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...