Posted on

TV Review: Unprecedented, Episode 5

Chloë Moss, Nathaniel Martello-White and Jasmine Lee-Jones make Episode 5 of Unprecedented unmissable 

“I want people not screens”

One of the main strengths, for me, of Unprecedented has been the sheer variety of the writing that has responded to Covid-19 here. Previous episodes (#1, #2, #3, #4) have all impressed but the combination of writers in this fifth instalment really captures that lightning-in-a-bottle potential that makes the best theatre spark.

I watched Chloë Moss’ Everybody’s Talkin’ whilst hungover but not even I can blame the huge weeping tears on that alone, this is a beautifully pitched, gorgeously performed slice of family drama in miniature. Three daughters gather on Zoom to speak with their recently bereaved mother but the trials of finding a new normal, within the context of already having find a new normal is full of unimaginable pain. Moss’ writing and Caitlin McLeod’s direction speaks directly to the challenges that so many faced even before coronavirus hit, and during, and Sue Johnston leads the cast marvellously.

Continue reading “TV Review: Unprecedented, Episode 5”

Posted on

News: cast announced for Unprecedented: Theatre from a State of Isolation

Headlong and Century Films have today announced a cast of over 50 UK actors taking part in Unprecedented: Theatre from the State of Isolation. A series of new digital plays written in response to the current Covid-19 Pandemic, Unprecedented will be broadcast across the nation during lockdown as part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine initiative.

Written by celebrated playwrights and curated by Headlong, Century Films and BBC Arts, Unprecedented explores our rapidly evolving world, responding to how our understanding and experiences of community, education, work, relationships, family, culture, climate and capitalism are evolving on an unprecedented scale. The series will ask how we got here and what the enduring legacy of this historic episode might be. Continue reading “News: cast announced for Unprecedented: Theatre from a State of Isolation”

Posted on

Review: Off the Page – Microplays 4-6 from the Royal Court and the Guardian

“I believe in being open to all cultures”

There’s something a little perversely ironic about Tim Price’s PPE being one of the more effective microplays (SHORT FILMS!) of the Royal Court and Guardian collaboration given how it is a wordless piece. Directed by Hamish Pirie with movement choreographed by the excellent Ann Yee, it plays off the trademark physical gestures that politicians have become known for using as an emollient to the relentlessly grim messages that they’ve had to deliver in recent years. David Annen, Cyril Nri and Eileen Walsh do a cracking job as leaders of different parties and just through physical expression, manage to hypnotise and hoodwink a whole host of supernumeraries standing in for the too-willing electorate. It’s not a world entirely without hope but it’s a powerful indictment of how much of contemporary politics is stagecraft that we just lap up.

Chloë Moss’ Devil In The Detail focuses on the world of fashion, something that director Christopher Haydon laughingly admits to knowing little of but as a multi-million pound enterprise, there’s much more to it than just knowing which handbag is currently de rigueur. Moss picks up on the way that fashion can be used to bolster a person’s mood and self-belief – as Pippa Bennett-Warner and Vanessa Kirby’s characters get ready for award shows in the atelier of a hot designer – but also how the world of fashionistas can wield it as a vicious weapon as Lucy Ellinson’s killer stylist (such lipstick, so colour, many wow!) corrects the assumptions they’ve made, casually dishing out humiliation and obsequiousness which shatters the mood that playing dress-up had cultivated between the pair. Continue reading “Review: Off the Page – Microplays 4-6 from the Royal Court and the Guardian”

Posted on

The 2012 Manchester Theatre Awards nominations

Best Actor
Justin Moorhouse, Two, Royal Exchange
Christopher Ravenscroft, The Winslow Boy, Bolton Octagon
Clifford Samuel, Obama the Mamba,
President Of The Slums, Lowry
Ed Gaughan, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Royal Exchange


Best Actress
Victoria Elliott, Two, Royal Exchange
Lucy van Gasse, Wonderful Town, Lowry
Maxine Peake, Miss Julie, Royal Exchange
Lysette Anthony, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Royal Exchange
Imogen Stubbs, Orpheus Descending, Royal Exchange

Best supporting actor
John Branwell, Alfie, Bolton Octagon
Antony Eden, Taking Steps, Oldham Coliseum
Russell Dixon, Macbeth, Bolton Octagon
Christopher Villiers, The Winslow Boy, Bolton Octagon

Best supporting actress
Natalie Grady, The Daughter-in-Law, Library Theatre
Clare Calbraith, Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, Royal Exchange
Carla Henry, Miss Julie, Royal Exchange
Maggie Service, The Country Wife, Royal Exchange

Best Actor in a Visiting Production
Karl Davies, Henry V and The Winter’s Tale, Lowry
John Owen-Jones, The Phantom of the Opera, Palace
Ray Fearon, Julius Caesar, Lowry
Robert Bathurst, Blue/Orange, Opera House

Best New Play
The Gatekeeper, by Chloe Moss, Royal Exchange Studio
Snookered, by Ishy Din, Oldham Coliseum
Towers Of Babel, by Nick Yardley, 24:7 Theatre Festival
Obama the Mamba, President Of The Slums, by Kevin Fegan, Lowry

Best Actress in a Visiting Production
Josefina Gabrielle, The King and I, Lowry
Elaine C Smith, I Dreamed a Dream, Palace
Sian Phillips, Cabaret, Lowry

Best Performance in a Studio Production
Tricia Kelly, The Gatekeeper, Royal Exchange Studio
Fred Bloom, No Sleep For The Haunted, Lowry Studio
Reuben Johnson, Wrecked, Lowry Studio
Julie Hesmondhalgh, Black Roses, Royal Exchange Studio
Rachel Austin, Black Roses, Royal Exchange Studio

Best Production
The Winslow Boy, Bolton Octagon
Orpheus Descending, Royal Exchange
Arabian Nights, Library Theatre
Wonderful Town, Royal Exchange/The Halle/
Lowry, at the Lowry


Opera
Giulio Cesare, Opera North, Lowry
Xerxes, Royal Northern College of Music
Hansel and Gretel, Clonter Opera
The Maiden in the Tower/ Kashchei The
Immortal, Buxton Festival
Don Giovanni, Opera North, Lowry


Dance
Hofesh Shechter – Political Mother, Lowry
Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, Lowry
Lyric Pieces, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Buxton Opera House
Some Like It Hip Hop, Zoo Nation, Lowry
Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, New Adventures Production, Lowry


Best Visiting Production
DNA, Hull Truck, Royal Exchange Studio
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Northern Broadsides/
New Vic Theatre, Buxton Opera House
Our Country’s Good, Out Of Joint/Bolton Octagon, at Bolton Octagon
Julius Caesar, Royal Shakespeare Company, Lowry
Blue/Orange, Theatre Royal Brighton production, Opera House


Best Musical
The Phantom of the Opera, Palace
Carousel, Lowry
9 – 5, Opera House
American Idiot, Palace
The Lion King, Palace

Best Special Entertainment
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Radio Show Live!, Opera House
Translunar Paradise, Lowry
Star Cross’d, Oldham Coliseum
Cinderella, Oldham Coliseum

Best Design
Manchester Lines, Library Theatre
Wonderful Town, Lowry
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Oldham Coliseum
Hansel and Gretel, Clonter Opera
Arabian Nights, Library Theatre

Best Studio Production
Days Of Light, Starving Artists, Royal Exchange Studio
Snookered, Tamasha/Oldham Coliseum/Bush
Theatre, Oldham University
Black Roses, Royal Exchange Studio
London, Paines Plough/Live Theatre and Salisbury
Playhouse, Royal Exchange Studio

Best Ensemble
Snookered, Oldham Coliseum
Star Cross’d, Oldham Coliseum
All the Bens, 24:7 Theatre Festival
Arabian Nights, Library Theatre


Best Newcomer
Tamla Kari, Saturday Night And Sunday
Morning, Royal Exchange
Anna Wheatley, Peter Pan, Octagon

Best Fringe
JB Shorts, Real Life Theatre Co,
Joshua Brooks, Manchester
All the Bens, 24:7 Theatre Festival
The Cell, 24:7 Theatre Festival
The Bubbler, Studio Salford

Posted on

Review: Fatal Light – Charged, Soho Theatre

Part of the Charged season at Soho Theatre

“Someone’s been round, some prick from Social Services, some f**king man telling me how to be a mother”

Taking place on the main stage for the first part is Chloë Moss’ Fatal Light. Directed by Lucy Morrison, it unfolds backwards from the starting point of a young policewoman struggling to deal with informing a woman Maggie, that her daughter Janine has died in prison. As we proceed, we discover the events and circumstances that have brought us here as Maggie is now forced to care for her granddaughter Aine, with the main thrust around Janine’s struggles to deal with her mental health issues and get some understanding treatment from the authorities.

The succession of short scenes means that there’s not really enough time to develop much dramatic impetus or the themes that are being covered, though the structure is cleverly portrayed: the three of us all twigged at different times that the storytelling was in reverse (depressingly, I was the last to work it out!). Continue reading “Review: Fatal Light – Charged, Soho Theatre”