Steve Connolly Archives - North West End UK

27Oct

By Rachel FosterNo Comments

North West

Fred – The Kings Arms

Trish and Danny are getting divorced and are having couples counselling to finalise the finer details such as who gets custody of Fred and the couples’ assets, it’s never going to be plain sailing. Their Counsellor Marc has disappeared out of the blue, so they get another counsellor Ellie at the last minute played by Louise Wilson. Louise has appeared in Coronation St as Nurse Lingard. She takes a brilliant part as the slightly unhinged replacement therapist who turns out to be Marc’s partner. Complicated? Yes. The dialogue is carefully concocted to reflect real life woes. Themes of jealousy, infidelity and conflict in relationships are brought to life in a sparklingly realistic way. The gender divide is comically highlighted with seething dialogue as the couple lock horns and take s...

3Sep

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

Noir Goes Stateside!

After a successful streaming run in the UK and Europe, the new play NOIR inspired by 40s and 50s black and white movies, will finally be available in America and the rest of the world as it joins the fantastic theatre streaming site OVERTURE+. Produced by the award-winning UK theatre company Vertigo Theatre Productions, NOIR tells the story of Veronica Smart (Emma Morgan), a beautiful 40-year-old woman with dreams of stardom and a 16-year marriage to Cliff Smart (John Tueart), a successful New York businessman. Now bored with life and the marriage decaying, she wants out, and she will do anything to make that happen. Meeting a group of teenagers at the local school where she works, including the rebellious but broken Jimmy Flynn (Richard Allen), sets in motion a plan that will include ...

23Jul

By Louise PennNo Comments

REVIEWS

Noir – Vertigo Theatre Company

Veronica Smart is as smart as her name. Ambitious, alluring, avaricious. Everything a femme fatale should be. In Vertigo Theatre Company’s 150-minute thriller, filmed largely in black and white with one colour – red – highlighting moments of action or arousal, Mrs Smart plots a dark and sordid revenge when she finds her husband Cliff in flagrante with his secretary. This tawdry tale is introduced by Detective Sal Pelletier, a gravel-voiced man with a permanent cigarette in his hand. As he recounts scene by scene, he watches as we do as the story unfolds. Writer/director Craig Hepworth and producer Karl Burge man the cameras (which are mobile phones) and brought their nine strong cast together in a versatile location – the Great Northern Warehouse in Manchester. Without any experie...

The original play NOIR is coming to Stream.Theatre from July 23rd

6Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

NEWS

The original play NOIR is coming to Stream.Theatre from July 23rd

After a critically acclaimed try out production in Manchester in 2017, the original play Noir was set to return in 2020, but then the world stopped due to the pandemic. Out of wanting to keep theatre alive, actors acting and audiences enjoying, the writer/director and producers at Vertigo Theatre Productions, armed with only camera phones, gathered the cast safely in a giant warehouse to put up the production without an audience and film the show on those phones, and not just that, but film it in the style of a black and white movie. Noir is set in past New York and tells the story of Veronica Smart, a beautiful but manipulative woman who is married to a man unworthy of her love as she lives a life she never really wanted. After starting a new job at the local high school, Veronica mana...