If a picture is worth a thousand words then the accompanying production shot should tell you a great deal about Brandon Thomas’s 1892 farce Charley’s Aunt, which has just opened at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre.  If you examine the photograph carefully you will notice that Oliver Gomm, who might be said to share the title role, is not playing a conventional Victorian widow.  But then, Donna Lucia D’Alvadorez is, in her own words, “no ordinary woman”.

Dating from the same period as The Importance of Being Earnest and the Savoy operas, Charley’s Aunt is every bit their equal for verbal dexterity, ridiculous situations and favourite stock characters - the silly-ass lord, the tyrannical uncle and the gauche lover are all present and correct.

The simple premise - two Oxford students invite their prospective fiancées to lunch and require a chaperone at short notice - is complicated by (among other accidentals) a jealous guardian, an impoverished (but titled) father, and the imminent arrival of a millionaire aunt who has never met her orphaned nephew because she’s been living in Brazil - “where the nuts come from”.  And in the best tradition of English farce there’s plenty of elaborate business, clowning about and slap-stick. 

Oliver Gomm is lovably daft as Lord Fancourt Babberley, and his virtuosic comedy cadenza with the piano in Act 3 earned him a round of applause on press night.  Stephen Hudson as the put-upon valet Brassett acts as a kind of world-weary Chorus, Malcolm Rennie is terrifyingly pop-eyed as the apoplectic Uncle Spettigue, and Briony McRoberts is charming and mischievous as the relative from the New World.

Director Braham Murray has slightly updated the setting to the 1920s for no discernable reason, although it is to the detriment of the plot device: the extremities of Victorian propriety might necessitate a cross-dressing chaperone, but the Bright Young Things of Brideshead-era Oxford could happily have managed without.  And if the intention was to give a Wodehousian flavour to the proceedings it doesn’t work because the most of the playing is far too naturalistic.  But at least the business is performed with flair and fluency, and all the physical comedy is first-rate.

Designer Johanna Bryant gives us three delightful sets, and the ladies’ flapper costumes are ravishing.  Truly, if the Royal Exchange were ever to go up in flames it would be the wardrobe department that I would rush in and save.

Those who have seen Charley’s Aunt before know it’s one of the English stage’s most copper-bottomed comedy classics, a treat never to be missed, and will already have booked their seats.  If you haven’t seen it before then you should make arrangements to remedy this situation as soon as possible. 

Charley’s Aunt is on until Saturday 7 August 2010

Prices: £8.50-£29.50

Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm [no performance Tues 6 July]

Matinees: Wed @ 2.30pm, Sat @ 4pm and Tues 6 July @ 2.30pm

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people”, gets a seriously good revival in the final production to grace the Library Theatre stage.

In just over a century this pearl among plays has taken its place alongside the classics of the canon.  Wilde’s sparkling wit and idiosyncratic style reach their acme in a text which is now so universally familiar that, like Hamlet, every line seems to be a quotation.

Director Chris Honer has assembled a cast of familiar faces (including old favourite Leigh Symonds as a brace of butlers) alongside a new generation of acting talent.  Among his discoveries is floppy-haired fop Alex Felton, a long-limbed, lissom youth who seems to have been born to play the role of the incorrigible Algie.  Florence Hall’s Cecily is perfect as the Victorian type of unspoiled innocence, although Natalie Grady as the more worldly Gwendolen has the edge on them both when it comes to comic timing.

Simon Harrison brings humour and sweetness to the otherwise stolid Jack Worthing, and Olwen May’s very funny turn as dotty governess Miss Prism gives the character more than her usual share of charm.  However Malcolm James’s cameo as the inveterate celibate Rev Chasuble nearly steals the whole show, wringing a laugh from every line without ever overplaying.  In fact the whole production is an example of what can be achieved from truth and taste, something Wilde would have appreciated.

It may seem strange, but the best example of this self-imposed restraint is the director’s decision to have Lady Bracknell played in drag.  Russell Dixon’s solid bulldog build and uncompromising masculinity mean that even though he speaks in low and moderate tones his Lady Bracknell has an underlying authority.  Ironically this enables him to play her as a living, breathing woman, rather than as the shrill caricature which is often the character’s fate. 

Designer Judith Croft’s opulent sets consist of a wall of slats with a beautiful cut-out design and a well-matched assemblage of antique furniture,  And her mouth-watering costumes almost deserve their own billing: the Lady Bracknell tout ensemble plays a huge part in Russell Dixon’s transformation, while Alex Felton seems to have become Ms Croft’s fashion muse.  How else could she have dreamed up those divine crimson shot-silk breeches?  And who else could possible have carried them off with such aplomb?

There can’t be a theatre-goer in the region who doesn’t have a soft spot for Manchester’s lovely Library Theatre and who doesn’t regret the closure of the little auditorium buried in the Central Library’s basement.  However the Library Theatre Company itself lives on and will be performing at The Lowry for the next few seasons.  And at least The Importance if Being Earnest is a high-point for the company to take leave of its home of more than half a century.

The Importance of Being Earnest is on until Saturday 3 July 2010

Prices: £8.00-£18.00 (concessions available)

Eves: Mon-Thurs @ 7.30pm; Fri & Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Thurs & Sat @ 3pm

Box Office: 0161 236 7110

www.librarytheatre.com

Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s most popular comedy, has achieved such ubiquity over the last century that it’s now one of those plays where the audience are practically saying the lines with the actors, like a classical equivalent of The Rocky Horror Show.  And if they’ve seen the musical version, Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady, then they’ll probably be singing along too.

So the challenge for any director is to try and shine a new light on the story of a Cockney flower girl who is transformed into the convincing likeness of a duchess by an arrogant phonetics expert.

This version features Exchange regular Simon Robson as Henry Higgins, who with his imposing height and noble Roman looks initially comes across as a formidable combination of Sherlock Holmes and Jonathan Miller; a self-absorbed scholar with no interests beyond his learned pursuits.  However when Colonel Pickering (whiskery Terence Wilton), uneasy about Eliza’s welfare in a masculine ménage, bluntly asks, “Are you a man of good character where women are concerned?”, Higgins’s sexuality suddenly comes centre-stage.  The rest of the exchange, for all the professor’s professed cynicism, only serves to illustrate that despite his intellectual mien this Higgins is no bloodless ascetic - even the extraordinary way Simon Robson deploys his long legs is intensely physically expressive.  And the distinct frisson of attraction that later passes between him and Clara Eynsford Hill (Harriet Barrow) on his mother’s chaise longue is something I have never seen before.

Contrasted with the Professor’s transition from emasculated academic to red-blooded male, Cush Jumbo’s Eliza makes the opposite journey, one that takes us back to the story’s mythic roots where a man creates a sculpture and then brings it to life.  Her bedraggled street vendor persona is a fiery force of nature, but from the moment she begins her transformation into a “lady” Eliza is less a human being and more an animated statue - cold, aloof, self-contained, the long, slim Edwardian fashions and constricted vowels merely adding to the impression. 

Among the other iconic roles, Ian Bartholomew stands out as irrepressible dustman Albert Doolittle, and although it was his Act II monologue that drew the spontaneous round of applause, I was particularly taken by his crestfallen bridegroom in the final scene - the combination of chirpy east end rhetoric with silk hat and morning suit is irresistible.

Designer Ashley Martin-Davis strips the stage of all but the bare necessities in the way of furniture and props, which makes for a Covent Garden somewhat lacking in atmosphere but allows space during the drawing-rooms scenes.  And the sound design is simply magnificent.  Where Shaw, unlike Alan Jay Lerner, has carelessly failed to demonstrate the methods and progress of Eliza’s tutoring, Peter Rice uses scene changes between acts to mash up combinations of increasingly sophisticated piano music and elocution exercises to illustrate her phonetical progression.  

Director Greg Hersov and his lead actor Simon Robson have amply succeeded in redefining aspects of a play that is very familiar but which still has surprises bubbling under the surface. 

Pygmalion is on until Saturday 19 June 2010

Prices: £8.50-£29.50

Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm [no performance Tues 25]

Matinees: Wed @ 2.30pm, Sat @ 4pm and Tues 25 May @ 2.30pm

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

If you’ve ever seen an old black-and-white film called The Family Way starring John and Hayley Mills then the plot of Rafta Rafta will seem very familiar.  Bill Naughton, Bolton’s genius loci, based the script on his own play All In Good Time, and Salford writer Ayub Khan Din (East is East) has brilliantly adapted and updated it to a contemporary, though still northern, setting.

The tale of a newly-wed couple whose attempts at marital consummation are constantly thwarted by their overbearing though well-meaning parents might appear to have little resonance in modern mainstream British culture.  But tweak the setting slightly - such as basing the story in the Orthodox Jewish community, like the Lowry’s recent Cling To Me Like Ivy - or in an Indian family, as here - and suddenly the sexual naïvety and innocence make sense.

There are strong domestic themes based around a domineering father who bullies his studious son and a young wife whose close bond with her daddy is resented by her mother.  Director Iqbal Khan elicits powerful performances from his cast when required and really pushes the boundaries of the drama. 

However the production never forgets that this is an outstandingly funny play, even occasionally veering towards farce.  Simon Nagra as the domestic tyrant Mr Dutt keeps the undercurrent of violence at a nice simmer without losing the comedy in his character.  Harvey Virdi as his ever-aggravated wife is radiant in the face of adversity, even accomplishing the surely impossible task of being a kind and loving mother-in-law.  Darren Kuppan and Bhavna Limbachia are sweet and touching as the newly marrieds and get the audience rooting for them wholeheartedly.  And there’s some lovely work in the smaller roles, notably Tony Hasnath as the groom’s cheeky kid brother and Kaleem Janjua as the bride’s doting and over-protective father.

Designer Lis Evans uses a well-compartmentalised stage to create the floorplan of the Dutt’s home for this in-the-round staging, which can be seen in Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic Theatre straight after the Octagon run. 

A strong ensemble and great script make this an incredibly entertaining evening at the theatre.

Rafta Rafta is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 5 June 2010

Tickets: from £9.00

Eves: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Sat 22 & Wed 26 May @ 2pm  

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

Cathy Crabb’s comedy Beautiful House returns to the Library Theatre stage in a full-blown professional production after its success in the 2009 Re:play Festival.

Middle-aged, middle-class Bridgette and Ronnie appear to have come down in the world with a bang when they take up residence in one of Salford’s less salubrious tower blocks.  The mystery of how they find themselves exiled from the rural idyll of Delph and living cheek-by-jowl with neighbours like pink-velour-track-suited Paula and chavvy Otis is eventually revealed over several fraught and occasionally alcohol-fuelled encounters.

The title is a metaphor that works on several levels.  Bridgette’s beautiful house is the rambling wreck she’s spent years renovating; for Otis, it’s the dream of a better life for his family a long way from the inner-city.  But to Paula, who (astonishingly) works on reception at the Manchester Museum and has become obsessed with Egyptology, “Beautiful House” means the special place where bodies go to be eviscerated before they are mummified. 

Cathy Crabb’s script is brilliantly funny, littered with killing one-liners, hilarious anecdotes and sharply detailed observation of life.  Her characters are raw and sometimes painful to watch, especially Ronnie and Bridgette with their shockingly cruel and destructive relationship - Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has nothing on this.  Janice Connolly, all condescending air and semi-refined accent, convincingly reverts to Bridgette’s native Failsworth idiom at the drop of a hat, and John Henshaw blusters about as her dull but dependable chemistry teacher husband.

Sally Carman is very funny but slightly cartoony as Paula - I miss the blend of the pathetic and the ridiculous which Cathy Crabb herself brought to the part last year.  However James Foster, reprising his role as nice-but-dim Otis, is superb once again.  His wordless reaction to Paula’s holiday story is unforgettable, a really great piece of acting.

Did I mention that it’s funny?  The cast has the audience roaring the whole way through, while Noreen Kershaw’s direction keeps the whole thing on an even keel.  A great evening’s entertainment.

Beautiful House is on until Saturday 8 May 2010

Prices: £8.00-£18.00 (concessions available)

Eves: Mon-Thurs @ 7.30pm; Fri & Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Thurs & Sat @ 3pm

Box Office: 0161 236 7110

www.librarytheatre.com

It’s been a long time since I saw a play at Taurus, and in the interim it has either been brilliantly revamped to make the tiny, cramped downstairs bar into a viable performance space with decent viewing lines, or emerging theatre company Organised Chaos have worked wonders to create an almost site-specific production which cleverly evokes the genteel and refined pleasures of an upmarket tearoom. 

We come down the basement stairs to find two couples tête-à-tête at neighbouring tables which are decked out with all the accoutrements of a leisurely and indulgent afternoon tea.  The white linen tablecloths, fine china, teapots and cafetières, not to mention the laden cake stands and mouth-watering array of pastries, made me want to summon a waitress and look at a menu at once - designer Alice Allen’s attention to detail is spot on.

What playwright Lindsay Kernahan and director Emma France then set up is a Siamese-twin of a comedy, with styles of writing and acting almost diametrically opposed, as the couples chat over their refreshments and intriguing stories come to separate but equally dramatic climaxes.

Jean (Celia Carron) and Poppy (Dianne Rimmer) are nicely turned-out ladies who lunch - or in this case, take tea.  Being of a certain age their conversations range across all the problems that can beset a woman in her middle years - ex-husbands, new partners, grown-up children, antisocial cats, transgender internet dating - that kind of thing.  With just a hint of the Cheshire Set about them (though that set is perhaps more Hollyoaks than Wilmslow) their bantering northern humour is reminiscent of Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood, and the characterisations are broad without being over-the-top.  I don’t know whether first-night nerves caused these scenes to played at a snail’s pace with Pinteresque pauses, but the snappy comic dialogue seemed to demand something a great deal less languid.

At the next table William (Laurence Pickford) and Abigail (Julie Burrow) are in a more modern and downbeat style of comedy.  William is divorcing his wife to be with his much younger girlfriend, but their long weekend away in the country is not turning out to be as romantic as anticipated, partly due to the age gap, and partly due to Abigail’s jealousy and William’s wandering eye.  The two actors establish a convincing relationship, conveying genuine emotion and even arousing our sympathy.  The humour comes less from the dialogue than the playing - small but true moments, such as when the slightly vain and self-absorbed William includes the whole audience in his lascivious stare, or glimpses his own smile in the wall mirror and stops to admire it.

Tonight’s performance really tweaked the audience’s funnybone.  If you miss the company’s work this time around there’s a further opportunity to catch one of their previous Taurus shows at the Buxton Fringe Festival this summer.

Evenings: 22nd to 24th April @ 7.30pm

Matinee: Sat 24^th @ 5pm

Tickets: £7 (£5 conc) from Quaytickets: 0843 208 0500 or www.quaytickets.com

Taurus Bar

1 Canal Street
Manchester

M1 3HE

www.organisedchaosproductions.co.uk

www.taurus-bar.co.uk

A text for tonight.  Perhaps we can’t all be Max Bygraves.  But we can try.

You’re an aspiring stand-up comedian; you’ve been coming to this evening class in a rundown FE college in Manchester every week for months; you’ve absorbed the wise words of the tutor, one-time bill-topper Eddie Waters, “The Lancashire Lad”; you’ve taken his advice about being honest, true, compassionate and working through the laughs not for the laughs; you’ve honed your act, practised at home, learned the lines: now it’s the big night when you’re performing an open spot at the local Working Men’s Club and secretly hoping to impress that agent from The Smoke, Bert Challenor, who’s in the audience supposedly just to assess your work but who might offer you a route to the big time and an escape from your miserable life. 

And then Bert gives you a tip-off: all he wants is gags. 

So do you scrap your act and try to remember as many near-the-knuckle one-liners and Christmas cracker jokes as possible in an attempt to ingratiate yourself with the man handing out the contracts?  Or do you stay loyal to your art, and Eddie?

Although Trevor Griffiths’ 1975 play is astonishingly specific in its period and locale, it couldn’t be more topical at a time when the biggest names in stand-up can sell out arenas, and Manchester is teeming with classes ranging from the improv games of Comedy Sportz to a BA (Hons) Comedy: Writing and Performance at Salford University.  And although the politically correct alternative comedians of the 1980s were supposed to have killed off the bigoted world view epitomised by Bernard Manning, not only have those frilly-shirted, bow-tied gag-merchants come back to enjoy a post-modern popularity, but the new breed of stand-ups are constantly crossing the lines of taste and decency with their “ironic” reclaiming of the offensive.

The playwright assembles a group of comic stereotypes, including a Jew and two types of Irishman, just like the set-up for a shaggy dog story, but David Thacker’s excellent actors transform them into completely rounded human beings while retaining the flavour of their archetypal origins. 

John Branwell is brilliant as Cockney wide-boy agent Bert Challenor, a salty cynic who believes in aiming for the lowest common denominator, and Richard Moore makes a fine contrast as the lugubrious and slightly tragic tutor Eddie. 

While all the comic wannabees are clearly drawn and well-detailed, Mark Letheren as Phil Murray, the born straight man, gives the most unselfish and thankless performance of the evening; for a gifted actor to take half-funny lines and kill them stone dead takes real skill as well as self-sacrifice.

Even the tiny roles are a delight: Howard Ward doubles up as the grumpy college Caretaker and virtuosic club pianist, and Simon Nagra plays lost student Mr Patel like a bemused Lou Costello.

Kieran Hill as the iconic Gethin Price is big, beautiful and just a touch camp.  When he reveals his Mohican-style shaved head and thick white greasepaint, the intended homage to Grock the clown smacks more of a character who has escaped from Taboo: The Boy George Musical.  At this point you realise that his turn isn’t comedy but performance art, and that even if he never plays Hulme Hippodrome he only has to wait for the Greenroom to open 1983 to be showered with Arts Council funding.

Helen Goddard’s design cleverly switches from a frighteningly accurate reconstruction of a down-at-heel 1970s classroom, (even the square metal dustbin is an authentic period piece) to a seedy northern club with a low-rent compère (Russell Richardson).

Seeing Comedians is like coming across the final episode of a six-part sit-com where all the characters have long been established and the grand climax has no context or emotional resonance for the casual viewer; and for a play about comedy it’s surprisingly unfunny.  However David Thacker’s enjoyable, well-paced and superbly acted production is highly recommended - for the drama, if not the laughs.

Comedians is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 8 May 2010

Tickets: from £9.00

Eves: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Fri 16, Sat 17, Mon 19, Sat 24 and Wed 28 Apr @ 2pm  

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

Shakespeare’s Plautus-originated farce about two pairs of twins separated at birth isn’t short of revivals, but here we have a perennial favourite completely fresh-minted in the Royal Exchange’s best production of the Bard since Greg Herzov’s Tempest.

 Guest director Roxana Silbert hasn’t felt the need to impose some radical interpretation, trendy concept or modern update on the play but lets it speak for itself - and how refreshing it is to see Shakespearean comedy, plain and unadorned, working so well on the stage 400 years after it was written.  The production is vigorous and unpretentious, with the bare-boned simplicity of those delightful outdoor shows that spring up around the country in the summer months. 

The casting needs to be absolutely perfect if the slapstick is to come over as knock-about comedy rather than cruel and sadistic, and the choice of ensemble is inspired: every actor is instantly likeable and the result is a charming and cheerful comedy of mistaken identities.  Sam Collings is notably winning as a well-heeled, sun-blocked Syracusean tourist, and the sparky relationship with his solicitous slave (Michael Jibson) veers between funny, tender, intimate and irritable as the day’s confusions ensue.  Jack Farthing as Antipholus’s long-lost brother has the arrogance and sense of entitlement of the handsome court favourite, and Owain Arthur as his bungling and abused servant is suitably long-suffering - the two blonde, chubby Dromios are a great double-act with a convincing resemblance to one another.

 Even the less colourful characters like the Duke of Ephesus (Munir Khairdin) and Egeon (Fred Ridgeway) are attractive and brimming with life, and Jan Chappell’s Abbess is impressive and imposing as she descends from the gods like a true deus (or dea) ex machina.

 There isn’t a stick of furniture on Anthony MacIlwaine’s stark stage - a plain white raised ring with a judiciously used revolve at its centre - so the action is never impeded and the focus is entirely on the characters.  This means that Steve Brown’s sound design and Chahine Yavroyan’s lighting are vital elements in creating a sense of place and atmosphere, and the costume department ably assists with lovely rich eastern fabrics cut in an Elizabethan interpretation of Byzantium.

 Resisting temptation to ham up the comic set-pieces, the production runs straight through in a modest 90 minutes without interval - a typical example of the evening’s elegance and restraint.  If this is accomplished piece is representative of Roxana Silbert’s work I hope the Royal Exchange invites her back at the earliest opportunity.

The Comedy of Errors is on until Saturday 8 May 2010

Prices: £8.50-£29.50

Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm [not Tues 13 April]

Matinees: Wed @ 2.30, Sat @ 4pm and Tues 13 April @ 2.30

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

Back again after two successful runs last year, the latest JB Shorts show - six brand new ten-minute plays written by top TV writers - returns to the basement of Joshua Brooks on Princess Street.

Work of this calibre, coupled with a comparatively short time commitment, attracts actors that Manchester’s top theatres would envy: JB Shorts 3 includes Chris Hannon (Lunch Monkeys), Vicky Binns (Molly from Corrie), Anthony Crank (Shameless) and Peter Slater (Ideal), while local luminaries Caroline Clegg and Noreen Kershaw are among the directors.

As usual there is an eclectic mix of style and content.  Backlash by James Quinn (currently gracing the stage of the Library Theatre) is a spoof party political broadcast satirising the anti-political correctness brigade; Lindsay Williams’ Quixotry exposes the fraught world of Scrabble tournaments; and Andrew Kirk uses multimedia technology and a bunny-girl outfit to put a relationship under pressure in I’m Mad, Me. 

After the break (featuring some very disturbing invisible theatre) S.H.A.G.G. by Dianne Whitley imagines what might happen if Russell Brand hosted a sex addicts support group in Chorlton-cum-Hardy (very convincing turn from Marvyn Dickinson as the tousle haired host who seems to be mainly addicted to himself), followed by the Trevor Suthers comedy Shakespeare’s Monkeys, a surreal piece which is dominated by Antony Bessick’s astonishing physical performance as a semi-simian zookeeper.

The finale, and my favourite, was Peter Kerry’s Truncheons and Blackberries which had sharp writing from the off, fantastic acting all round, a nice touch of farce and enough meat in the concept for a full-length play.  Peter Slater and John Catterall are a pair of memorably dim PC Plods, Verity Henry is their sexy but foul-mouthed Deputy Chief Constable, and Annamarie Bayley is a top Daily Mail columnist who inadvertently uncovers an explosive secret.

The fast-paced format of JB Shorts makes it a winner with audiences because even if one sketch isn’t to your taste another will be along in ten minutes (a much better service than the Eccles tram, I can tell you).  Here’s looking forward to JB Shorts 4.

www.jbshorts.co.uk

Till Saturday 27 March (not Sunday) @ 7pm

Tickets £5 on door

Joshua Brooks

106 Princess Street
Manchester

Lancashire M1 6NG

They say you should write what you know.  When David Mamet had a holiday job in a sales office pitching valueless real estate to credulous punters he stored up this first-hand experience to create his iconic 1980s stage play Glengarry Glen Ross.

The salesmen of this particular firm are, like all sales reps, psychotic, paranoid, blame-shifting, duplicitous egomaniacs, constantly harking back to some golden age when commissions fell like pennies from heaven, and each convinced that the manager is passing them poor leads and no-hope clients.  Bad enough when you’re trying to earn an honest buck on a day-to-day basis - but when this month’s sales figures will either win you a Cadillac or your cards, unconventional and desperate tactics are required.

Anyone expecting fireworks and melodrama will be surprised by director Chris Honer’s subtle and refined reading.  He gives us a humane Tolstoy-like perspective on the characters, reflecting their internal view of themselves rather than crudely externalising their flaws and failings.

It is perhaps unusual, but you can get away with this kind of understatement in the intimate confines of the Library Theatre (a proximity emphasised by Judith Croft’s design which puts the Act 1 set right at the front of the stage).  And pitch perfect casting means you recognise the characters before they even open their mouths.  Leigh Symonds’ apologetic Lingk is a professional victim; James Quinn’s sweaty Aaronow is a little guy in a big guy’s body; Paul Barnhill’s nerdish Williamson has been promoted above his abilities but is too dumb to realise it; and John McAndrew’s baby-faced Moss is brazen in his treachery.  All these qualities can be seen at a glance, so there’s never any need for the actors to overstate characteristics which they already embody.  

That incredibly powerful actor David Fleeshman, here as the delusional has-been Shelly Levene, plays against his own inherent physicality and gives us a detailed, almost finickerty interpretation of the role that rationalises all the conflicts and contradictions in the man.

Finally Richard Dormer is mesmerising as smiling wolf Richard Roma, the company’s ruthless über-salesman.  Dangerous, charming and charged like an electric wire, he’s an alpha-male in a testosterone-fuelled world yet almost girlish in the way he dances and flirts to achieve his own ends.   

Judith Croft’s set is superbly realised, from the Chinese restaurant’s plush velvet booths to the faithful recreation of a shabby 1980s office where even the cheap plywood desks appear to be authentic period pieces.

Those who are familiar with the film should be warned that the dramatis personae of the stage version are slightly different.  Ironically Chris Honer’s production is more forensic and close-up than any film would dare to be with a Mamet script, while high production values and a first-rate cast make this one not to miss.

Glengarry Glen Ross is on until Saturday 3 April 2010

Prices: £8.00-£18.00 (concessions available)

Eves: Mon-Thurs @ 7.30pm; Fri & Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Thurs & Sat @ 3pm

Box Office: 0161 236 7110

www.librarytheatre.com