UK Theatre Network

Eyes down for a full house, everyone!  It’s festival time here in Manchester, and to give visitors an authentic taste of life Up North the Royal Exchange Theatre has been transformed into a bingo hall for the duration.  With plastic chairs, dirty carpets, tea in polystyrene cups and flashing scoreboards around the auditorium, you almost believe you’re at the Gorton Mecca or Salford Gala.

Writer-director Neil Bartlett re-creates the full-on bingo experience with a cast of twenty actors who play the few remaining customers and skeleton staff of a run-down establishment which is on the brink of closing.  The regulars are a raggle-taggle crew who remain loyal, not to the hall, but to the ongoing hope of having a life-changing win - or even a win that will buy them a weekend away, clear their credit cards, pay for their wedding, or just feed and clothe their kids. 

The evening is an amazing hybrid of traditional scripted drama, verbatim theatre and site-specific installation, encompassing audience participation, Greek choruses and musical numbers.  Knowing full well that the usual Exchange audience will never have set foot inside a bingo hall, Neil Bartlett gives us a practical lesson in housey-housey, with clip-boards, game cards and “dabbers” (pens) under every seat, and the chance to play along in the second half for £200 of cash prizes every night.

Ian Puleston-Davies is the “caller” Frank, comparatively glamorous in his frilly dress shirt and bow tie, but after twenty-odd years he’s too old and jaded to enjoy the attention any more.

Sally Lindsay as Linda, the struggling manager, shows us exactly how she puts on a brave performance for the benefit of staff and customers to try and keep the old place alive.

Linda’s insubordinate staff members are Warren Sollars as sex-obsessed Joe, Amanda Henderson as gobby Joy and Emily Alexander as disdainful Debbie - all still young and full of life, they sizzle in a series of slick musical routines.

The fifteen actors who comprise the customers play their well-defined roles with impressive naturalism, but also slip easily into the stylised choric sequences, murmuring their hidden hopes like prayers.  The unity which the musical director Simon Deacon and movement director Struan Leslie achieve with this chorus is extraordinary.

Everybody Loves a Winner doesn’t really have a story or come to any profound conclusions (other than “you’ve got to be in it to win it” or “it could be you”), but it does provide the audience with an entertaining, involving and unique theatrical experience.

Everybody Loves a Winner is on until Saturday 1 August 2009

Prices: £8.50-£29.00

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

Matinees: Wed @ 2.30, Sat @ 4pm

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk

www.mif.co.uk