Sweat – Royal Exchange Theatre
Set in 2000 and 2008, both ends of the Bush Presidency, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Sweat depicts life in Reading, Pennsylvania - a working class industrial town in the heart of America’s Northeast and Midwest Rust Belt. In this pre-Trump era we meet the locals who spend their down time and hard earned wages in a local bar and we follow their lives as they, the labour force, the working class community, are disenfranchised so significantly that the resulting anger led to reliable ‘blue’ states turning politically red and the Trump era began.
When entering the unique theatre in Manchester’s Royal Exchange my initial thoughts always head towards design. What have they done with the space? I am always excited to go into one of the most thrilling theatre spaces in the U...