Sarah Frankcom Archives - North West End UK

Escaped Alone & What If If Only – Royal Exchange

13Feb

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Escaped Alone & What If If Only – Royal Exchange

Caryl Churchill has been feted amongst the theatrical fraternity for over half a century. Through her associations with The Royal Court and Joint Stock companies and their exploration of feminist themes and sexual identity, she was in the vanguard of gender politics, her style of writing and staging drawing comparisons with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. My exposure to her work has been limited to a production of ‘The Skriker’ at this theatre for the Manchester International Festival a decade ago, so I was keen to delve deeper into her worldview with this presentation of two of her later works as a double bill. Photo: Johan Persson Helmed by Sarah Frankcom, who, as the acclaimed former Artistic Director of this theatre, knows the opportunities and pitfalls of directing in this uni...

Work It Out – HOME Mcr

“Five, six, seven, eight - step right, swimming motion, move like Jagger, turn and again!” Exercise is good for us. We all know that. It is beneficial not just because it helps to shed a few pounds, it also gives a much-needed boost to our mental health. Progress over perfection is the key to success. Writer Eve Steele has produced a play so full of heart you can hear it pounding like the ticker of an unfit beginner at their first exercise class. This finely judged play is polemical when it needs to be, veers on the right side of sentimentality and brings together a wonderfully disparate group of characters. Together they become their own little mini community. They all have their problems including drug addiction, alcoholism, hoarding and overeating. Damaged and defeated they com...

Brief Encounter – Royal Exchange Theatre

Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 2 is undoubtedly one of the most famous pieces of music in cinematic history, the dark strains being synonymous with the 1945 David Lean directed 'Brief Encounter', its tone of repression and guilt defining a certain very English attitude to love and sex in the immediate post war period. The film was based on Noel Coward's pre war one-act play 'Still Life', and this festive season the Royal Exchange Theatre has turned this melancholy tale of squandered opportunity into a quirky and witty musical using songs exclusively from Coward's extensive back catalogue. The resulting Christmas confection is a soft fondant of nostalgic memory wrapped round a bittersweet centre. The central love story is the paper thin tale of Laura (Hannah Azuonye), an upper middle c...