Decades Archives - North West End UK

Decades: 1970s/1980s/2000s – Leeds Playhouse

26May

By Paul ClarkeNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Decades: 1970s/1980s/2000s – Leeds Playhouse

To kick off their delayed 50th birthday celebrations the Playhouse team commissioned both experienced and newer creatives to create short monologues boldly trying to meld the history of Leeds and events across the north over six decades since they opened their doors.. They are offering all six as the King Lear of monologues, or two lots of three like tonight’s offering spanning three decades. There may be some obscure artistic reasoning behind this but it seems odd to run them out of sequence as doing so might have added to their power. As a veteran of the eighties Leeds anarchist and squat scene it must have tempting for Alice Nutter to offer a sugar-coated version of that scene, but typically in Nicer Than Orange Squash she offers an often funny indictment of the hypocrisy an...

Decades: Stories From The City 1990s/2010s/2020s – Leeds Playhouse

There is always a hum in any theatre before the lights go down, but tonight as creatives and an audience make that unique communion after months apart it feels like the air of expectation is off the scale as we uncomfortably sit in our masks. Typically, the Playhouse have not made it easy for themselves by offering returning theatre lovers six monologues that attempt to meld events from the seventies right through to lockdown with a potted social history of Leeds For me monologues are biggest of all challenge for the writers, performers and this audience who are just relived to be sat in a dark space at last. It is like stand up with a script as there is no place to go if goes wrong, no-one to bounce off and if the writing is even marginally off it can be torture for all concer...

Casting announced for Decades: Stories from the city at Leeds Playhouse

Leeds Playhouse has announced the six actors who will perform in their Decades: Stories from the city season as they reopen their doors for their 50th anniversary celebrations. They will perform short monologues by a heavyweight group of writers including Poet Laureate Simon Armitage who will be joined by Leanna Benjamin, Kamal Kaan, Alice Nutter, Maxine Peake and Stan Owens. All the writers have strong connections to the Playhouse, so have each taken a particular decade from across the Playhouse’s lifespan covering the 1970s to the 2020s tracing the city’s changes over that time. Isobel Coward will star in Alice Nutter’s Nicer Than Orange Squash, Eva Scott is in Maxine Peake’s Don’t You Know It’s Going To Be Alright and Cassie Layton performs Kamal K...