Paul Wilcox, Author at North West End UK

9Sep

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

East Is East – Octagon Theatre

There is something rather unsettling about watching East Is East in 2026. Ayub Khan-Din's celebrated play, first staged in 1996 and set in Salford in 1971, was written at a time when Britain was beginning to confront the contradictions of a multicultural society. Thirty years on, Kash Arshad's new production arrives with the play's questions about identity, belonging, family and prejudice still perhaps too stubbornly relevant. Set above the Khan family's chip shop, the play introduces us to seven children negotiating the competing expectations of their Pakistani father George (Bhasker Patel) and English mother Ella (Samantha Power). George is determined that his children should embrace his version of Pakistani tradition; his offspring, born and raised in England, have rather differe...

Game of Thrones: The Mad King – RSC Stratford Upon Avon

8Aug

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

West Midlands

Game of Thrones: The Mad King – RSC Stratford Upon Avon

There is a particular excitement that accompanies a genuine theatrical event: not simply another adaptation of a familiar property, but the sense that a production is attempting something genuinely ambitious. Three days before its official press night, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s preview of Game of Thrones: The Mad King already feels like one of those rare occasions where expectation meets execution. Running for well over three and a half hours, with just a single twenty-minute interval, this is epic theatre in every sense. Remarkably, it rarely feels overextended. Director Dominic Cooke maintains an unerring grip on the pacing, while adaptor Duncan Macmillan has achieved something that should perhaps have been impossible: distilling George R.R. Martin’s vast mythology into a work t...

The Cherry Orchard – Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

22Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

West Midlands

The Cherry Orchard – Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

There is a temptation with The Cherry Orchard to treat it as a museum piece: a wistful farewell to a vanished aristocratic world wrapped in reverential melancholy. Laura Wade’s ambitious new version, directed by Tamara Harvey for the Royal Shakespeare Company, refuses to preserve Chekhov in aspic. It brings freshness and immediacy to one of theatre’s greatest farewell plays, though its determination to find contemporary clarity occasionally comes at the expense of some of the original’s quieter poetry and ambiguity. Written specifically for Harvey, the Swan Theatre and this ensemble, Wade’s adaptation is less concerned with reproducing Chekhov’s exact cadences than capturing the emotional and political forces beneath them. Purists may notice the freer language and sharper rhythms, but t...

20Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

The Boys We Were – The King’s Arms

Nostalgia has become a lucrative commodity. From Take That to Steps, the reunion tour has evolved into a reliable cultural ritual, inviting audiences to relive happier times while asking whether former stars can ever truly recapture the magic. Tom Peters’ The Boys We Were explores that familiar territory, using the reunion of fictional boyband The Boiz to examine friendship, regret and the uneasy transition from fleeting fame to ordinary life. Former manager Max (John Joyce-O’Keeffe) attempts to reunite his fractured protégés for a television special and tour, only to discover that old resentments have never really disappeared. Successful solo artist Jay (Rob Peters) remains estranged from Lee (Tom Peters), whose bitterness over the band’s collapse continues to simmer, while Ry (Bil...

16Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Anastasia – Z-Arts, Manchester

Like My Fair Lady wrapped in the fairy-tale romance of Cinderella, with occasional glimpses of the epic sweep and moral gravitas of Les Misérables, Anastasia is an ambitious musical that asks a great deal of its performers. Fortunately for Manchester Musical Youth, this exceptionally talented company proves more than equal to the challenge. There is something fitting about Anastasia becoming Manchester Musical Youth’s 40th production. For well over a decade, MMY has established itself as arguably Manchester’s leading youth musical theatre company, renowned for producing powerful vocal ensembles while continually raising its artistic ambitions. Under the assured leadership of Kimberly and Dave Holden, this milestone production demonstrates a company continuing to evolve, marrying its tra...

This Machine Kills Fascists – The Empty Space

10Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

This Machine Kills Fascists – The Empty Space

The words “This Machine Kills Fascists” emblazoned across Woody Guthrie’s guitar have become one of the defining images of American protest culture. In David Dunn’s spirited musical—ending a short UK tour as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe—that slogan becomes both mission statement and challenge, asking whether songs still possess the power to confront intolerance, inequality and authoritarianism in an increasingly polarised world. A musical biography of Guthrie could easily descend into reverential myth-making. Dunn wisely resists that temptation. Instead, he presents a man of extraordinary talent, fierce conviction and deeply uncomfortable contradictions. Guthrie’s loathing of racism and exploitation is rooted in a childhood overshadowed by poverty and by a father whose prej...

10Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Fun Home – Royal Exchange Theatre

In the same month that Something Rotten! delights audiences with its joyous Shakespearean irreverence at the Opera House, Manchester welcomes another long-awaited Broadway success whose journey across the Atlantic was delayed by the pandemic. Almost a decade after its Tony Award-winning run, Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking graphic memoir finally reaches the Royal Exchange, joining a growing wave of American musicals—including Dear Evan Hansen, Come From Away, Jagged Little Pill and next month’s London premiere of Kimberly Akimbo—that have reshaped the genre by favouring emotional realism over escapism. Its arrival continues the Royal Exchange’s renewed commitment to musical theatre. After years in which the genre appeared only occasionally in...

9Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

East – The King’s Arms

Nearly 50 years after its premiere, Steven Berkoff’s East still has the power to provoke. What was once notorious for its profanity and sexual explicitness now shocks for entirely different reasons. In 2026, it is the casual misogyny, blatant racism and everyday homophobia that land with the greatest force, exposing attitudes that have aged badly while prompting uncomfortable reflection on how much has – and hasn’t – changed. If Shakespeare met Shameless, the result would look much like East. Berkoff fuses muscular, poetic verse with the grit of London’s East End, creating a theatrical language that is exhilarating one moment and exhausting the next. Performed in the intimate surroundings of The Kings Arms as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe, Stir Crazy Productions fully embrac...

Punk Rock – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

10Jun

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Punk Rock – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

The highly successful Altrincham Garrick Studio season of productions centred around a Manchester theme concludes this week with a timely revival of Simon Stephens’ 2009 classroom drama Punk Rock. Under the direction of Meg Brassington, it demonstrates that the teenage concerns of more than a decade ago are, if anything, even more pertinent and relevant today. We meet our seven protagonists at a sixth-form college in Stockport. The action takes place during the autumn term of 2009 as they negotiate the pressures of forthcoming mock A-level examinations. However, any similarity to The History Boys and the cosy world of Alan Bennett nostalgia is quickly dispelled by the very different tone Stephens employs in his portrayal of tortured adolescence and teenage angst. In the hands of a le...

21May

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Even These Things – Royal Exchange

Anniversaries are the central plank of this season at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, with both the celebration of 50 years since the theatre was established and three decades since June 1996, when the explosion of the largest bomb in mainland Britain since WWII devastated the heart of the city centre. The latter is commemorated with Even These Things, a new piece of writing by Irish Mancunian Rory Mullarkey which seeks to place the bombing within the cultural identity of Manchester’s history and explain its part in the renaissance of the modern city. As with the city it celebrates, Even These Things is a complex creation: beautiful in individual parts, but one that does not always work together as a cohesive whole. The play comprises three acts — 110 minutes without an interval — spa...