The King’s Arms Archives - North West End UK

1Aug

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Bad Habits – The King’s Arms

Imagine Sister Act crashing headlong into St Trinian’s and you’ve got the gloriously chaotic energy of Bad Habits. Stu Meevens’ irreverent comedy throws a convent into crisis as an eccentric order of nuns hatch an increasingly ridiculous plan to save their home from becoming a supermarket, by stealing a collection of holy relics, resulting in two hours of organised theatrical mayhem. Meevens’ script is packed with one-liners, running gags and knowingly daft wordplay. The sisters’ names alone range from gloriously cheesy to outrageously NSFW that would make the Pope blush. Not every joke is original, but even the more telegraphed punchlines land thanks to the confidence and commitment of an experienced cast who know exactly how to sell them. Leading the convent is Dale Vicker’s wo...

21Jul

By Dan GrimesNo Comments

North West

paywall – The King’s Arms

This was my first trip to The King’s Arms, and this 54-seat black-box venue, nestled in the historic heart of Salford, felt like the perfect setting for this one-woman show, performed as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. Written and performed by Neysa Killeen, a self-styled Irish storyteller, the play begins in medias res with Lizzie, a 27-year-old woman, making the difficult decision to leave her Dublin flat and return home to the unwelcoming arms of her father. Defeated in her quest to become a hard-hitting investigative journalist by a combination of the stitched-up patriarchy and the cost-of-living crisis, Lizzie’s story charts her personal journey from a small child dubbed ‘cold’ by her aunt on the day of her mother’s funeral to a wrung-out postgraduate struggling to pay h...

20Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

The Boys We Were – The King’s Arms

Nostalgia has become a lucrative commodity. From Take That to Steps, the reunion tour has evolved into a reliable cultural ritual, inviting audiences to relive happier times while asking whether former stars can ever truly recapture the magic. Tom Peters’ The Boys We Were explores that familiar territory, using the reunion of fictional boyband The Boiz to examine friendship, regret and the uneasy transition from fleeting fame to ordinary life. Former manager Max (John Joyce-O’Keeffe) attempts to reunite his fractured protégés for a television special and tour, only to discover that old resentments have never really disappeared. Successful solo artist Jay (Rob Peters) remains estranged from Lee (Tom Peters), whose bitterness over the band’s collapse continues to simmer, while Ry (Bil...

9Jul

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

East – The King’s Arms

Nearly 50 years after its premiere, Steven Berkoff’s East still has the power to provoke. What was once notorious for its profanity and sexual explicitness now shocks for entirely different reasons. In 2026, it is the casual misogyny, blatant racism and everyday homophobia that land with the greatest force, exposing attitudes that have aged badly while prompting uncomfortable reflection on how much has – and hasn’t – changed. If Shakespeare met Shameless, the result would look much like East. Berkoff fuses muscular, poetic verse with the grit of London’s East End, creating a theatrical language that is exhilarating one moment and exhausting the next. Performed in the intimate surroundings of The Kings Arms as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe, Stir Crazy Productions fully embrac...

Sheila’s Island – The King’s Arms, Salford

12Feb

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

North West

Sheila’s Island – The King’s Arms, Salford

Something quite special has been slowly brewing over the last couple of years at the King's Arms pub in Salford — and not just the excellent pint of Guinness. In this side-street boozer, incongruously wedged between Salford Central station and the bustling ring road, the husband-and-wife team of Colin and Lisa Connor have quietly established the tiny theatre nestled in the roof as a prime destination to see challenging and rewarding productions in the city centre. This dynamic duo have now taken the next step in their development by creating The Kings, a company of actors and creatives designed to showcase the wonderful talent our regional theatre network offers. First out of the blocks for The Kings is Sheila's Island by Tim Firth, a reworking of his earlier Neville's Island from 1...

10Nov

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Playing Burton – The King’s Arms

Many times, actors get labelled as icons, legends and titans of their craft. Richard Burton was someone who would be extolled as such yet tempered by opinions that his was a wasted talent, squandered in the depths of a bottle of gin and never truly realised on account of his untimely death at the age of 58. Resurrecting the man via Mark Jenkin’s rich and lyrical script is a tall order for anyone, especially where they are required to hold their audience through a long monologue. And Burton was renowned for his love of the spoken word whether in the prose of Shakespeare, the poetry of Dylan Thomas or within the scripts of the Hollywood epics he was adored for, so delivery is critical. Off the bat, Sean Cernow neither looks, nor sounds, like Burton so it is best to put a pin in ...

28Jul

By Hannah KellyNo Comments

North West

Flat 4 – The King’s Arms

Influenced by her own experiences and trauma, Isobel Songer’s ‘Flat 4’ is a powerful one-woman show that forms part of the Greater Manchester Fringe 2025 at the King’s Arms Theatre. Impressively, Songer has both written the play and performs the roles of all characters and monologues within the story. Through its entirety, ‘Flat 4’ demandsthe audience’s undivided attention. The performance is essentially about the complexities of female friendships, introducing ‘Alex’ and ‘Becks’ and their flat share at university. Songer guides the audience through Alex’s downwards spiral as she deals with abuse, anorexia and her subsequent depression. The combination of spoken word poetry alongside theatre is an interesting approach to the story. Integrating frequent poetic monologues ...

26Jul

By Angela KellyNo Comments

North West

The Invocation – The King’s Arms

In one of the most suited theatres for such a performance, the King's Arms welcomes "The Invocation", a bizarre twilight zone-esque evening by Casino Improv, an Improv troupe from Wigan as part of Greater Manchester Fringe.As the audience settled into their seats, the cast, clad in black clothing and red capes, began engaging with the audience in a ceremonial fashion as they asked for "requests" that could be improvised into a horror story. The requests chosen were randomly selected via an iPad and then the stories began!The evening then essentially became the presentation of a bunch of improvised horror stories in a hilarious "off the cuff" style by the comedy quintet. Eerie music and various sounds to accompany stories were used throughout. There is no denying the talent on stage and the...

26Jul

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Robo Bingo 2.0 – The King’s Arms

‘IT Consultants’ Lloyd Henning and Peter Sutton, better known as Foxdog Studios, have, in true IT style ‘turned it off and on again’ on one of their popular shows, Robo Bingo, rebooted as 2.0 with new wi-fi, new games and a whole lot of new coding headaches to keep both our dynamic duo and audience on their virtual toes. Mixing Flight of the Conchords musical jamming with the social awkwardness of The IT Crowd, Foxdog invite the audience to play along not only in games of bingo but also classic childhood games of Snap, Guess Who and Spot the Difference albeit constantly interrupted with a variety of pop-ups and other technological interludes. Henning and Sutton are a charming and witty duo, with quips and quick thinking as they navigate the chaos, bringing gales of laughte...

24Jul

By Angela KellyNo Comments

North West

Soaked – The King’s Arms

As Greater Manchester Fringe makes a welcome return, The King’s Arms is appropriately in the hub of it all again! This time, directed by Peter Macqueen, the play ‘Soaked’, a La'al Marra production, is gracing its stage. Written by Emma Rydal, ‘Soaked’ it is a story that many can identify with. The writing seems effortless, and the main characters could be any one of us chatting, interacting and simply trying to juggle life. Soaked is an intelligent piece of theatre with no pretentions and a thought-provoking storyline. At times it felt like the audience were presented with potentially a challenge as to whether it was appropriate to laugh or not. There are some seriously amusing parts of the play and Emma Rydal must be applauded for interjecting humour into such a serious thread of ...