Canal Street Lonely Hearts Club – Hope Mill Theatre

With an inspired creative vision, the updating of a theatre piece can breathe new life into it, bringing entirely new meanings to the story and characters. The gender-swapped Company revival provided a female-centric look at the thirty-five-and-still-single life, questioning societal expectations, while &Juliet allows the queerness of Shakespeare to be a lot more overt. But when Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club writer Jonathan Harvey‘s motivation for a modern, Northern version of his 90s London-based play doesn’t go beyond ‘f*** it, why not?’, its purpose is thrown into question before the curtain has even lifted.

In a Canal Street flat, two brothers (Shaun, straight and Marti, gay) contemplate their love lives as the former’s girlfriend is being unresponsive while on holiday in Barbados, and the latter struggles to express his affection towards anyone.

This bare-bones plot trundles along, impeded by extraneous dialogue before seemingly going backwards on more than one occasion as some scenes near enough replay themselves. It’s kitchen sink with only the occasional drip of drama. The irrelevancy of the Gay Village setting stings: shout-outs to vague localities such as Didsbury and Blackpool are present, but there’s no nod to any particular club when Marti declares he’s simply going ‘out on the street’!

Attempts to adapt the script into a contemporary setting are almost exclusively limited to sigh-inducing political references, though this evening’s audience revelled in the abundant boomer humour. The semi-reliance on technology in our smartphone-dominated world makes for unconvincing plot points for which our disbelief must be suspended to a non-viable level for the story to work.

As Shaun and Marti, James Sprague and Cameron McKendrick respectively captivate during moments of tension between the brothers- a few false starts from Sprague aside. Nick Collier charms as hopeless romantic Dean, Riah Amelle’s George irks with an excessive Southern accent, while Lucy Hilton-Jones’ Clarine is a crowd-pleaser. However, playing a character with dissociative identity disorder for laughs so relentlessly does not come across as progressive nor comical to this reviewer.

An abrupt and jarring conclusion confirms that this dusty fossil of a play is better off remaining in the past.

Canal Street Lonely Hearts Club continues at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester until 14^th September with tickets available from https://hopemilltheatre.co.uk/event/canal-street-lonely-hearts-club/

Reviewer: Scot Cunningham

Reviewed: 4^th September 2025

North West End UK Rating: