The 2007 sell-out sensation And Did Those Feet by Bolton writers Les Smith and Martin Thomasson is back at the Octagon for a second triumphant run.  This show is living proof that new writing can succeed beyond the purlieus of sophisticated metropolitan audiences and that regional theatregoers are equally hungry for new plays - particularly if they’re about the local football team.

 In 1923 Bolton is an industrial town still recovering from the Great War and further shattered by an economic downturn which brings redundancies and short-time shifts in its wake - not a glimmer of the glamorous Roaring Twenties here.  The only ray of hope for ordinary folk is the Wanderers’ FA Cup prospects and an impossible dream of watching them play in the final at Wembley’s brand new stadium.

 Sport serves mainly as a backdrop for stories about grief, love and politics among a small bunch of diehard Trotters supporters.  Young factory worker and devoted footie fan Ted (Mark Letheren) is trying to arrange his wedding to totally unsporty and very religious Martha (Naomi Radcliffe) but cup ties and cutbacks keep getting in the way.  Their neighbours Alf (Huw Higginson) and Hilda (Susan Twist) still miss their son Billy (Chris Finch), a one-time apprentice player at Burnden Park who died in the trenches, but while Hilda keeps Billy’s memory alive by attending games her husband is pained by the slightest reminder of his loss. 

 The flashbacks to war are genuinely affecting, and the writers create a tangible sense of what the peacetime depression meant for entire communities of working-class labourers.  But there’s also a great deal of warm northern humour, notably from Martin Barrass reprising his role as eccentric newsagent Bob who walks all over the country in reinforced clogs to follow his beloved team.

 The production is revived by its original director Mark Babych, the Octagon’s highly regarded Artistic Director Emeritus, who seems to have added a lustre to an already highly polished product, aided by a revised script which now plays up the celebrated White Horse incident (where a huge mass of unticketed spectators burst through a turnstile and onto the pitch) with its spine-chilling foreshadowing of Hillsborough.  Lesley Hutchinson’s slickly and imaginatively choreographed crowd scenes are a comic treat, but my highlight remains Martin Barrass as the terrier-like Bob, a little Jack Russell of a chap in a flat cap and weskit who practically gets up on his hind legs and wags his tail with enthusiasm when David Jack scores.

 Although I’m still not convinced that And Did Those Feet is a play which has any relevance to an audience outside a BL postcode, it continues to enjoy an undefeated run on its home ground and serves as a marvellous showcase for the combined skills of everyone involved.

And Did Those Feet is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 10 April 2010

Tickets: from £9.00

Eves: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Fri 12 March, Sat 13 March, Sat 27 March, Wed 31 March and Sat 10 April

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

George Orwell’s dystopian post-war novel Nineteen Eighty-Four imagines life in the future as a mixture of Stalinist Russia, Brave New World and The Blitz, with a splash Cold War paranoia thrown in for good measure. 

Our hero Winston Smith, a supposedly loyal drone in the Ministry of Truth, secretly dreams of smashing the despotic Party organisation which runs the state.  But the political and personal merge when Winston risks an illegal love affair with his colleague Julia despite the constant threat of discovery by ubiquitous two-way telescreens, a network of infant spies, and the terrifying Thought Police.

Matthew Dunster’s adaptation remains strictly faithful to the novel even down to the Brief Encounter-style dialogue, and has a traverse feel with a catwalk bisecting the auditorium.  This is a fast-paced production where scenes and characters come thick and fast, furniture and props literally fly in and out, and the cast members take a large number of roles between them.

Paul Wills’ design allows for effortless and rapid scene changes, and when the stage splits to reveal the high-tech torture chamber in the Ministry of Love the effect is truly impressive. 

Jonathan McGuinness as Winston (bearing a striking resemblance to Orwell himself) exudes bemusement and vulnerability as he goes on his perilous journey of self-discovery and rebellion, while Caroline Bartleet’s Julia has a confidence that comes from knowing exactly how to play the system purely to achieve her own ends and not from any underlying principals.

However the highlight of the evening is not some state-of-the-art special effect but an old-fashioned piece of theatrical rhetoric.  Paul Moriarty delivers an extract from banned book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which I can assure you is as boring as it sounds, and invests it with such clarity and emotion that dry prose becomes inspiring oratory.  The spontaneous round of applause which Mr Moriarty earned on press night was well-deserved.

The grim and restrictive life of Oceania in 1984 may not appear an exact parallel with Britain in 2010, but since the Iraq conflict has resulted in democratic nations using detention without trial and state-sanctioned torture, and our own government has been caught trying to re-write the history of why the war ever happened, Orwell’s nightmare vision now seems more prescient than ever.

1984 is on until Saturday 27 March 2010

Prices: £8.50-£29.50

Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Wednesday @ 2.30, Saturday @ 4pm and Tuesday 9 March @ 2.30pm

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

Renowned touring theatre company Out of Joint are reunited with award-winning Irish writer Sebastian Barry for this new play about that nineteenth-century colossus of fiction Charles Dickens. 

The action takes place during the summer of 1857 when fellow celebrity writer Hans Christian Andersen makes an unexpected and interminable visit to Dickens’ new home in Kent.  The irritation caused in the household by the Dane’s eccentric and childlike behaviour is exacerbated by his poor grasp of English.  Their visitor however is delighted to find himself surrounded by a huge ménage of larger-than-life characters and is oblivious to increasing undercurrents of tension. 

This production is a dream meeting of fine writer, superlative cast and top notch production.  The dialogue has the satisfying style and literariness of a sketch by Boz himself, yet avoids seeming stilted or awkward because of the skilful delivery of great actors like David Rintoul and Niamh Cusack. 

Rintoul’s self-centred and self-dramatising Dickens is alive with passion and vitality, yet has a complete want of empathy for those around him (declaring that a “play is more real than real life”), casually wrecking his loved ones’ lives like a moustache-twirling villain in a melodrama. 

Niamh Cusack gains all our sympathy as his worn-out wife Catherine.  Only just recovering from a career of constant childbirth, she finds her role in the household usurped by her younger sister, her elder children being sent away, and her husband planning a separation.  Cusack matches Rintoul for ardour but is given additional opportunities for pathos, and seizes them.

Danny Sapani plays overgrown schoolboy Andersen as a blundering but well-meaning innocent all unconscious of the emotional atrocities surrounding him.  Although Barry’s intention was presumably to shine a new light on Dickens’ life by refracting it through the prism of Anderson’s eyes, somehow the famous Hans becomes overshadowed by bewitching little Irish housemaid Aggie, charmingly rendered by Lisa Kerr.  An Anglo-Hibernian theme creeps more and more into the narrative, underscored by those sentimental Thomas Moore songs so beloved of the Victorians.

Barry has written a compelling narrative and wonderfully rounded characters, and director Max Stafford-Clark brings them exuberantly to the stage with a variety of techniques ranging from puppetry to singing. 

Lucy Osborne’s set is cluttered with all the impedimenta of a traditional Victorian home, but works brilliantly with Tim Bray’s lighting to evoke scenes as diverse as a hilltop ramble, a moonlit fishing expedition, an impromptu cricket match and the Crystal Palace.

Great literary biographies invoke the spirit of an author’s work as well as creating a living portrait of their subject.  Sebastian Barry illuminates his subject, Dickens, by turning Dickens into a character of Dickensian proportions, and in the process becomes himself a writer of Dickensian dimensions.

Andersen’s English is on at Manchester Library Theatre until Saturday 6 March 2010 and then touring

Prices: £13.00-£18.00 (concessions available)

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

Matinees: Thurs & Sat @ 3pm

Box Office: 0161 236 7110

www.librarytheatre.com

www.outofjoint.co.uk

I Ought to be in Pictures isn’t one of Neil Simon’s better-known plays, but it follows the scientifically proven formula of classics like The Sunshine Boys and The Odd Couple: when apparently incompatible individuals live in close proximity they generate friction, which creates sparks of comedy gold. 

Herb (Stuart Fox) is a typical Simon character in the Walter Matthau mould, a quarrelsome curmudgeon with a tender heart buried somewhere beneath his grizzly exterior.  He has long escaped the claustrophobic atmosphere of New York to live the dream in the Californian sunshine as a Hollywood screenwriter.  Unfortunately a bad case of writer’s block is causing trouble in his professional life, and commitment-phobia is hacking off his no-strings girlfriend Steffy.

Then a 19-year-old back-packer called Libby turns up on Herb’s doorstep with ambitions of her own to make it big in the film business - with or without her father’s help. 

Stuart Fox as Herb initially delivers a first-rate impression of a grumpy, self-obsessed has-been, but visibly melts with the gradual rediscovery of his paternal feelings.

Elizabeth Carling as Steffy brings real warmth to the witty and wise divorcée who tries to encourage the father-daughter relationship without herself turning into a jealous step-mother.  And no one has carried off white flared trousers with such aplomb since Charley’s Angels.

The real find of the evening is Kirsty Osmon, making a striking professional debut in the role of Libby.  All tomboyish charm and coltish bare legs, Ms Osmon is absolutely convincing as a free spirit who can hike across a continent or tune a car engine, yet who is still clearly very young and vulnerable.  The impromptu midnight rehearsal of her audition speech with only an angle-poise lamp for a spotlight shows how naïve this seemingly streetwise New Yorker remains. 

Paul Wills’ design, a loving homage to the 1970s, shows us Herb’s chaotic life embodied in his scruffy open-plan apartment, with a glimpse of the symbolic citrus trees through a sunny window.

Director Paul Jepson has concentrated on the play’s dramatic implications - in the hands of such an excellent cast the smart one-liners can take care of themselves.

I Ought to be in Pictures is on until Saturday 27 February 2009

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

Shakespeare’s magical comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the latest play in the Octagon season to be directed by the Artistic Director, David Thacker, who won a brace of Olivier Awards for his RSC production of Pericles twenty years ago.

The Sergeant Pepper-influenced publicity flags up a Swinging Sixties theme, so it’s surprising to find the auditorium initially awash with sombre army uniforms and Che Guevara-style propaganda posters - a nod to the very un-swinging military dictatorship which seized power in Athens in 1967.

Rob Edwards (eponymous hero of that 1990 Pericles) doubles the roles of Theseus, head of Athens’ repressive jackbooted regime, and Oberon, the equally cruel despot of fairyland.  Paula Jennings is Theseus’ black-veiled spoil-of-war Hippolyta who becomes translated into a white mini-dressed, sexually liberated Titania. 

Designer Ashley Shairp’s acid-coloured playground of a forest, teeming with bouncing balls and magic lanterns, seems to unleash the potential in every character, including a quartet of mismatched lovers fleeing from the city, and a weaver with a thespian bent and an ass’s head.

Vanessa Kirby’s heart-broken Helena sets the stage alight with her passion, energy and comic timing - no wonder Rob Edwards’ magisterial Oberon is so visibly taken by her.  Compassion for the young mortal melts his hard heart and leads to a sequence of reconciliations, including his own with Paula Jennings’ luscious and uninhibited Titania.

Kieran Hill makes an unusually good-looking Bottom and is beautifully rigged out for his Act V turn as Pyramus, but Russell Dixon’s Peter Quince runs off with the comedy honours for a spot on portrait of a fruity old-school actor in a classic piece of character acting.

The handling of the verse is uniformly excellent, and David Thacker’s inspired use of the entire auditorium really brings the show alive, ably assisted by music director Carol Sloman’s trippy score and Wayne Dowdeswell’s hallucinogenic lighting.

The production could benefit from being played at a much faster pace as its current running time is more akin to Hamlet than a comedy which I once saw performed in ninety minutes flat.  Nevertheless this is a colourful, energetic and lucid production of the original rom-com.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 6 March 2010

Tickets: from £9.00

Eves: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Friday 5, Saturday 6, Monday 8, Wednesday 17 and Sat 27 Feb @ 2pm

Box Office: 01204 520661

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

Fiona Peek’s new play Salt was co-winner of the Royal Exchange’s Bruntwood Playwriting Competition in November 2008, and the premiere of this sophisticated social comedy has been eagerly anticipated.  

The action takes place between July 2007 and March 2008 during the course of five dinner parties in Simon and Amy’s beautiful basement kitchen.  Simon’s stable law firm salary and Amy’s chic little gallery job provide them and their children with a lifestyle straight out of a weekend colour supplement.  However their two child-free friends Rachel and Nick (Amy’s old flame from college days) are struggling with debt now that his freelance journalism commissions are drying up and RSI has ended her orchestral career.

Fiona Peek’s debut play, with its skilfully interwoven themes of debt, fertility, work/life balance and food porn, thoroughly nails the late-noughties zeitgeist.  The other unacknowledged but ever-present problem plaguing the middle-classes is excessive recreational drinking - a vice which does more than its fair share to inflame the situation here.

Even if external circumstances didn’t play a part, the chemistry between Amy and Nick and their uninhibited flirting has “slow-motion car crash” written all over it.  Beth Cordingly’s smug Amy is still proprietorial of her ex, constantly reminding Rachel (and Simon) of how long they’ve known each other and therefore how much better she understands him than his wife does.

Simon Chadwick plays her husband as an uptight conformist pretending to be a laid back peacemaker.  He tries to remain aloof from the emotional maelstrom but this diplomacy only masks his diffidence towards the other couple.  You form the impression that if he and Amy were to divorce, she would get Rachel and Nick in the settlement.

Kevin Harvey’s slightly-scouse and immature Nick, one of those nightmare guests who can’t distinguish between a dinner party debate and a stand-up row, is stuck in the laddish culture of the 1990s, and Esther Hall’s brittle Rachel is as highly strung as her own violin when confronted with the dilemma of treating her immature husband as a child or making him face up to his responsibilities.

Ben Stones’ sleek set is like watching the window display in a designer furniture shop coming alive, and Jo Coombs’ fluid and fast-paced production captures the authentic tone of entitlement of the (apparently) affluent professional classes.

My only quibble is that the bombshell dropped in the dying moments is treated with such brevity and underplaying as to be almost subliminal - if this was on DVD you’d frantically rewind it trying to work out exactly what happened.  But even without a freeze-frame facility the first-night audience was highly appreciative of this witty and clever new play.

Salt is on until Saturday 20 February 2010

Prices: £4 (conc)-£9.50

Evenings: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Wed & Sat @ 2.30

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun is the best thing the Royal Exchange has put on in ages. 

Three generations of the Younger family are cramped into the shabby rented rooms on Chicago’s Southside which god-fearing matriarch, Lena, first moved into as a new bride full of hopes and dreams. 

But Lena’s husband worked himself into an early grave, and although her son Walter fantasises about making a quick buck by investing in a series of shady schemes, and her daughter Beneatha bubbles with exciting ideals and ambitions, reality means that Lena and her daughter-in-law Ruth are skivvying for rich white people and her grandson has to sleep on the sofa.

However the imminent arrival of a cheque for $10,000 - the life insurance on Lena’s late husband - could transform all their lives.

Superficially A Raisin in the Sun appears to be staple Royal Exchange fare like Wesker’s Roots or Osborne’s The Entertainer, a naturalistic drama from exactly the same era which tells its tale via a highly detailed depiction of domestic life: the opening blow-by-blow account of the Youngers’ early morning routine, down to breakfast being cooked live on stage, leads one to expect nothing more.

But this poor, black family’s frames of reference aren’t provincial and miniaturist but global and historical: Lena traces her ancestors back six generations to when they were brought to America as slaves, and sees her own life as part of their progression; aspiring medical student Beneatha looks both backwards and forwards when she becomes fascinated by African culture.  The gender politics are intriguing, too.  Has Walter been emasculated by his nagging wife and infantilised by his all-powerful mother?  Are Beneatha’s hopes realistic, or should she settle down with a man who isn’t her intellectual equal but who can offer material security?  The story becomes increasingly powerful and moving, culminating in a nail-biting choice for one of the characters that will materially and morally affect them all.  And Lorraine Hansberry’s writing has a fundamental optimism and belief in a better future which is absent from her English contemporaries.

The whole cast is excellent, down to the smallest cameo.  Ray Fearon’s ne’er-do-well Walter is charming and sulky, and Tracy Ifeachor as his student sister is sassy, sophisticated and shy by turns.  Starletta DuPois plays the magnificently upholstered matriarch Lena with authority, while Jenny Jules as Ruth quietly conveys the loneliness of a disappointed wife trying to hold things together.

Director Michael Buffong has given this great play a fantastic production that entertains and emotionally engages throughout.  The whole experience is so uplifting that it’s little wonder some members of the audience were on their feet at the end.

A Raisin in the Sun is on until Saturday 20 February 2010

Prices: £8.50-£29.50

Evenings: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Wed & Sat @ 2.30

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

As so many theatres seem to believe that “Christmas is for children”, thank goodness Manchester Royal Exchange always keeps something special in reserve for the grown-ups.  This year’s classic show is Blithe Spirit, Noel Coward’s “improbable farce” about a séance which goes horribly wrong.

As well relishing the sophisticated drawing-room comedy we associate with Coward, Sarah Frankcom’s production goes at a cracking pace and sets up a series of slap-stick sequences which are eventually topped by a genuinely impressive coup-de-théâtre, courtesy of designer Liz Ascroft.

When the Royal Exchange are looking for suavity and sophistication the first person they call is Milo Twomey, whose debonair manner and raffish charm suit Charles Condomine perfectly.  Ex-Coronation Street actor Suranne Jones plays his second wife Ruth with style and conviction, while Nelly Harker strops about admirably as the late lamented Elivira.  And Peter Temple and Wendy Nottingham demonstrate how two first-rate actors can flesh out the comparatively small parts of Dr and Mrs Bradman and turn them into fully-rounded characters.

However scene after scene is stolen by Annette Badland in the plumb role of Madame Arcati.  Ms Badland leaves her dignity at the door to play the medium as an overgrown schoolgirl who scuttles about the Condomines’ house gobbling sandwiches, snuffling like a dog, and eventually falling into a dead faint with her skirts around her ears.  Madame Arcati is probably the closest the Royal Exchange will get to a pantomime dame this season, only with a much better line in wit and repartee.

Blithe Spirit is on until Saturday 23 January 2010

Prices: £8.50-£29.50

Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Wed @ 2.30, Sat @ 4pm

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

If you think you’ve seen the definitive musical version of Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, think again.  Like Lionel Bart's classic version, the production at Bolton this festive season is laced throughout with catchy songs and dances.  However the Octagon’s new adaptation, with a cast playing multiple roles as well as all the instruments, is very much in the Northern Broadsides tradition - hardly surprising, as writer Deborah McAndrew and composer Conrad Nelson are both veterans of that company.

The narrative is stripped down to about two hours, so out go various sub-plots, but the old favourites are all present and correct.  Robert Pickavance is an oleaginous and sycophantic Fagin; Tim Frances is excellent comic value as Mr Bumble, the cruel and cowardly beadle; Esther Ruth Elliott is Nancy, the tart with a heart; and a rotating cast of talented and enthusiastic children play Oliver Twist, the Artful Dodger and all the assorted urchins.

Dawn Allsopp’s impressive set, an imposing urban sprawl of brick walls, rackety bridges and dirty cobbles, spans the whole width of the auditorium and soars to the ceiling.  Director Josette Bushell-Mingo’s production makes the most of the huge playing area, with great choreography and energetic ensembles.

This version of Oliver Twist is sweet without being saccharine, and addresses the iniquities of Victorian England without being too scary for a younger audience.  Judging by the reaction from the stalls on Friday night, this is a really excellent Christmas show for the whole family.

Oliver Twist is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 23 January 2010

Tickets: £8.50 - £15.95

Shows: Mon-Sat at 10.15am, 2.15pm & 7.15pm (performance schedule varies - see website)

Box Office: 01204 520661

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

The Entertainer is John Osborne’s famous depiction of post-war Britain in crisis, shown through the microcosm of a family of music hall performers eking out a meagre living in a dying industry. 

The Rice family’s domestic circumstances have drifted downhill in line with the decline of the halls, but no matter how urgent the threat from their creditors or the tax-man there is always enough money for gin and cigarettes.

The play is over fifty years old but the sense of national decline, the looming presence of a war abroad, and the binge drinking all strike a contemporary note.  However the most obvious reason to revive this play is the spectacular role of Archie Rice, originally played by Laurence Olivier in a performance said to have reignited his career.

Archie Rice is Falstaff cut from utility suit cloth, a huge personality with a voracious appetite for women, alcohol and life.  Despite the frequently cited private education and boater-and-blazer costume he is Not Quite a Gentleman, though his bluff and bravado carry him along.  Even in the privacy of his own home he continues to give a performance, but while Archie’s on-stage persona is superficially warm and charming there is a sense of menace lying below the surface.  Keith Floyd would have made a great Archie Rice.

The Entertainer is set in the living area of the family’s shabby rented rooms in some god-forsaken provincial town, but with a sudden switch of lighting Archie is on stage and performing his old-fashioned comedy turn and uninspired song-and-dance routine.  To an audience accustomed to a diet of drawing-room dramas à la Terrence Rattigan this technique must have seemed daring and innovative.  Today these interludes merge almost unobtrusively into the whole, which is perhaps why sound designer Steve Brown creates a feeling of dislocation by miking up Archie so his voice eerily seems to come from a distant place.

David Schofield as Archie has totally mastered playing in-the-round, and in the music hall interludes he involves the whole audience with his cheeky appeals and frequent asides.  Laura Rees as his disillusioned daughter Jean shows flashes of real passion when her mid-century angst mixes with large quantities of gin, and  Roberta Taylor playing Archie’s long-suffering wife creates genuine pathos with her terrified vision of a comfortless old age.

Although superficially in tune with our times The Entertainer is emotionally unengaging and the characters are all shot through with John Osborne’s very special brand of bile.  However there is clearly some entertainment value to be had from the seedy life of a down-at-heel 1950s comedian, as Hancock’s Half Hour proves every Wednesday on Radio 7.

The Entertainer is on until Saturday 5 December 2009

Prices: £8.50-£29.50

Evenings: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Wed & Sat @ 2.30

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk