s a point towards the end when Condo reveals the outcome of her experiment, but also a realization about some of its implications, and I genuinely – just for a minute – felt the pain she was describing.

Of course, the fact that I had this feeling is all credit to the careful and deliberate pacing of the show’s script, as well as Condo’s sensitive and expressive performance. The Empathy Experiment is a very well-crafted show, and it’s really quite clever in the way it elicits an emotional response from its audience.

Overall, The Empathy Experiment is a charming, thought-provoking and clever production, which draws on Condo’s skills as a poet and spoken word performer to create a very enjoyable hour of entertainment. I will admit, I did turn my phone back on when the show finished, but I’ll also admit it was nice to briefly be without it.

The Empathy Experiment had a short (and sold out) run at the Greater Manchester Fringe, but it will be on at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. If you get chance to check out the show in Edinburgh, it’s a definite recommendation from me.

The Empathy Experiment was on at The King’s Arms on the 10th and 11th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe, and it will be performed in August at The Banshee Labyrinth, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Thespis Theatre, GM Fringe)

Wednesday 10th July 2019
Whitefield Garrick Theatre

This year’s Greater Manchester Fringe runs from 1st-31st July. I’m reviewing a selection of shows staged throughout the month for this blog and for North Manchester FM. The next production I saw this month was Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Thespis Theatre, which was on at the Whitefield Garrick on the 10th and 11th July (I was at one of the performances on Wednesday 10th July). You can hear my radio review of the show on Saturday’s edition of Hannah’s Bookshelf, but here’s the blog version…

I was interested in this production for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is one of two shows I’m planning to see this year that’s in a language other than English. Thespis are an Israeli theatre group, and their production of Shakespeare’s Sonnets is (mostly) in Hebrew, with English subtitles. While this year’s Fringe programme offers many great opportunities to see local talent, I’m excited to also have the opportunity to see emerging companies from further afield.

The second reason I was intrigued by this show is that I’d never been to the Whitefield Garrick before. Situated very close to Whitefield tram stop, this small theatre is home to the Whitefield Garrick Society, which grew out of wartime Home Guard performances. The building is a former machine shop – and it’s a really great little theatre space.

But back to Shakespeare’s Sonnets… the real reason this production interested me is that it weaves together and mixes up the words of Shakespeare’s famous poetry sequence to create a theatrical and narrative experience. If you are familiar with the sonnets, you will know that there is some (admittedly debated) sense of a narrative thread – even some sense of character, at times – to them, but I was fascinated to find out how Thespis would draw this out on stage.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets is an intense, almost hypnotic, production, which uses expressionistic performance and stylistic design to focus on the themes of erotic love, vanity, jealousy, cruelty and sadness that permeate Shakespeare’s sequence. Directed by Meir Ben Simon and performed by Yoav Amir, Reut Berda-Levy, Odelya Dadoun, Debbie Levin and Gal Shamai, the production almost works as a series of vignettes, highlighting and dramatizing particular emotional threads, rather than as a linear story.

The show opens with a painter at his easel. The four other performers move onto a raised area at the back of the stage and watch him. At first, it feels as though they are watching with admiration, but it soon becomes clear that they are vying for his attention, like a troupe of somewhat competitive muses. Mirrors and paintbrushes abound, with the artist both drawing and being drawn by his muses.

The approach taken to the text of Shakespeare’s poetry is to fragment, repeat, distort and mix lines from different sonnets. Although the screens show lines from the English text, and signal the sonnet number from which they are taken, even non-Hebrew speakers in the audience quickly realize that these are not verbatim subtitles of the words being spoken on stage. Individual lines and words are repeated, or echoed by another character, and lines from multiple poems are brought together.

The overall effect of this is an emphasis on the musicality of the sonnets, which – when combined with the stylistic physical and aesthetic design – transcends the actual language being spoken (much in the same way as in an opera). This transcendence comes to the fore later in the production, when the first line of Sonnet 40 is repeated and echoed by the performers in a series of other languages (I think I caught French, German, Italian and Spanish).

Thespis have constructed their ‘narrative’ of the sonnets through a series of vignettes. For those familiar with Shakespeare’s poems and the standard interpretations of them, it is no surprise to see the ‘Fair Youth’ and the ‘Dark Lady’ appearing on stage, or to see them engage in a near-vicious tug-of-war over the artist. However, what’s more interesting are the interactions between these two characters, and the way they respond to one another in often unexpected ways. The actors adopt personas, rather than characters, and these adapt and alter as the performance progresses, following threads suggested by Shakespeare’s poetry.

I say the performance ‘progresses’, but this would suggest a more concrete linearity than is found in the production. While certain relationships appear to grow and fade on stage, this is not a strict narrative progression, nor does it follow a particular sequencing of Shakespeare’s poems. In places, Shakespeare’s Sonnets uses its source material as a jumping-off point for a more virtuoso enactment, with the poems being suggestive, rather than prescriptive.

I’d like to give praise, too, to Rona Mishol’s costume design, which lends a sriking visual style to the production. Each performer wears a simple white outfit, overlaid with jagged embroidery that suggests a broken mirror – a nice touch. However, costuming and design (including the sound design and music by Nadav Vikinski) really comes into its own when one of the female performers makes the (perhaps anticipated but certainly arresting) transformation into the Dark Lady. As a set-piece, this transformation is beautifully worked and was one of the highlights of the show for me.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets is an intense and rather serious piece of theatre that offers an expressionistic and thematic interpretation of a poetic sequence. Nevertheless, Thespis aren’t averse to a bit of crowd-pleasing! The performance of Sonnet 18 – undoubtedly the best-known of the sonnets – is a proper show-stopper, and it made me smile to see that – even in a complex and fragmentary meditation on leitmotifs and musicality – ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ still gets to headline!

Shakespeare’s Sonnets is an intelligent and stylish staging of the Bard’s poetry sequence. For non-Hebrew speakers, it is an opportunity to lose yourself in the music of the poetry and the performance. If you get chance at another venue (in Israel or beyond!), I recommend you check out Thespis Theatre’s production.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets was on at the Whitefield Garrick on 10th and 11th July, as part of this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: People are Happy on Trains (war/war/war Theatre, GM Fringe)

Sunday 7th July 2019
Twenty Twenty Two, Manchester

This year’s Greater Manchester Fringe runs from 1st-31st July. I’m continuing my little journey through the festival programme, and the next show I saw was People are Happy on Trains by Galway-based war/war/war Theatre, which is on at Twenty Twenty Two, Dale Street, Manchester.

I saw People are Happy on Trains on Sunday 7th July, and it was the second play I saw that day. The first was All Things Considered’s Wake Up, Maggie! (which I talked about in my previous review), and I must say that the two shows made for quite a double bill. The contrast between the two was really quite striking!

Written by Anna Doyle and directed by Aoife Delany Reade, People are Happy on Trains is a one-act play exploring the complex emotional journey that profound grief can take. This metaphorical journey is staged as an actual journey – the train trip from Glasgow to Edinburgh – which is presented in real-time. It is staged on a very simple set: three sets of chairs with a central aisle conjure up a train carriage, and the rest is left to our imagination (led by the actors’ performances, of course). Although – as I’ve mentioned in previous reviews – I don’t like to know too much in advance about the plays I go to see at the festival, I did have a bit of background info on this one, as I interviewed Doyle about the production for my Hannah’s Bookshelf Greater Manchester Fringe Special at the end of June.

Emily White plays the central character, who is named in the credits simply as ‘girl’ (no character names are used in the actual performance). As we learn early on, this girl is travelling to Edinburgh to collect the personal effects of a loved one who has died. As she enters the carriage and takes her place towards the front of the stage area, she seems entirely alone. But it’s not long before others quietly move in behind her.

Credited only as the seat number they occupy on stage, Ellen McBride, Hanahazukashi Mai and Una Valaine play 59, 57 and 54 respectively. Following the girl into the carriage and taking their seats, it’s quickly apparent that these women are not simply fellow passengers travelling to Edinburgh.

People are Happy on Trains is an expressionistic piece that explores grief. The girl has lost her brother – her best friend – and the experience of this is described in fragmentary monologues from White, who exudes a control and earnestness deliberately at odds with the pain of the story she is telling. This control is juxtaposed with the freer expression of McBride, Mai and Valaine’s performances – these are even more fragmentary, but hint at the bewildering array of emotions that collide and conflict following a bereavement.

One of the striking things about People are Happy on Trains is the way the piece powerfully juxtaposes style and content. The performances and dialogue are stylized, expressionistic and mannered, and yet the story told is painful and raw – even brutal, in places. Despite the constrained stylistics, there is an undeniable universality to the narrative. Similarly, while the fragmented monologues describe a very specific relationship and backstory, the show constantly feels as though it is describing something more generalized and communal.

Strange as it may seem to say about a play that deals with the pain and confusion of grief, I found the performances in People are Happy on Trains almost pleasantly hypnotic. There’s a balletic style to some of the group pieces – an analogy drawn with a piano recital, which begins with Valaine and Doyle’s poetic writing, moves between the actors with a neatly choreographed grace. And I also enjoyed the way the sounds and movement of the train journey are signalled by the actors to punctuate the piece.

These elements – and the lyrical narration of Doyle’s script – lend the play a sort of dreamlike quality. Again, this makes for an interesting juxtaposition, as the girl’s story seems to touch on something very human and real, and yet the style of the production encourages the audience to see it is as unreal – even hallucinatory, at times. This contradiction is thought-provoking, but also relatable. Grief is contradictory, and the feeling of being both real and unreal at the same time is something many people will be able to identify with.

This is undoubtedly an ensemble piece, which relies on a certain chemistry between McBride, Valaine and Mai, as well as a brittleness in their interactions with White. It’s hard to single out one actor in a piece of this nature, but I will say that I found myself particularly drawn to McBride’s performance as the woman in Seat 59. Bristling with barely-concealed anger from the moment she arrives on stage, McBride delivers some of the harsher lines of the play, revealing the darker and more brutal emotions that underlie the grieving process. Her compelling and commanding performance ensures that this is a bit of a sucker-punch, but it is contextualized by the more wistful, nostalgic and reassuring performances of Valaine and Mai.

Overall People are Happy on Trains is both heartfelt and controlled – a serious meditation on the experience of grief. It makes intelligent and confident use of stylistic constraints to deliver a clever piece of contemporary theatre. I look forward to seeing more from war/war/war Theatre in the future.

As a short addition, I would like to mention how much I liked the venue chosen to stage this production. I’d not been to Twenty Twenty Two before, and I wasn’t sure how well a basement ping pong bar on Dale Street (with an entrance in a loading bay on Little Lever Street) would work as a performance space, but I really liked the vibe! The minimalist style and décor of Twenty Twenty Two really suited People are Happy on Trains, and there was a great atmosphere in the bar itself.

People are Happy on Trains is on at Twenty Twenty Two on Dale Street from 7th-10th July, as part of this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: Wake Up, Maggie! (All Things Considered, GM Fringe)

Sunday 7th July 2019
Theatre, King’s Arms, Salford

This year’s Greater Manchester Fringe runs throughout July. The fourth show I saw this year was Wake Up, Maggie! by All Things Considered Theatre, which was staged at the King’s Arms Theatre on Sunday 7th July. I’ll be playing my radio review of the show on North Manchester FM on Tuesday, but here’s the blog version…

Promising a show about ‘class, confusion and karaoke’, and about growing up in the 80s and early 90s, Wake Up, Maggie! is a lively and energetic two-hander by All Things Considered’s artistic director Emma Bramley and associate artist Stuart Crowther. And – this seems to be turning into a bit of a theme for this year’s Fringe – it’s not quite what I expected. Or rather, it was so much more than I expected.

Wake Up, Maggie! begins at the door, with audience members being offered a choice of stickers: Margo Leadbetter, Hyacinth Bucket or Ethel Skinner (I chose Ethel, by the way). Bramley and Crowther are already in the theatre space, dressed in tabards and carrying feather dusters, wandering round the stage and seating area. If you weren’t sure that the show was going to look at aspects of class (specifically working-class life), then this pre-show welcome nails the colours to the mast. However, it doesn’t quite prepare you for the full complexity of the performance.

The show is, on the whole, a duologue, peppered with short bursts of pop songs (some ironic, some illustrative), based on life experiences of the two performers (who are playing themselves on stage). Specifically, it considers and contrasts the two performers’ experiences of class. Crowther introduces himself as coming from Rochdale, and being solidly – and securely – working class, despite the fact that a number of the other personal characteristics he mentions – university lecturer, yoga practitioner, queer, vegan – aren’t immediately associated with the stereotype of the working-class northern bloke.

Bramley’s introduction is more confused. In fact, this is explicitly stated early in the show. Crowther isn’t confused about class, but Bramley is. She grew up poor, with a working-class father and a middle-class mother. She went to a ‘posh’ school, but was on free school dinners and had no money for clothes. Much of the show’s focus is on examining what this conflicted background means about Bramley’s class identity – does she fit in any of the boxes?

Touching on an array of characteristics usually used to categorize class identities, Bramley and Crowther work through anecdotes that reveal the limitations of these categories. Is university education a marker of class? Or financial circumstances? Or what you call your evening meal? This is undercut with jokey comments about the north/south divide, with Londoner Bramley asking at one point: ‘Have I not heard of this because I’m a southerner? Or because I’m middle class?’

I enjoyed this original and nuanced approach to the well-worn subject of class identity. It’s unexpected and a bit in-your-face at times, but it’s also genuinely moving in places and definitely thought-provoking. Bramley presents and examines her confusion through monologue and flashback, in which she conjures up versions of herself during childhood, including a memorable scene where she roots through a bag of cast-off clothes, desperate to find something, anything from Tammy Girl. Of course, her performance also relies on interaction with Crowther, which is consistently warm, funny and playful.

The dynamic between the two is undeniably comical, but it also offers an intriguing perspective on the question of class. In this relationship, the ‘solid’ working-class identity acts as a sort of guide to the system, with the ostensibly middle-class identity being revealed as a fragile and uncertain pretence. Bramley performs vignettes of her past experiences, but she also frequently fires questions at Crowther, apparently expecting him to have all the answers.

Crowther’s performance is an absolute joy. Where Bramley oozes discomfort, awkwardness and – in places – desperation in her story about trying to find a ‘place’ in the world, Crowther shines with the confidence and security of someone who knows exactly where his place is. His side of the performance is mostly delivered through poetic spoken word – with some cracking lines like ‘The world is full of curtains in the North’ – that serves as an unashamed love letter to northern working-class culture.

This steps up a gear as Crowther evokes a very specific ‘hub’ of this culture – the Castleton Moor Conservative Club. Not only is Crowther’s verbal portrait so beautifully descriptive you can almost smell the Lynx and lager tops, but it also situates the club as a potent metaphor for the security (and tribalism) that class identity offers. Awkwardly pulling at her t-shirt, class-confused Bramley asks Crowther if she can go with him. ‘It’s members only where I’m going,’ he says, ‘I’ll have to sign you in.’

My one criticism of Wake Up, Maggie! is that it was a bit too short. There is a lot going on here – Bramley’s exploration of her own conflicted relationship to class, Crowther’s affectionate evocation of working class Rochdale, brief background snippets of political context and pop culture from the 80s and 90s, the identity and fate of the Castleton Moor Con Club, the North/South divide – and the show’s focus occasionally feels a bit dissipated. Allowing a little more time to explore things would have helped with this, and some of the complexities would have withstood a little further analysis.

But I guess this criticism is also a compliment: I’m also saying that I would have happily watched more, and I’ll admit I was a little disappointed when I realized that Crowther’s glittering, climactic number was, literally, the show-stopper.

All in all, Wake Up, Maggie! is a delight of a show. It’s funny, authentic, affectionate, and one of the most nuanced takes on class identity I’ve seen for a long while. There was only one thing that didn’t ring true for me – I can’t believe Emma Bramley has never heard of Fray Bentos pies!

Wake Up, Maggie! was on at the King’s Arms in Salford on Sunday 7th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. For the full programme of this year’s Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: Gobby (Jodie Irvine, GM Fringe)

Saturday 6th July 2019
Studio, King’s Arms, Salford

The 2019 Greater Manchester Fringe continues throughout July, and I’m continuing to see and review shows on this year’s programme. On Saturday 6th July, I was at the King’s Arms, Salford, to see Gobby, the debut play by Jodie Irvine. I’ll be playing the radio version of my review on North Manchester FM on Tuesday, but here’s the blog version…

Written and performed by Irvine – and directed by Serafina Cusack – Gobby is a one-woman play that promises ‘a playlist of awkward encounters’ and a story of ‘growing up and starting over’. I will admit I went into Gobby expecting, perhaps, a clichéd tale of angst, embarrassment and over-indulgence. But I’m delighted to say – and this is one of the reasons I’ve fallen in love with the Fringe – my expectations were completely confounded!

When the audience enters the (admittedly rather cosy) Studio at the King’s Arms, Irvine is already on stage, in character, listlessly blowing up balloons. Behind her is a banner that proclaims, ‘It’s a party’. Her character is Bri (‘like the cheese, except not like the cheese because it doesn’t have an E at the end’), a seemingly awkward party host. Around her, the stage is covered in party decorations – foil hats, streamers and party poppers litter the space.

Bri explains that she’s going to tell us about five parties that changed her life. She lets off a single party popper to signal the beginning of the first scene: this is Party Number 1, a gathering Bri herself has thrown in order to convince some formerly close friends to spend some time with her. For some reason, those friends have stopped inviting Bri to things, and she’s desperate to try and redress this.

Irvine is certainly engaging and very funny in this opening gambit. A party hat on an inflated balloon stands in for a guy she’s talking to. Her description of the much-desired clique as a ‘pack of wolves’ leads to a funny self-deprecating assessment, and sets up an apparently identifiable dynamic (the ‘pack’ are the Mean Girls to Bri’s Cady, the Heathers to her Veronica). But Gobby is about so much more than this, and the layers that sit under the surface are about to be revealed.

And what a reveal it is. Part way through the first party, and whipped up to high pitch with stress and annoyance at being ignored, Bri discloses some backstory that changes our perception of her character and the direction the story is going. I swear I felt the audience take a collective breath (carefully, though, as we were sitting rather close together in the studio space!), but Irvine’s performance didn’t miss a beat. Moving seamlessly from awkwardness, to biting humour, to bitterness, to brittleness, Bri is a rounded and well-realized character with a powerful story to tell.

I don’t want to say too much about how that story unfolds. However, I will say that it’s an unusual, but absorbing, take on self-awareness, survival and self-worth. As some of the show’s publicity states, this is a show about ‘what it really means to be loud’. Bri is ‘gobby’, and the show offers an honest, sympathetic and – on occasions – bittersweet exploration of this.

As a woman who has sometimes been called ‘gobby’, and who knows that she talks too much, too fast and too loud sometimes, I felt a rather personal identification with the character of Bri. More painfully, I also once found myself in a similar situation to Bri’s backstory, and felt some rather visceral parallels between my own experience and that portrayed on stage. I say this, not to bring my own story into this review, but rather to highlight the seriousness of Irvine’s piece. While Bri is a fictional character, the story of Gobby is one that will resonate – perhaps painfully – with many audience members (I don’t imagine I can be the only one!). In her writing and performance, Irvine seems aware of this, and more than up to the task. There is a sensitivity and humanness to Gobby’s story, devoid of condescension or trite answers.

Irvine’s writing and performance are both charming and sensitive (and yes, I laughed a lot, but I did also shed a tear or two). But – weirdly – I would also like to praise her use of props. When the show begins, you’d be forgiven for thinking the party items have simply been cast around the stage at random, and yet at every moment of the performance, Irvine is able to lay her hands on exactly the party popper or paper cup that she needs. Like all the best parties, Gobby is a carefully choreographed piece, despite all its appearance of casualness.

It’s not just Irvine’s use of props that’s well-choreographed, the storytelling is also very well-constructed to give a sense of arc and development. The humour is relatable, and Irvine has great comic timing. But the more serious – and heartfelt – story that underlies it is really quite moving. The show’s real strength lies in the way these two elements work together – they’re actually two sides of the same coin.

Overall, Gobby is a show that really surprises. Sharp, honest, and well-performed, this is an entertaining and skilful debut show, and I hope to see lots more from Irvine in the future.

I’m going to end this review with a slightly unorthodox bit of praise… for the rest of the audience at Saturday’s show! As I’ve mentioned, the Studio at the King’s Arms is a bit of a cosy space. The show was sold out – which is great for Irvine, but it meant that every bit of seating space was needed. We were rather close to one another, to say the least. I don’t know if it was the vibe of the venue, or the anticipation of the show, but I couldn’t have shared that space with a more good-natured group of people, who happily squeezed in together with good humour and patience. As I say, an odd thing to mention in a review, but what a lovely bonus!

Gobby was on at the King’s Arms in Salford on 5th and 6th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. It will be touring other Fringe festivals, including Bedford, Exeter and Edinburgh, in July and August. For the full programme of this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe, visit the festival’s website.

Review: The Yank is a Manc! My Ancestors and Me (Hopwood DePree, GM Fringe)

Friday 5th July 2019
International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester

This year’s Greater Manchester Fringe runs from 1st-31st July, and I’m reviewing a selection of shows on this year’s programme for this blog and for North Manchester FM. My second show of the festival was on Friday 5th July, when I saw Hopwood DePree perform his one-man comedy storytelling show, The Yank is a Manc!: My Ancestors and Me. I’ll be playing my radio review of the show on Saturday’s Hannah’s Bookshelf. But here’s the blog version…

The Yank is a Manc! is the true story of Hopwood DePree’s relocation from Los Angeles to Middleton, to save the Grade II*-listed Hopwood Hall. I’ve been following the story with interest for a while, and Hopwood was actually the first guest I had on my local history show on North Manchester (A Helping of History), back in November 2017, shortly after the show began. I also caught up with Hopwood again for my Hannah’s Bookshelf Greater Manchester Fringe Special at the end of June. So I’ve heard a bit of the background to the show’s backstory. It’s certainly an unusual tale, but it’s also been a great boost for the historic building, which has been at serious risk for some time.

This Summer, Hopwood is touring a one-man show (part stand-up comedy, part storytelling) about his decision to move to the UK, his experiences at the hall (and in Manchester and Middleton generally), and the challenges faced by what he amiably describes as the ‘home restoration from Hell’. The show opens with a short video montage to fill in the background for the uninitiated, and further pictures appear occasionally to illustrate the story. These are a nice mixture of jokey images and genuine pictures of the hall and its current condition.

The one-hour show is funny, affectionate and occasionally absurd (but always on just the right side of believable). Much of the humour comes from the fish-out-of-water situation of the ‘Yank’ arriving in ‘Manc’. As you might expect, there are plenty of jokes about cultural misunderstandings, on the ‘two countries separated by a common language’ lines. An early bit about trying to buy a sweater sets the tone – minor vocabulary differences tumble into a bigger mix-up, with Hopwood presenting himself as the wide-eyed, baffled stranger in a strange land. The show is less ‘you people are crazy’, than a self-deprecating wander through the little absurdities of Hopwood’s unorthodox relocation.

The Yank is a Manc! is a very funny show – I particularly enjoyed the description of Hopwood’s first Bonfire Night – but it is also suffused with an engaging affection and openness. While Hopwood makes his passion for saving the historic building clear, what really comes through is a fondness for the building’s idiosyncrasies – and the idiosyncrasies of the other people involved in the project, and of Middleton/Manchester/Rochdale as a whole. Frequently laughing at himself – there are a number of jokes about spray tans and teeth whitening – Hopwood leaves the audience with the feeling that, mad as his project is, he wouldn’t actually want to be anywhere else.

Watching the show in Manchester, with an audience including a number of people from Middleton, there was a pleasing familiarity to the story and the humour. A couple of jokes seem to revolve around particularly Manc or Northern expressions and characteristics (and Hopwood’s occasional switches between calling his new home ‘Manchester’ and calling it ‘Rochdale’ will make perfect sense to people from Middleton). However, the show was actually first performed at Brighton Fringe, and it will be going on to Camden and Edinburgh next month. It’d be interesting to know what audiences from slightly further afield make of the story – I suspect the humour will still hit home, as I don’t believe you need to know Midd to enjoy the comedy of the situations described. Still, I think Middletonians (and North Mancs generally) will feel a particular possessiveness.

As well as tales of linguistic confusion, heritage architecture, and local history, The Yank is a Manc! also conjures up some of the slightly larger-than-life characters that have played a part in the story of Hopwood Hall. We get a glimpse of Hopwood’s LA agent Sheila (and her sound-a-like assistant Ken) and her bemusement at her client’s new career direction, as well as small nuggets of motherly advice and wisdom from a parent who believes her son is having a mid-life crisis. And we get to meet Geoff (a local historian) and Bob (the long-time caretaker of the hall), who flit between looking after Hopwood and tormenting him for being a ‘Yank’.

I have enough inside knowledge – like most people involved in local history in the North Manchester area – to know that Geoff and Bob are real people. In fact, I’ve met Geoff, and he is indeed an incredible local historian, and I have no doubt that he did indeed furnish all the in-depth information about the hall that Hopwood references throughout the show. However, it would also be fair to say that the ‘Geoff’ and ‘Bob’ we are treated to on stage are also characters, based on real people but with a pinch of poetic licence for the show. This is done very well, as Hopwood avoids lazy caricature throughout his presentation of the two Middleton men – again, there is a real sense of affection and warmth – and show a good talent for character construction and dialogue, as well as great comic timing.

Overall, The Yank is a Manc! is an uplifting show that is both funny and sweet. It’s a great story, told with humour and charm. I defy anyone not to be rooting for the historic manor house and its unconventional guardian by the end.

The Yank is a Manc! My Ancestors and Me is on at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, on 3rd-6th July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. It also will be on in August at the Camden and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. To see the full programme for this year’s GM Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: Underwater (Gare du Nord Theatre, GM Fringe)

Tuesday 2nd July 2019
The Whiskey Jar, Manchester

The 2019 Greater Manchester Fringe Festival began on Monday 1st July. This year’s programme is really packed, and I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer throughout the month for this blog and for North Manchester FM.

The first performance I attended this year was on Tuesday 2nd July, and it was Underwater by Gare du Nord Theatre, which is on at The Whiskey Jar in the Northern Quarter. I generally like to go into Fringe shows armed with as little information as possible – strange though that might sound! – as I love the feeling of now knowing what to expect and being surprised. However, I did have a bit of info in advance for this one, as I interviewed Geoff Baker of Gare du Nord for my Hannah’s Bookshelf Greater Manchester Fringe Special, which aired on 29th June.

Underwater is a one-act play that takes place in the sea. In truth, it would be more accurate to describe it as a mini-trilogy of plays, as it is a sequence of short pieces written by Marco Biasioli. Although it was actually a complete coincidence, it feels rather appropriate that Underwater is the first Fringe play I’ve seen this year, as I rounded off last year’s Fringe by seeing Hanging by Tangled Theatre, which was also a production of a play by Biasioli and was also performed at The Whiskey Jar.

There are some definite comparisons to be made between Hanging and Underwater – the dream-like, semi-surreal characterizations and the off-beat, disjointed dialogue being the most obvious. Both plays also use an odd, slightly unsettling humour, though this is more pronounced in Underwater, which combines verbal humour with more physical comedic turns. Certainly, there is a clearer sense of a ‘message’ in Underwater, though this is carried as much through the direction and design as through the script, but there is still some sense of ambiguity and uncertainty at times.

Billed as a ‘show in the dark’, Underwater actually starts with the stage lit up and the actors visible. As the audience arrive, the cast – Luke Richards, Eloise Bonney and David Allen – are sitting cross-legged on the stage, waiting for us. They sing snippets of water-themed pop songs and look slightly impatient. Around them are transparent bin bags filled with rubbish, and the stage is strewn with plastic debris.

The first piece in the mini-trilogy takes place on and near the surface of the sea. Allen becomes a rather fatalistic seagull (with a wistful West Country accent), sitting on a rock and delivering a monologue about the lack of other rocks and other seagulls. It’s not initially clear whether this is a vision of a future where sea levels have risen, or that Allen is playing a particularly solipsistic seagull – given the content of the rest of the play, I tend to think it’s the former.

The seagull envies the killer whales, who he believes want to eat him. Little does he know, said whales (played by Richards and Bonney) have embraced veganism and are attempting to live solely on seaweed. The plan, intended to atone for the species’ mass slaughter of krill, is not going well, and it seems that these two (named Orco and Bianca) may be the last two remaining orcas in the ocean.

I don’t want to give too much away about the direction the short pieces take – it always seems unfair to describe too much of a play of this length. Suffice to say, the vegan killer whales segment combines veiled environmental commentary with a satirical side-swipe at right-on hipsterism and misplaced activism. The latter is the more heavy-handed, and is played mainly for laughs, but the former underlies this humour and connects back to the seagull’s lonely fatalism.

After the killer whales face the consequences of their dietary choices, we dive deeper into the sea for the next sequence. This is signalled by a dip in the lighting – the use of lighting is an effective aspect of the show (in the absence of backdrops and scenery, the lighting is the device by which the audience is taken underwater). The second segment features two blind jellyfish (Richards and Bonney again) and a manipulative turtle (played by Allen). This section of Underwater makes more use of physical comedy and absurdist dialogue, with the two jellyfish banging into one another – and the audience, and the furniture – with surprising force. The more manic tone of this middle section is pronounced – and ambitious, given the confines of The Whiskey Jar’s basement space!

As mentioned, the stage area of Underwater is strewn with bits of rubbish and discarded plastic. The significance of this should be pretty clear in a show that bills itself as facing ‘the environmental apocalypse’. What’s interesting about this idiosyncratic set décor though is that the actors can’t (or don’t) attempt to avoid it. The rubbish audibly swishes around their feet as they move on the stage, tangling and constantly threatening to trip them up. It isn’t mentioned at all in the first two segments, which is a nice touch. The disruptive ubiquity of plastic is an apt background noise to what we’re seeing.

Underwater’s three actors each portray three different creatures, and I have to admit I did have a favourite performance from each. Allen is great as a mournful seagull, intoning his depressive monologue about sardines with a whimsical gravitas. I also enjoyed Richards’s hipster killer whale; both his physical movements and self-righteous tone were spot on (as was his pronunciation of the name ‘Bianca’). For me, Bonney really shone as a slightly bonkers but rather charming jellyfish, intent on building an aquarium and addressing (with no clarity of thought whatsoever) political imbalances of power.

As for the final sequence of the play – when the lights finally drop down to darkness and we go to the bottom of the sea – well… you’ll have to watch it for yourself to find out where it all ends!

Underwater is on at The Whiskey Jar on Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd of July, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s Fringe, visit the festival website.

Gare du Nord have two other productions on this year’s festival programme: When Liam Met Emmeline in Manchester and The Suitcase, the Beggar and the Wind. And I’ll be reviewing one of these later in the month.

Review: No One is Coming to Save You (This Noise)

Sunday 30th June 2019
HOME, Manchester

Yesterday, I posted a review of Electrolyte, which I saw at HOME, Manchester as part of this year’s Incoming Festival. This is a review of the second festival production I saw that night: No One is Coming to Save You by This Noise. I’ll be reviewing both productions on North Manchester FM on Tuesday, but here’s the blog version of my review of No One is Coming to Save You…

It was interesting to watch No One is Coming to Save You immediately after seeing Electrolyte (which was on the bill on the same night), as the two productions are really quite different. While Electrolyte is a loud (even brash) piece of gig theatre, No One is Coming to Save You is an experimental piece, with its feet in a literary, rather than musical, tradition. Electrolyte explores and celebrates the bonds of friendship; No One is Coming to Save You examines isolation, and what happens to the human mind when there’s no one to talk to. Electrolyte is about mental illness, whereas No One is Coming to Save You is about mental health.

The play opens onto a relatively bare stage. There’s a boxy old TV on a chair, and a piece of AstroTurf on the floor. And there are two people lying on the AstroTurf. These are our two unnamed characters – narrators, really – played by Agatha Elwes and Rudolphe Mdlongwa.

Written by Nathan Ellis and directed by Charlotte Fraser, No One is Coming to Save You is a piece of off-beat narrative theatre that moves from funny to unsettling (and sometimes combines the two), and which takes place in the minds of two people who cannot sleep.

‘There is a woman…’ intones Elwes, as she begins to outline the minutiae of what the unnamed woman, who is sitting alone in a dark kitchen, is doing. ‘There is a man…’ says Mdlongwa, before beginning his monologue, describing the man. The piece is a duologue, rather than a dialogue (for the most part), as the two take it in turns to speak, moving around the small stage space as though the other isn’t there. Half-full glasses of water are scattered around the floor, and the television intermittently shows disjointed images of disasters and brief captions addressing the audience.

No One is Coming to Save You is far from a comfortable linear narrative. The two performers offer oddly matter-of-fact accounts of what the two characters are thinking, but, for the most part, they do not perform as the characters. Until a short dialogue towards the end of the play, the accounts are given in third person, so the man and woman are being described (in a rather objective tone) rather than embodied. Moreover, the thoughts that are being described are fragmentary, and include supposed memories that may or may not have happened. At times, the descriptive monologues become rather surreal, and at others they take on a detached, dark tone, as the two imagine ways to hurt and destroy people around them.

It is to the performers’ credit that, despite this disjointed way of constructing and presenting narrative, the audience still feels a sense of engagement with them as ‘characters’. Elwes, in particular, is compelling as she recounts the mundanity of the woman’s work as a video logger, and her relationship with Lavender, the woman she works with. However, I also very much enjoyed Mdlongwa’s somewhat absurdist explanation of what ‘selling olive oil spread to empty nesters’ entails.

Fraser’s direction is also good here. Given that the piece is delivered entirely through two not-quite-converging monologues, the movements of the two performers around one another, and the way they almost – but not quite – overlap in their speech, are very effective. The dance break (and I’m giving no spoilers on that one) is well-timed to throw the audience off-guard.

There’s a technique in creative writing that I’ve presented several times at workshops. Take a piece of prose – no matter how cute or mundane – and put it into present (or future) tense. If it’s in first person, change it to third (or second). The result is that your mundane piece of prose takes on an unsettling – often disturbing – quality. This technique is used to good effect in No One is Coming to Save You. Much of what the characters describe is really quite ordinary – even the more exaggerated fantasies of violence are so very strange to anyone who has suffered from insomnia – but the show takes that ordinariness and presents it as extraordinary. The script imbues even the act of looking at some patio doors with a profundity that hints at something more than the act itself. And the result is really rather absorbing.

No One is Coming to Save You is not about mental illness as such, but rather the low-level anxiety, angst and ennui that permeates so much of our existence – but which is relatively easy to dispel. Its hopeful – almost reassuringly twee – ending feels fitting, as this is a play about how wrong it can feel when nothing is actually wrong. As anyone who’s struggled to sleep will know, it’s always darkest just before dawn.

I’ve seen some other reviews and interviews describing this production as belonging to a particular time, or to a particular generation. I have to disagree with these assessments. While there is some sense that the ‘modern world’ is to blame for the narrators’ angst, this is not a story simply about – dare I say it – millennials. It may be tempting to imagine that this type of anxiety, dissociation and dread is a new phenomenon, this grizzled Gen-Xer found it completely recognizable. Indeed, the use of a TV, rather than a mobile phone, as the ubiquitous site of menace, adds to this effect. (I wouldn’t want to say for sure, but I bet there’s plenty of baby boomers who’d claim the phenomenon for their generation too!)

Overall, No One is Coming to Save You is an off-key, quirky piece of theatre, with good writing and direction, and two surprisingly engaging performances. If you fancy watching something a little less linear and a little more charmingly illogical, then this is a definite recommendation for you!

No One is Coming to Save You was on in London on 27th June, Bristol on 28th June, and Manchester on 30th June, as part of this year’s Incoming Festival.

Review: Electrolyte (Wildcard)

Sunday 30th June 2019
HOME, Manchester (Incoming Festival)

I was at HOME, Manchester on Sunday to see Electrolyte, one of the productions in this year’s Incoming Festival programme. I’ll be reviewing the show on North Manchester FM on Tuesday, but here’s the blog version of my review…

The Incoming Festival takes place in Manchester, Bristol and London, and showcases emerging theatre companies from the UK and beyond. Electrolyte is a production by Wildcard, which was performed in London on 28th June, Bristol on 29th June and Manchester on 30th June, as part of a UK and Ireland tour.

Electrolyte is a piece of gig theatre, written by James Meteyard and directed by Donnacadh O’Briain. Music and lyrics are by Maimuna Memon. The story unfolds through spoken word poetry and live music (in a variety of genres, though it leans towards the electronic), which is performed on stage by the multi-instrumentalist cast. This is the first time I’ve seen this sort of performance, and it is hard not to be swept up in the energy of it all.

The cast are on stage as the audience enter, apparently tuning up their instruments, joking around with each other, and greeting audience members that they recognize. Of course, on reflection, this is an important (but subtle) part of the show, so perhaps they don’t actually recognize anyone. However, this deceptive casualness sets the tone for Electrolyte’s intimate and personal narrative, which not only breaks the fourth wall at times, but also draws its audience in and encourages a degree of affection and empathy with its central character that should be at odds with its short length and unusual performance style. Music plays a pivotal role in this play, but it would be wrong to call it musical theatre.

The protagonist-narrator is Jessie, a young lass from Leeds, who is played beautifully by Olivia Sweeney. Jessie begins as a fairly recognizable character type – she’s a little bit reckless, a little bit lost, struggling to find anything of value in her life, besides getting drunk and high with her mates. The show proper kicks off when Jessie takes the mic and begins her rhymed and rhythmic narration; she introduces her friends and near enough drags the audience with her to the gig they’re attending.

Sweeney’s performance is mesmerizing throughout. She is instantly believable as the intense but vulnerable Jessie. It is easy to feel that you actually know Jessie – an impressive feat given that the play runs at just over an hour – which is vitally important to the development of the story. Jessie’s vulnerability runs much deeper than initially appears, and the fact that the audience experiences this so viscerally is, to a great extent, credit to Sweeney’s relentless, yet charming, performance.

However, credit should also be given to Meteyard’s writing. Again, the show has a deceptive casualness to it that belies the complexity of its storytelling. Reflecting back afterwards, you realize that careful signs were placed from the beginning of Jessie’s narration. Given the show’s association with the Mental Health Foundation, as well as the content warnings given beforehand, it is not really a spoiler to say that the show deals with issues of mental illness. However, I found the way in which Electrolyte presented and handled these issues to be quite unexpected and innovative. More significantly, I found the type of mental illness portrayed to be very unexpected: this is not a play about depression and anxiety. I don’t want to dwell too much on my own personal experiences, but I will say that Electrolyte deals with the type of mental illness that I have (though not the exact condition). It is rare to see the symptoms of this type of illness represented with such (at times, brutal) honesty, and I was impressed with how convincing Sweeney’s performance was. The rest of the cast move between seamlessly from performing the soundtrack (a mix of almost-numbers and ambient soundscape) to engaging in the action and dialogue with Jessie. Megan Ashley and Ben Simon are reassuringly nice as Jessie’s ‘couple friends’ Donna and Paul, and Chris Georgiou offers some comic relief as sweary extrovert Ralph. Again, the audience is encouraged to identify with the dynamics of these friendships – as it is changes in her friends’ lives (Donna and Paul are engaged, Ralph is moving away) that unsettles an already troubled Jessie.

The final two characters are the new additions to Jessie’s life. Meteyard plays the role of Jim, a London DJ who may or may not be what he seems, and Robyn Sinclair is hypnotic as Allie Touch, a singer-musician on whom Jessie becomes fixated. Sinclair’s vocal performance is excellent – again, making it very easy for the audience to empathize with Jessie’s fixation. But I also liked the fact that – no spoilers! – Sinclair voices lines for another character later in the show, a choice that subtly hints at some of the darker threads of the story.

Electrolyte has no set, save the cast’s instruments, which are laid out like a gig stage. And yet, the show is able to transport us from a flat, to the streets of Leeds, to a train, to a London warehouse with surprising ease. While the writing and performances do a lot of the work here, praise is also due to Timothy Kelly’s lighting design, which really blew me away in the show’s climactic scene, as it captured both the setting and the symbolism in an epic, almost confrontational, fashion.

If I have one criticism of Electrolyte it would be that the show’s ending is rather too neat. The play tackles some aspects of serious mental illness with a refreshing and creative rawness that is rarely seen – and yet, it doesn’t take the same approach to recovery, which is presented as rather too easy here. After being so impressed (and moved) by the play’s representation of symptoms, I felt rather let down by the breeziness of the resolution. I’m all for mental health narratives with happy endings (we’ve seen more than enough of the alternative!), but this has to be balanced with a little more candour.

Despite this, I would still definitely recommend Electrolyte. It’s an exuberant, energetic and intelligent piece of theatre, with a brilliant script and some genuinely stunning performances.

Electrolyte was on at HOME, Manchester on Sunday 30th June, as part of the Incoming Festival. It is currently touring nationally.

My Year in Books 2019: June

I only got chance to read three novels this month, sadly, as other stuff kept getting in the way. I'm halfway through a fourth one at the moment, but since there's only six hours of the month left, I think I'll have to save that one for my July post!

So, here's my (shorter than expected) post about the books I read in June. In case you're interested, you can see the posts from the rest of the year here: January, February, March, April, May

Gillespie and I by Jane Harris (2011)

Back to the pile of books I bought on a tour of charity shops in Bakewell (and I’ve still got quite a few to get through!). Despite having read a few duffers, I’m definitely enjoying the surprise factor with the books I’ve read this year. I’ve been consciously avoiding reading reviews, and only skimming blurbs, when I choose titles, so I’m going into most books with no real expectations. This was the case with Gillespie and I – a stonking book (the edition I read was over 600 pages long) set in late Victorian Glasgow. I’ll be honest, surprise factor aside, this one was a bit of a disappointment. The narrator is Harriet Baxter, an unmarried woman in her 30s who travels to Scotland from London after the death of her aunt. Arriving in Glasgow for the International Exhibition, Harriet stumbles into the lives of Ned Gillespie, an artist, and his family. She becomes close to the Gillespies, but tragedy is just around the corner. Or rather, not quite around the corner, because it’s around 250 pages before anything dramatic actually happens. There’s a fantastic conceit at the heart of Gillespie and I (no spoilers, but remember I do love an unreliable narrator), but the execution just didn’t do it for me. It’s extremely slow-paced, and once you’ve twigged the game Harris is playing (which I did, sadly, quite early on), it feels even slower. Sadly, I have to say that this one was just too much of slog for me.

The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths (2018)

Briefly breaking off from my Bakewell purchases to read a book my mum lent me. She’s become quite taken with Elly Griffiths’s Dr Ruth Galloway series, ever since I lent her The Janus Stone. I think she’s been catching up with the whole series, but I seem to just be dipping in and out. I’ve read the second and ninth titles; The Dark Angel is the tenth book, so at least it wasn’t too jarring a leap from the last one I read. This book sees Ruth Galloway travel to Italy to help out Italian archaeologist Angelo Morelli with a perplexing find. Ruth once had a one-night-stand with Morelli – of course she did! – so the book, like the previous titles, is just as concerned with the investigators’ private lives as with any murder or mystery. In fact, this was even more pronounced in The Dark Angel. The creepy archaeological enigma outlined in the blurb and preface is brushed away almost immediately (a massive disappointment), to be replaced with a rather bloodless tale of a murdered priest. This death is almost entirely eclipsed by the ongoing saga of marriages, affairs and pregnancies that proliferate throughout the series. This time, it’s Ruth coming to terms with Harry’s wife Michelle being pregnant, and Shona thinking about cheating on Phil. In truth, it’s more like a soap opera than a crime series, and I just found The Dark Angel a bit of a let-down. Might leave this series for my mum from now on.

A Place of Secrets by Rachel Hore (2010)

Back to the books I bought in Bakewell charity shops… and I’m really not sure I read the blurb on this one carefully at all. Turns out that A Place of Secrets is much more of a romance than I normally read. But hey! surprise factor! The book tells the story of Jude, a woman with a PhD in eighteenth-century studies who works for an auction house. Jude is asked to handle the sale of a collection of books at Starbrough Hall in Norfolk, which (coincidence!) is the estate on which her grandmother grew up. Jude travels to Norfolk, reconnects with her sister and niece, and discovers that the latter is suffering from the same bad dreams that troubled her as a child. As Jude delves into a mystery in the rare book collection – a missing teenager from the 1700s – she also tinkers around with a puzzle from her grandmother’s past, possible supernatural occurrences related to an old folly on the Starbrough estate, the potential sale of said folly by a dastardly landowner, her grief over her dead husband, and her feelings for a hunky writer/animal-lover who lives in the cottage where her grandmother once lived. There is a lot going on in this one, but it’s handled with a light-hearted, almost fluffy, touch… and a helluva lot of coincidences. The way the solutions to the various mysteries dovetail is almost too much to swallow… but I still found the story rather charming, in its own way. Maybe I’m mellowing.

Review: The Basement Tapes (Zanetti Productions)

Tuesday 25th June 2019
HOME, Manchester (Incoming Festival)

I was at HOME Manchester again this week to see The Basement Tapes, one of the productions on this year’s Incoming Festival programme. I’ll be reviewing the show for North Manchester FM next week, but in the meantime here’s the full version of my review…

Now in its sixth year, the Incoming Festival takes place in London, Manchester and Bristol, and showcases the work of emerging theatre companies from the UK and beyond. The Basement Tapes is a piece by New Zealand’s Zanetti Productions. It was performed in Manchester on 25th June, before moving on to London on 27th June and Bristol on 29th June, as part of a UK tour.

The Basement Tapes is a one-act play, performed by Stella Reid and directed by Jane Yonge, which takes place entirely in the eponymous basement. A young woman is faced with the task of clearing out the cellar after the death of her grandmother. As she sifts through old clothes and cheesy records, she uncovers an old tape recorder… and then a tape recorded by her grandmother. She’s shocked to hear her relative’s voice again, but then sits down to listen to the tape. A story begins to emerge that is equal parts mysterious and unsettling.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Basement Tapes – it’s a skilful, well-crafted and expertly performed piece of theatre, with surprises – and even shocks – that I did not see coming. Billed as a ‘mystery’, this play is much more than that – but it would be unfair to give too much away about the story! Suffice to say the story has a few curveballs that I didn’t expect, and a creepiness that went beyond what I was anticipated. (If you’ve read stuff on my blog before, it should go without saying that ‘creepiness’ is a very good thing in my book!)

It is rare to see horror tropes tackled successfully on stage – it’s really not an easy genre to perform live, and in such intimate surroundings as Theatre 2 at HOME, but Zanetti Productions are more than up to the task. The Basement Tapes hits all the right notes to create a thrilling and disturbing tale, which left me feeling genuinely unnerved by the end. The trajectory of the creepiness is just right; the tension is built subtlety and competently. So competently, in fact, that inanimate objects on stage begin to feel imbued with a sense of menace.

The play opens on a deceptively simple set, designed by Oliver Morse – a pile of cardboard boxes to the back, with a few apparently inconsequential objects scattered around in front. However, the work to which this set is put is quite remarkable. Reid moves, empties, fills and throws away the boxes, which take up different places on the stage, ready for later interactions. While Reid appears to treat the boxes in a rather cavalier fashion, the underlying precision of her performance is revealed by the lighting, which picks out objects on the stage at various points. Everything we’re seeing is a deliberate part of the storytelling, moving us inexorably towards the play’s climactic denouement.

The sound design (by Thomas Lambert) and lighting are excellent throughout. While The Basement Tapes is not afraid to ‘go big’ on some effects (bright and colourful lighting, blaring music), it also makes skilful use of darkness and silence – some of the more striking moments come when there was no light, or no sound – as well moments of warmth and quietness. It would be tempting in a story of this sort (which the blurb describes as ‘Twin Peaks meets Serial’) to try and create cinematic techniques; however, The Basement Tapes is all theatre. This is not a piece that feels like a short film enacted live, but rather a production that truly belongs on the stage, created by a company that knows how to use the theatre space (with its opportunities for lighting and sound) to its full potential.

But what really impressed me – and what I enjoyed the most – is the storytelling. A single act is a short space to present a fully developed tale, but The Basement Tapes manages it. The script gives just enough information to conjure a clear backstory, weaving a convincing backdrop to the main ‘mystery’, which is revealed through the atmospheric narration provided by the tapes found in the cellar. Tiny fragments of backstory are scattered throughout, from an empty sherry bottle to a camel-coloured coat. Again, there is a deceptive simplicity to this – without the careful and deliberate contextualizing, it would be difficult to imagine an audience sitting quietly, watching a woman on stage listening to a tape. However, by the time the granddaughter hits the ‘play’ button, we’re just as intrigued as she is.

While the mystery and horror elements are, perhaps, the most striking aspects, the use of humour is also very well-done. I particularly enjoyed some of the nods to… erm… slightly older members of the audience, as the central character negotiated such archaic technology as tape recorders and landline phones.

Reid gives a stunning performance as the granddaughter. She is endearing and engaging throughout, ensuring that the audience feels that we know (and like) the young woman she’s playing. Reid begins the performance with a boisterous dance routine, and variously moves between brash comic turns, sentimental reminiscences, manic curiosity and mounting anxiety as the story on the tape begins to unfold. On occasion, these moves happen quickly: there’s a brilliant bit with a cookbook that captures an abrupt – but completely believable – swing from affectionate mockery to tearful nostalgia, which perfectly evokes the mixed emotions of bereavement and its aftermath. Again, Reid’s captivating performance encourages a feeling of intimacy and familiarity, which is a key part of the play’s story development and resolution.

In case this rather effusive review hasn’t made it clear, The Basement Tapes is an excellent piece of theatre – highly recommended. It’s a play that really stays with you after you’ve left the theatre and undoubtedly one of the best things I’ve seen on stage this year.

The Basement Tapes was on at HOME Manchester on 25th June, as part of the Incoming Festival. The Incoming Festival takes place at HOME Manchester, New Diorama Theatre, London, and Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol, on 24th-30th June 2019.

Review: The Hired Man (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch/Hull Truck Theatre/Oldham Coliseum Theatre)

Thursday 20th June 2019
Oldham Coliseum

On Thursday, I was at Oldham Coliseum for the press night of The Hired Man, on behalf of North Manchester FM. I played the shorter version of my review on this week’s Hannah’s Bookshelf, but here’s the blog version...

Photo credit: Mark Sepple

Howard Goodall’s 1984 musical adaptation of Melvyn Bragg’s novel, The Hired Man, comes to Oldham in a new revival. Co-produced by Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch, Hull Truck Theatre and Oldham Coliseum Theatre, this production is directed by Douglas Rintoul and Jean Chan.

The Hired Man opens in Cumberland in 1898, at a hiring fair. The cast take to the stage, singing out their desire to become hired men and work on the land. One man, John Tallentire, emerges triumphant, being offered sixteen shillings to work for a man named Pennington. Newly-married John is happily waiting for his wife, Emily, to join him, as the job includes a cottage, where he hopes they will be able to begin their life together.

The Hired Man is the story of John and Emily’s life together, told through musical numbers that offer snapshots that span over twenty years. It is the story of John and Emily, but also of the world in which they live and work. John toils as an agricultural labourer, then leaves the land for the coal mines, before signing up to the army in 1914. Agriculture declines, coal mines thrive, trade unions are formed, war breaks out and ends, tragedy and disasters loom – all in the course of two acts.

Photo credit: Mark Sepple

This method of storytelling is unusual for musical theatre. On the one hand, it lends the narrative an ‘epic’ or ‘saga’ quality, moving the audience through the vicissitudes of early twentieth-century working class life, and the changing fortunes of the central characters. On the other, it glosses over the developments and motivations in individual relationships. Emily’s relationship with Jackson Pennington, for instance, is presented through a couple of scenes and songs, but the complexity of emotional dilemma is obscured.

While the story moves quickly through two decades, Oliver Hembrough (as John) and Lauryn Redding (as Emily) do an excellent job of conveying the change in age and circumstance of the central couple, without makeup or significant costume change. Hembrough’s John moves from the enthusiasm of youth to an obsessive dedication to toil, to an almost stoic insistence on just getting through the business of life in a way that is both believable and engaging. Months (and sometimes years) pass between numbers, and so it is a credit to the performances that these transitions aren’t too abrupt or jarring.

However, it is Redding’s Emily that really carries the passage of time. Beginning as an effusive and optimistic young woman (apparently very young, as the number ‘Now for the First Time’ tells us), Emily gains maturity, experience and something of hard edge before our very eyes. Redding performs this expertly – though I was left feeling I wanted to see much more of Emily’s perspective. The Hired Man is very much focused on the life of the eponymous character, but an interesting counter-narrative – that of Emily – is hinted at, and I couldn’t help but wonder about some of the things that are left unexplored (e.g. Emily’s later decision to work in a bobbin factory). In many ways, this is credit to Redding’s strong and commanding performance.

Photo credit: Mark Sepple

The cast are all actor-musicians, and so bring instruments onto the stage in various combinations throughout the show. This lends a spontaneity to proceedings and gives the show an air of folk entertainment, in-keeping with the atmosphere of the music and script – but it also means that the cast is really put through its paces.

Lloyd Gorman plays Jackson Pennington – the boss’s son who falls for Emily – with a sort of hapless charm that is really rather endearing. The contrast between Jackson and John is clear, making Emily’s dilemma a plausible one. James William-Pattison and Lara Lewis are enjoyable in the second act as Harry and May, John and Emily’s children, and Samuel Martin and T.J. Holmes offer strong supporting performances as John’s brothers Isaac and Seth. While mostly offering comic relief in the first act, Holmes shines in the second as trade unionist Seth, particularly in the number ‘Men of Stone’ (an anthem to unionisation belted out with near-Bolshevik fervour by Holmes).

Photo credit: Mark Sepple

Jean Chan’s design for the production is interesting. The set is sparse, with the only backdrop being a painted screen depicting the Cumbrian countryside. The production uses a revolving stage, which is utilised to very good effect. In ensemble numbers, it creates a sense of the crowd; in duets, it moves us between differing perspectives. It is in the second act when the staging and design really comes into its own. Transporting us from a kitchen, to the trenches, to a mine shaft, to a country fair, small alterations to the set’s design belie its apparent simplicity.

The Hired Man is very much a show of two halves. The first act, which takes place entirely in the Cumbrian countryside, is in distinct contrast to the dynamic shifts of the second, in which the hidden complexities of Chan’s set design are revealed. In particular, the scenes and numbers depicting the trench warfare of WWI are very well-done, with the space around the revolving stage allowing for multiple perspectives (the men in France and Emily back at home) to appear simultaneously. This clever staging is another real strength of the production.

Photo credit: Mark Sepple

Overall, this is a very well-produced and performed production of The Hired Man. Admittedly, the story is rather sentimental in places, with some of the ‘big picture’ commentary (on the situation of the working class in the early twentieth century) seeming rather hurried. The truncated storyline can be a little frustrating at times, leaving you wanting to see more of what happened in the missing years between numbers, but this does not detract too much from a story that is both bucolic and biting. Rintoul’s capable direction, along with some first-rate performances from the cast, carry us through the story with style and charm.

If you’ve never seen a production of The Hired Man before – or even if you have! – this revival is definitely a good one to watch. I recommend this one.

The Hired Man is on at Oldham Coliseum until Saturday 6th July.

Review: Yvette (China Plate)

Friday 7th June 2019
The Studio, Royal Exchange, Manchester

On Friday, I attended a performance of Yvette at The Studio, Royal Exchange, on behalf of North Manchester FM. I’ll be playing a version of this review on this week’s A Helping of History, but here’s the blog version…

Written and performed by Urielle Klein-Mekongo and directed by Gbolahan Obisesan, Yvette is a one-woman show that uses original music and spoken word to convey a powerful story about growing up with a secret. (You may remember that I reviewed Obisesan’s adaptation of Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen last year.) The production is presented by China Plate.

In the intimate setting of the Royal Exchange’s Studio space, a simple – but very effective – stage is set. A room in a house is conjured by the use of screens and door, with a coat stand to one side, a bath to the other, and single mic stand in the middle. It is to this microphone that Klein-Mekongo heads when she makes her entrance.

The show is about Evie, a thirteen-year-old black girl, growing up in Neasden with her mother. From the first moment she takes the mic, Klein-Mekongo is completely convincing as a young teen – the way her school uniform sits awkwardly on her body, the shyness with which she initially faces the audience, the buoyant joy she takes in creating and performing music, all serve to create a strong sense of character before the audience have heard a single word. Although the show is, in many ways, dominated by vocal and verbal performance, I found Klein-Mekongo’s embodiment of Evie to be one of the real strengths of the play, as her quick switches between joyful, childlike confidence to discomfort (and even disgust) perfectly capture the instability of teenage physicality and identity.

Photo credit: Helen Murray

Evie’s story is told through musical performance, spoken word and acted vignettes. Klein-Mekongo uses a loop pedal throughout to create a soundtrack that, at first, is up-beat and rhythmic, inspired by garage and R+B and accompanied by happy dance moves that, again, are movingly evocative of early teenage femininity. We learn quickly that Evie loves music, Pokemon… and boys. She has a fractious relationship with her mother – a character who ‘appears’ on stage when Klein-Mekongo switches register – who is convinced Evie is on a bad path.

Evie has a crush on her friend Lewis, and is beginning to suspect that he might feel the same way. She has decided that she wants to lose her virginity to him at a party. Again, musical performances (including a hilarious number in which Klein-Mekongo ‘duets’ with herself to give a flavour of Evie and Lewis’s friendship) convey this part of the story.

However, there is another, darker story shadowing this innocence and exuberance. Evie’s narration is periodically interrupted by a sharp burst of white noise, which visibly overwhelms her and – at one point – causes her to shout out in protest at an unseen figure. ‘You’re trying to make me talk about it,’ she says, before calming herself and counting down from five until the static subsides.

This use of white noise as an intrusion and disruption of narrative connects Yvette to the other play I reviewed this week: dressed., which not only touches on some of the same themes, but is also (like Yvette) based on a true story. This use of the same auditory technique to signal the disruptive incoherence brought about by trauma suggests some comparison between the two productions – both plays are concerned with representing the effects of sexual trauma on the female body, and the impact this has on a sense of identity – however, they are very different shows, based on very different stories.

Photo credit: Helen Murray

There are hints from the beginning as to what the other story in Yvette entails. A man’s jacket hangs ominously on the coat stand; Evie talks about an ‘uncle’ who has come to stay; she makes reference to her desire to be loved. Another aspect of this is the play’s engagement with race and colourism, and the way this erodes the young woman’s sense of self-worth. Evie is mocked and – eventually – humiliated by a girl called Patrice, who she describes as a ‘lighty’. This antagonistic colourism – with the darker-skinned Evie being denigrated by the ‘lighty’ girls – coupled with her mother spitting that she ‘looks like [her] father’ builds to a painful and searing exploration of the true fragility and vulnerability of the young girl.

And it certainly is painful. Yvette builds to two climactic and intertwined sequences that are breath-taking in their visceral representation. Klein-Mekongo’s powerful physical performance, along with a far darker use of the show’s ubiquitous loop pedal (now sampling spoken lines and looping them, literally ad nauseam), pulls no punches. It is perfectly staged, but incredibly difficult to watch. Unlike dressed., in which the moment of assault is narrated in complete darkness at the beginning of the production, Yvette’s trauma is staged in raw and unflinching detail – with the audience’s attention being directed to the embodiment of this trauma, in a very arresting way. In dressed., the audience is asked to close their eyes as the story is told; in Yvette, it is impossible to draw your eyes away.

Yvette is described as a show about ‘a stolen childhood’. The audience watches as a seemingly happy and innocent girl is torn apart and broken down. One of the difficulties of the play is that there is no staging of her healing. While there is some reflection on subsequent events, and a commandingly beautiful song about self-worth and identity at the end, this is not a show about the process of rebuilding that identity. Ultimately, Yvette is a show about survival, rather than rebirth or transformation, which is underlined by the bodily transformation that is notable when comparing the first and last musical performances. With a sustained and compelling performance from Klein-Mekongo, creative and effective music and musical technique, and pitch-perfect direction from Obisesan, Yvette is an assured, assertive and intense piece of theatre, with a thought-provoking rawness that will stick with you after you’ve left.

Yvette was on at The Studio, Royal Exchange from 6th-8th June.