UK Theatre Network

Shakespeare’s cross-dressing pastoral comedy receives an inner-city update in Greg Hersov’s joyful production this summer. 

The usurping Duke Frederick has relocated his court to the Playboy mansion, where the dress code is formal evening wear and bunny-rabbit ears.  Superficially this is a world of liberty and licentiousness, but even champagne on tap can’t enliven the misery or distract from the air of menace and suppressed violence.  No wonder Frederick’s lively daughter Celia and melancholy niece Rosalind prefer to hide away in the chill-out lounge with its mellow tunes and low lights.  When Frederick finally snaps and exiles Rosalind there’s actually a sense of release and the promise of new-found freedom.

Designer Ashley Martin-Davis says his inspiration was the high-noon of hippydom, the Summer of Love; but with its acid-hues, status sneakers and skinny jeans the Forest of Arden looks more like mid-90s Madchester – all that’s missing is a big bomb going boom – though it happens that the forest is festooned with boom-boxes, as multi-coloured loudspeakers descend on wires from the gods.

Cush Jumbo is elegant and restrained as the Rosalind, but disguised as Ganymede she becomes a back-chatting, baseball-cap wearing, body-popping inner-city “blood”, with the accent and attitude to match.  Ganymede is part performance poet, part rapper, and the way this style of speech animates the language, the imagery, and the rhythms of the poetry, not to say the divided nature of Rosalind’s character, is an absolute revelation.  This has got to be the most inspired interpretation of a Shakespearean character since OT Fagbenle’s blaxploitation Mercutio for English Touring Theatre.

Arden’s other inhabitants are a selection box of soft centres and hard nuts.  James Clyde’s raddled ex-rock star Jaques looks every inch the former “libertine”; Gyuri Sarossy’s yuppy estate agent Oliver comes over very strongly as a nasty piece of work who wouldn’t scruple to redevelop the wild woodland into designer apartments; and Terence Wilton has a lovely cameo as a happy-clappy, bike-riding Sir Oliver Martext.

The musical interludes are beautiful, led by Howard Hutt’s melodious Amiens; he makes a fine impression with his verse speaking too, and would have been a vast improvement on Ben Batt’s uninspiring Orlando, whose gruff manner and blue shirt seem more suited to working on the tills at Tesco’s.

Above all, director Greg Hersov remembers that As You Like It is a comedy and gives us a bright, summery production that will raise the spirits.  As Ganymede might say: “Rispeck”.

As You Like It is on until Saturday 6 August 2011
Prices £9-£30
Evenings: Mon-Sat @ 7.30
Matinees: Wed & Sat @ 2.30
Box Office: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk

The Manchester International Festival’s even more exciting fringe - the Not Part Of Festival 2011 - kicks off at Taurus Bar with this unusual comedy drama from multiple award-winning playwright Stuart D Lee.

Although there’s no shortage of Second World War-based fiction, Dev’s Army deals with the rarely explored issue of Ireland’s uneasy neutrality during what their Prime Minister Eamon De Valera (“Dev”) preferred to call the “Emergency”. With the Irish state barely twenty years old and the battle for freedom from the British still fresh in the memory, the population had conflicting emotions about fighting on the same side as their erstwhile foes even against a potentially much greater evil.

It’s September 1940, and while the Battle of Britain draws to a close over southern England all that is protecting the Irish coast against invasion is a trio of ill-matched oddballs armed with a one-wheeled bike and an unloaded gun. The seaside setting recalls Bridget O’Connor’s hilarious The Flags, while the ramshackle set-up is like Dad’s Army re-written by Martin McDonagh.

The ever-reliable Richard Sails as elderly patriot Paddy captures the character’s simultaneous craven cowardice and bully-boy bravado in the slippery way he dwells on the events of 1916 without ever specifying his role in them. Dean O’Sullivan’s credulous youngster Michael is the catalyst for many farcical situations, particularly at the beginning of Act 2, and Matt Lanigan’s earnest Dermot lends credulity to the squad as the only one with actual experience of fighting in a war.

The drama shifts into a different gear when a mysterious man in a suit is washed up on the beach following an explosion. Wayne Allsop is really excellent as the sinister and duplicitous stranger, all charm and danger - a classic Kevin Spacey role.

James Foster’s direction is strong on emotional realism, while Owen Rafferty’s evocative sound design and Christian Taylor’s attention to detail with the set, props and costumes establishes that this production has ambitions higher than the average fringe show. An excellent debut from Elysion Productions.

Dev’s Army

Presented by Elysion Productions

Taurus Bar, Canal Street, Manchester

Wed 29 June - Sat 2 July 2011 @ 8pm (3pm matinee on Sat)

£7/£5 (conc)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

　

www.notpartof.orgwww.elysionproductions.co.uk

The Library Theatre Company is popping up all over Manchester before eventually moving into its new home.  The latest port-of-call on this four-year odyssey is a disused cotton mill in Ancoats, the world’s first industrial suburb.  Murrays’ Mill is a listed building in the process of being regenerated, but it was already half a century old in 1854 when Charles Dickens was writing his state-of-the-nation novel, Hard Times.

Cruel factory owner Josiah Bounderby and foolish local MP Thomas Gradgrind attempt to create a more efficient workforce by regulating human life along strictly scientific and mechanical lines - “Now, what I want is, Facts.”  In the end though their dogma destroys the people who are most precious to them.

This site-specific promenading performance is an adventure for both the theatre company and the audience, as the actors emerge from behind the proscenium arch and bring their characters out into the real world.

The evening begins with a series of installations in the dark and damp basement of Murrays’ Mill, an atmospheric space teeming with specially recruited volunteer actors.  Riotous gin houses, artisans’ workshops, mean little sitting rooms and filthy bedrooms all echo to a never-ending cacophony of horses’ hooves clattering on cobbles, rattling machinery, crying babies, hacking coughs and fiddles playing Irish jigs.  This is a genuinely immersive and intimate experience, as well as being thoroughly eerie – there’s no interaction with the audience, but the figures move round without seeming to see you – I couldn’t decide if they were ghosts, or I was.

The action then moves upstairs to a long, narrow, low-ceilinged room with bare floorboards underfoot, wooden beams above, and exposed brick walls.  Here designer Judith Croft has created a series of open-plan “compartments”, a bit like a department store for stage sets, representing the various parlours, offices, schoolrooms, gambling dens and hovels of the story.

Inevitably in turning a full-length novel into a two-and-a-half hour play something has to give.  Ironically, given the performance’s industrial location, it’s the working-class aspects of the narrative which have been shrunk to almost nothing, so the weaver Stephen Blackpool is reduced to a walk on part in the domestic drama of the middle-class Gradgrind family.  And although Charles Way’s adaptation has been written especially for this production it still feels like a conventional theatre script rather than something that would only ever work in the unique space of Murrays’ Mill. 

However the promenading aspect is the theatrical equivalent of a 3D film at the IMAX, allowing us to observe Dickens’ gallery of grotesques at very close quarters - and the acting from the professional cast members is extraordinarily good.

The ever reliable David Fleeshman portrays Gradgrind as an essentially benign if misguided figure; Verity May Henry is lively and colourful as Sissy Jupe; and Mina Anwar’s Rachel is passionate and instantly sympathetic.  Unsurprisingly, though, it’s the villains who dominate. 

Richard Heap was a memorable Magwitch at the Library Theatre several Christmases ago, but at least I was viewing him from the safety of the stalls.  His over-the-top interpretation of the loud, vulgar, bullying Bounderby is hugely enjoyable, both funny and horrific.  I was only a few feet away as he drooled over fragile young Louisa Gradgrind (Alice O’Connell), demanding a kiss like a lecherous elderly uncle, and the physical immediacy made me shudder with horror – an intense and thrilling moment.

Arthur Wilson is hilariously creepy as Bounderby’s oddball clerk Bitzer, and Gareth Cassidy’s nervous high-pitched laugh captures the latent hysteria in Tom Gradgrind.  Richard Hand’s Harthouse is a plausibly attractive playboy, and he’s practically unrecognisable as strict schoolmaster Mr M’Choakumchild.  Equally versatile are David Crellin, who doubles the rather worthy Stephen Blackpool with avuncular circus owner Mr Sleary, and Lynda Rooke as both Stephen’s drunken wife and the down-on-her-luck gentlewoman Mrs Sparsit (whose resemblance to Christina Rossetti is uncanny).

Chris Honer directs the action with his usual sure touch and gets the very best from his fabulous cast, but there are a few logistical problems with the promenading, and although I enjoyed this production I would have been even happier watching it from a seat in a theatre.

Hard Times is on until Saturday 2 July 2011
Location: Murrays’ Mill, Murray Street, Ancoats, Manchester M4 6JA
Entry time: 7.15pm

A limited number of tickets are available on the day from the temporary box office at The Midland Hotel, Peter Street between 5.30-6.30pm, cash only.

Prices: Mon-Thurs £20 (£15 conc); Fri-Sat £22
Box Office: 0843 208 6010
www.librarytheatre.com

Arthur Miller’s 1955 play A View from the Bridge, set in the impoverished world of New York dockers and longshoremen, has the same sense of timelessness as the Greek tragedies it references.  Yet the subplot about desperate illegal immigrants and their precarious twilight existence strikes an urgent contemporary note today.

Eddie Carbone is a simple and good-hearted manual labourer.  Thanks to his generosity and sense of responsibility his wife Beatrice has never had to work and together they have raised Beatrice’s orphaned niece Catherine as their own.  But as Catherine has grown up Eddie has become more over-protective and possessive of her, and Beatrice’s eagerness for Catherine to fly the nest is as much for her own sake as her niece’s.

Miller’s narrator is the neighbourhood lawyer Alfieri, a not-so-cool and dispassionate observer of the unfolding drama.  For him, legal practice walks hand in hand with the laws of nature: “The law is only a word for what has a right to happen”.  As Eddie’s natural affection for Catherine becomes something more sinister, the catalyst for his inevitable punishment arrives in the guise of Beatrice’s illegal immigrant cousins, Marco and Rodolpho.

Olivier award-winner Con O’Neill plays Eddie with a surprising amount of tolerance and humour – in fact humour is the overwhelming note of Sarah Frankcom’s production – but the moment in Act Two when Eddie crosses the line with his niece draws an audible gasp of horror from the audience.

Anna Francolini’s jealous Beatrice, who seems rather too smart and middle-class to be married to a docker, revels in the shrewish aspects of the role, while Leila Mimmack’s feisty Catherine seems to grow up in front of our eyes.  Ronan Raferty’s sparkling and mercurial Rodolpho has exactly the quality the playwright describes of being able to make people laugh just from his manner of speaking.

Ian Redford was in the Exchange’s production of Antigone a couple of seasons ago, and his Alfieri seems steeped in classical Greek tragedy from the outset, while some lively cameos (assorted neighbours, longshoremen and immigration officers) remind us of the 1950s Brooklyn setting.

James Cotterill’s simple and uncluttered design lets the action move swiftly and clearly, and Peter Rice’s sound design is particularly interesting when Eddie makes his fatal phone call.

The tumultuous applause at the end of the show clearly indicates that the Royal Exchange has another hit on its hands.

A View From The Bridge is on until Saturday 25 June 2011
Prices £9-£32
Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm
Matinees: Wed @ 2.30, Sat @ 4pm
Box Office: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk

In theory a play about philosophy and scientific investigation isn’t my idea of a good night out – I’m not French after all.  But on reflection I realise that many an enjoyable evening at the theatre has sprung from just such dry origins.  For instance, Pierre Marivaux’s romantic comedies put the spotlight on the psychology of the Enlightenment; Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and Shelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water use the very philosophical notions they reference for their dramatic frameworks; and that’s without even mentioning Tom Stoppard’s entire oeuvre.

Adapted from his own novel Thinks…, acclaimed critic and academic David Lodge has written a Platonic dialogue between a writer of fiction and a professor of cognitive science in which they explore the different meanings of consciousness and its subjective experiences (Qualia) using their particular specialisms.  What David Lodge the award-winning storyteller and dramatist creates is an unusual, often funny and sometimes moving two-hander which charts the love story between two oddly endearing characters.

Recently bereaved forty-something Helen is trying to get over the sudden loss of her husband by swapping her introverted occupation as a novelist for a semester of teaching at one of the newer universities.  But she’s living alone on campus, and as her colleagues head home at 5pm she feels more isolated than ever.  There’s nothing for her to do but sit in front of the computer and examine her feelings via an intimate, almost spiritual journal.

Media don Ralph is one of the stars of the science faculty, and with his charm, good looks, rich wife and adoring fans he can come across as a little arrogant and self-centred, although deep down he’s worried about leaving behind a lasting academic legacy.  As he burbles random thoughts into an audio recorder and tries to take his subconscious by surprise we notice that the recurring themes of his discourse are less intellectual than he might have hoped.

Ralph’s not entirely disinterested impulse to befriend Helen leads to a discussion about grief, and thence to his own researches into consciousness.  But as the pair kick philosophical ideas around a spark of something extracurricular arises between them 

Although the raw intellectual ideas in the play are very interesting and accessibly presented, it’s the relationship between the characters which grips, entertains and emotionally engages.  The slightly overlong first part of the play is mainly about the philosophy; the second part becomes almost soap opera-like in its dramatic twists and turns.

Rob Edwards has worked at the Octagon before, but seizes the chance to come centre-stage with a vivid and charismatic performance as Ralph the suave, sexually insatiable scientist.  The writer and actor make the hesitant speech patterns seem so natural and spontaneous that we almost seem to be watching the very thoughts being processed in the character’s brain, although the playwright slyly implies that Ralph does most of his thinking with another part of his anatomy.  The boyish charm and flirtatious sense of humour make Ralph as irresistible to the audience as he is to Helen.

Helen is in an obviously sympathetic position but there are elements of self-pity and lack of humour in the character which Kate Coogan skilfully manages to avoid.  She is an immediately attractive and likeable actor, and while her brave smile endows Helen with a kind of inward fortitude, the shy eyes and evasive gaze remind us of her inward suffering.

There’s a definite chemistry between the two actors, and for them to carry so huge and challenging a play with such apparent effortlessness is a massive achievement.

Ciaran Bagnall’s clean, high-tech design is like the set for a sci-fi movie, dominated by an impressive architectural structure which references the two hemispheres of the brain.  David Thacker’s direction is so good it’s invisible.

David Lodge has written a play which perhaps imagines that it’s slightly cleverer than it really is, but the story and characters make this a superb new drama - and who’s going to complain about that?

Secret Thoughts is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 4 June 2011
Tickets: £9.50-£21.50
Performances: Mon-Sat @ 7.30
Matinees: Sat 21 & Wed 25 @ 2pm
Box Office: 01204 520661
www.octagonbolton.co.uk

On the Royal Exchange stage a terrible wrong is being righted.  Canadian playwright Brad Fraser saw with his own eyes the lack of substantial and challenging theatre roles for actresses of a certain age (of any age, come to that) and decided to create an ensemble piece specifically about a set of women in their prime.  The result is 5 @ 50, a caustically funny warts-and-all drama which is receiving its world premiere in Manchester under the expert guidance of the writer’s long-term champion Braham Murray.

Fraser’s quintet of protagonists have known each other since school and are all about to hit the big Five-O.   As they meet up for boozy birthday parties, girlie nights in, liquid lunches and casual drinks we watch the group dynamics shift when past rivalries cause clashes and hidden secrets begin to emerge. 

If there is a hint of Sex and the City about 5 @ 50 that’s probably down to the affluent urban setting (high heels, hard drugs and fancy confectionery all feature) and the range of female archetypes that the playwright deploys.  Fern (Barbara Barnes) is a classic stay-at-home mom; Tricia (Ingrid Lacey) is the career journalist who has trouble with long-term relationships; Lorene (Candida Gubbins) is a serial wife but failed mother; and Norma (Teresa Banham) is the faithful lesbian with a tricky partner.

At the heart of the drama is Jan Ravens’ Olivia, whose character undergoes huge transformations in the course of the play and yet remains an enigma.

Director Braham Murray has cast five fantastic actresses, and if I wasn’t always convinced by the roles written for them to play I was enormously impressed by the way they were acted.  Johanna Bryant’s sophisticated design allows the scenes to shift seamlessly between random locations and the costumes, from sharp business suits to slobby jogging pants, are perfectly suited to their respective characters. 

It’s always interesting to see the birth of a brand new piece of theatre but it’s not always easy to predict its long-term success.  Brad Fraser will know he’s created a classic when Ed Hall’s all-male theatre company Propeller takes 5 @ 50 out on tour.

5 @ 50 is on until Saturday 14 May 2011
Prices £9-£32
Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm
Matinees: Wed @ 2.30, Sat @ 4pm
Box Office: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk

One of the most prominent Boltonians of recent years was steeplejack, steam enthusiast and all-round Lancashire character Fred Dibnah, much loved for his television programmes celebrating engineering, Victorian architecture and the vanishing remains of the industrial revolution.  So it’s only appropriate that a dramatisation of his life by local writer Aelish Michael should receive its world premiere at Bolton Octagon.

 By focussing on Fred’s last decade the structure of the drama is almost ready-made.  We meet Fred at his lowest point, having just divorced wife number two and lost custody of his young sons.  The last thing he needs is to hear that his TV series isn’t being re-commissioned.  Concerned friends Malc, Keith and Bert realise things are serious when Fred can’t even summon up the energy to fettle his steam engine.  But then glamorous magician’s assistant Sheila enters Fred’s life and casts a spell that reinvigorates both him and his career.

 The first half of this play is hilarious, with typical down-to-earth Lancashire characters and delightful wordplay rooted in the local vernacular.  And the courtship of Sheila in the shed is the most unlikely wooing scene since Richard III got it together with Lady Anne over the corpse of her late father-in-law.

 Colin Connor’s Fred is the spitting image of the man – the facial likeness is uncanny, the voice is precise, he even captures the waddling gait.  And if there is something a bit cartoon like about him it only adds to the comedy, although it’s slightly less successful in the play’s poignant second half.

 By way of contrast, Michelle Collins’s take on Mrs Dibnah The Third is a naturalistic portrayal of a lively and attractive woman who cares passionately for her husband.  Michelle Collins is excellent in all facets of the role and steals the show by becoming the heroine of the story.

 Mike Burnside as Fred’s golden-hearted pal Bert and John Mcardle as the Machiavellian silver fox Malc are also memorable and multi-layered.

 James Cotterill’s design feels like being in a real engineering works, partly because of the authentic accumulation of clutter and junk on stage, and partly due to the vast sense of space he creates above and behind the playing area.  Joe Stathers-Tracey’s video projections shown on three screens high above the stage make for an arresting and original opening when Fred descends from the gods on a rackety ladder in the middle of a storm – a truly dramatic moment. 

 Like a precision engineer, director David Thacker has fettled a believable world for this very local story – one the press night audience seemed to relate to very strongly.  No doubt this will be as big a success for the Octagon as their smash hit And did Those Feet.

 The Demolition Man is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 7 May 2011

Tickets: from £9.50

Performances: Mon-Sat @ 7.30

Matinees: Fri 8, Sat 16, Wed 20 Apr, Wed 4, Sat 7 May @ 2pm 

Box Office: 01204 520661

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

Playwright Nicola Schofield was one of the earliest talents to emerge from the Royal Exchange/Bruntwood new writing competition with her script, Maybe Tomorrow.  Now award-winning theatre company Organised Chaos Productions has seized the opportunity to stage her latest piece, a tense drama called Peacefully at Home.

A lingering and painful deathbed is the classic situation which has brought together a sundered family, leading to scenes of conflict as long-buried secrets come to the surface.  Bridget, the seemingly devoted wife of the dying man, is joined by her old friend Una; and practical, stay-at-home son Chris meets up with his very different brother, James, who in spite of being the dreamer was the one who escaped from the country to the big city.

Nicola Schofield skilfully sets up an apparently close and devoted family which then falls apart before our eyes; the shocks keep coming right up to the very last moment.

In their brief scenes together Lee Joseph as Chris and Chris Brett as James create a genuine mood of long-standing intimacy and brotherly affection.  The most impressive performance comes from Laura Littlewood as James’s smug yummy-mummy wife Sarah.  There is real truth in the writing of this character, and Laura Littlewood plays her with conviction and confidence. 
 
Set designer Jonathan Ingham creates an economical yet suggestive staging for the comfortable and attractive family garden.  Director Emma Hatcher is faithful to the drama’s ebbs and flows, letting the characters develop at a leisurely pace - however the play could do with some judicious trimming because there isn’t enough story to justify its current length. 

While not quite as successful as last winter’s production of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, Organised Chaos should be congratulated for continuing to champion new writing and local acting talent.

Peacefully at Home
Presented by Organised Chaos Productions
Taurus Bar, Canal Street, Manchester
Wed 6 - Sat 9 April 2011 @ 8pm (7pm on Thurs 7)
£7.50/£5.50 (conc)
www.organisedchaosproductions.co.uk

JB Shorts 5
Wednesday 23 March 2011

The opportunity to see some of the north’s best TV writers stretching their theatrical muscles in a range of short, sharp 10-minute plays is yet again packing out the cellars below Joshua Brooks bar in Manchester.  The cream of local acting and directing talent is also on parade - both on stage and in the audience.  JB Shorts is becoming a kind of biannual smoking concert for Manchester’s thespian community, only the club’s doors are open to everyone.

As usual the programme contains an eclectic mix of styles and subjects: a comedy about a malfunctioning Sky box leads to an emotional crisis and a philosophical discourse on the transience of digital media; the quick buck promised by a clinical trial isn’t as consequence-free as it seems; a man’s desperate trip to a psychiatrist has shades of Blithe Spirit about it.

The most surprising piece is Peter Kerry’s My Poor Fool is Hang’d, which bucks the trend for contemporary realism with a fully rigged-out costume drama.  This sequel to King Lear featuring Kent (Russell Richardson), The Fool (John Catterall) and Cordelia (Annamarie Bayley) shows how indigestible the absolute truth can be, albeit in a rather obscure manner.

For a truly successful combination of comedy and drama you have to turn to Diane Whitley’s Snapshots.  Bill and Sally are the victims of a surprise 40th wedding celebration hosted by their doting granddaughter Zoë and her new beau Greg.  Zoë has compiled a slideshow of photographs which mark the major landmarks in a long and apparently happy marriage.  Using an ingenious device, which director Chris Wright handles with slick assurance, the pictures are brought to life by the two younger actors while the older Bill and Sally comment on the action.  Glenn Cunningham and Tom Tyler-Shaw are utterly convincing as the old and young Bill, a carefree rocker trapped by an unwanted pregnancy who grows into a sympathetic and likeable character.  Ruth Evans and Rachael McGuinness have a harder job to make the shallow Sally into someone the audience can care about, but they do forge believable partnerships with their respective Bills.  This script is one of the best things I’ve seen at JB Shorts and demonstrates how much can be achieved in just 15 minutes on stage.

The equally assured finale is by Dave Simpson, who also employs a flash-back device for We’re All In This Together.  Rookie comedian Jack (James Quinn) has taken to the stage in an open mic comedy night and is lambasting the coalition government with a series of pitiful gags.  Only a performer as assured and funny as James Quinn could make Jack’s deliberately amateurish act come across as hilarious.  Every time the stand-up pillories some new government policy the action flashes back to show the impact it’s had on Jack’s own life and how thoroughly he’s been betrayed.  Peter Slater is also good value as his nerdy friend turned Lib Dem councillor.  We’re All In This Together is very much a topical comedy, and arguably pure agitprop.  But on the day Manchester University announced maximum student tuition fees of £9K, and mere hours after George Osborne’s second budget, the response from the crowd was vocal and enthusiastic. 

Small wonder even successful TV writers whose audiences are usually counted in the millions still get a kick from having their work performed live on stage.

On until Sat 2 April (NOT Sunday 27)
7pm (doors 6.40pm)
JOSHUA BROOKS, 106 Princess Street, MANCHESTER M1 6NG
(The junction of Charles St and Princess St, at the side of the BBC)
All Tickets : £5 (Pay on the Door)

Manchester International Festival today announced the full programme of new and specially commissioned work to be premiered in the city this summer.

The festival includes the previously announced play by Victoria Wood at Manchester Opera House; the collaboration between Marina Abramovic, Willem Dafoe, Robert Wilson and Antony (of Antony & the Johnsons) at The Lowry; and Mark Elder and the Hallé playing Wagner’s Die Walkure at the Bridgewater Hall.

There will also be exciting contributions from major international artists in every conceivable field.  And speaking of fields, the festival is going to have its very own sustainable, carbon-neutral farm supplying the Albert Square café.  However, far from being a verdant urban oasis, the vertical farm is situated in a disused tower block in the city; the project is intended to run up to the 2013 event.

Returning to the UK, the iconoclastic Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjork has been developing Biophilia (love of nature) for three years.  This melding of music, nature and science, which is only now possible thanks to recent developments in technology, will be performed at Campfield Market Hall next to the Museum of Science and Industry for comparatively intimate audiences of only 1800.  As well as creating the first “App Album”, the multi-media interactive shows include specially invented instruments such as a 30-foot high pendulum.

Blur’s Damon Albern and director Rufus Norris have focussed their attention on the Elizabethan code breaker, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and magician Doctor John Dee.  With live music on authentic period instruments and West African drums, and featuring 20 orchestral players, the project defies explanation but intriguingly we are promised magic, tunes and anthems.  Doctor Dee will also be seen at the Olympic Festival in June 2012.

In addition to the festival’s brief of commissioning world premieres, this time the artists have also been encouraged to re-imagine and reinterpret iconic events from the past.  Victoria Wood’s new play That Day We Sang is set in 1969 when a Granada TV documentary is marking the 40th anniversary of the legendary Manchester School Children’s Choir’s recording of Nymphs and Shepherds Come Away.  Switching between the two eras, the play is a love story about a pair of middle-aged people who might have a second chance in life.

Punchdrunk are taking over the Media City plaza on Salford Quays to create their first event for children, The Crash of the Elysium.  Aimed at an audience aged between 6 and 12 years, their co-conspirators include BBC North, BBC Wales and Steven Moffatt, and although the subject matter is super-secret they promise it’s something all will children love.

Art events include a range of activities both inside and outside the Whitworth Art Gallery, a group show at Manchester Art Gallery, and an LED wall in Lincoln Square.

Acknowledging Manchester’s place in musical history, both pop and classical, musicians at the festival include Sinead O’Conner, Snoop Dogg, Ricky Lee Jones, Alina Ibragimova and Paul Heaton (ex The Housemartins and The Beautiful South); and Sacred Sites brings internationally renowned performers of sacred song and recital to five different faith communities in Manchester.

The Pavilion Theatre on Albert Square will host an eclectic range of work and artists, with Johnny Vegas performing on stage for one week with his new show.

Promising something for everyone, and with at least one third of the tickets free, the 2011 Manchester International Festival sounds like a great proposition for this summer.

30 June-17 July 2011
Various venues, Manchester and Salford
www.mif.co.uk