Large Theatres – Live Art Alive

FUN HOME

Some musicals leave you humming a catchy tune on the journey home. Fun Home leaves you quietly sifting through your own memories, wondering how families can be built from equal measures of love, silence and misunderstanding. Director Sarah Frankcom returns to The Royal Exchange with this deeply affecting production to embrace that complexity with grace, intelligence and emotional precision.

Based on Alison Bechdel’s celebrated graphic memoir, Fun Home traces the cartoonist’s journey through childhood, adolescence and adulthood as she attempts to understand both her own identity and the enigmatic father she lost too soon. Rather than following a straightforward chronology, memories collide, overlap and revisit each other, reflecting the way recollection really works. It is less a story and more an excavation of the childhood memories that flood in as we unpack the boxes of possessions that so often come to represent the lives of our loved ones after death. For any of us who have grappled with delving through the personal objects of family members there is the joy of reconnecting but also the shock at what new insights may be revealed. Here there is the added poignancy of watching Alison grapple with these memories as she stands on the cusp of being the same age as her father when he chose to end his life.

The Royal Exchange provides an ideal setting for such intimate archaeology. Its in-the-round staging places the audience almost inside Alison’s memories, close enough to catch every flicker of uncertainty and every carefully concealed hurt as the adult Alison sensitively portrayed by the wonderful Jodie McNee looks back at her past.

The performances are all very strong , with each of the three Alisons capturing different shades of the same searching soul. Their transitions between childhood curiosity, teenage awakening and adult reflection feel seamless, allowing the audience to witness a life gradually assembling itself from fragments. There is a rotating cast of 3 ensembles playing the children and Harriet O’Shea sets the bar very high as young Alison delivering a phenomenal performance. Her rendition of Ring of Keys is a gorgeous portrayal of a pivotal moment of self-recognition.

At its emotional centre stands Bruce Bechdel, a complex man grappling with his own sexuality and penchant for very young men. Nigel Harman portrays this troubled perfectionist as both vulnerable and loving yet emotionally unreachable. He is a man trapped by expectations that slowly become impossible to sustain as his secret life starts to bleed through into his immaculately constructed persona. His relationship with Alison unfolds not through grand revelations but through fleeting moments that, with hindsight, carry enormous weight. It is a heartbreaking reminder that understanding often arrives after the opportunity for conversation has disappeared.

Jeanine Tesori’s richly textured score avoids theatrical bombast, instead allowing emotion to emerge naturally from the characters’ inner lives. Lisa Kron’s book is witty, perceptive and quietly devastating, balancing moments of genuine humour with profound sadness. There is the painfully haunting Days and Days as a mother reflects on a fractured marriage, but also the joyous coffin scene with Come to the Fun Home where the kids make a commercial for their family funeral Home which has an infectious Car Wash feel.

The production resists sentimentality, trusting its audience to sit with ambiguity rather than resolve it. McNee is a good conduit for that level of emotional delicacy as we watch her witness and absorb her memories, although there are points where its frustrating to see such a fine actress often on the sidelines. The light touch pays off and Frankcom clearly understands that grief is not always loud; often it whispers through remembered conversations, unfinished sentences and questions that linger for decades.

Fun Home ultimately becomes less about sexuality or family secrets than about the universal longing to be truly seen by the people we love. It acknowledges that parents are complicated, children can be unreliable historians of their own lives, and forgiveness is rarely complete.

This exquisite Royal Exchange production is compassionate without becoming sentimental, emotionally rich without manipulation, and its impact continues to resonate long after you leave the theatre. It doesn’t simply tell Alison Bechdel’s story. It gently invites us to reconsider our own and those of our parents and of our children.

★★★★☆

Jodie McNee as Alison in Fun Home at The Royal Exchange Theatre. Image credit: Johan Persson

The Royal Exchange Theatre 3rd July – 1st August 2026

THE SURGE: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor

Contemporary Dance, Large Theatres

The cast of THE SURGE.
Image credit: Tom Visser

Music and Text by Sinead O’Connor

Direction and Choreography by Sonya Tayeh

The Hall, AVIVA STUDIOS

★★★★☆

Whatever it may bring, I will live by my own policies, I will sleep with a clear conscience, I will sleep in peace. If I hope for anything as an artist, it’s that I inspire certain people to be who they really are. My audiences seem to be people who have been given a hard time for being who they are.

Sinéad O’Connor, Rememberings 2021

Few artists have worn their wounds as defiantly as Sinéad O’Connor with a voice that could cradle grief one moment before erupting into righteous fury the next. THE SURGE, premiering in Manchester before moving to New York, creates a compelling tidal pull between the vulnerability and rebellion that defines the essence of both the artist and the woman.

This is dance theatre fuelled less by narrative than by sensation. The movement surges in relentless waves, bodies gathering and scattering as though caught between communion and isolation. At times such as during Tiny Grief Song, bodies ripple and flow like drifting notes scattering across a sheet of music. Sonya Toyeh’s choreography oscillates between explosive physical release and moments of almost unbearable stillness, allowing silence to speak as eloquently as movement. At its best, the company captures the contradictions that made O’Connor such an unforgettable presence: tenderness wrapped in steel, fragility refusing to surrender with a celtic unwillingness to go gently into that good night.

O’Connor’s own narration from her 2021 memoir Rememberings and her glorious music sit at the heart of the evening and are thoughtfully woven into the choreography. Sound and movement converse, each amplifying the emotional resonance of the other. There are passages where the dancers appear almost possessed by rhythm, rather than simply responding to it, creating images that linger long after the lights fade. The lighting design by Tom Visser perfectly complements the choreography and lights the dancers as though they are caught in multiple tableaux from an Annie Leibovitz shoot.

Visually, the production possesses an austere beauty. The stage feels both expansive and intimate, with lighting carving shifting emotional landscapes from shadow and glare. Costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa avoid easy iconography, hinting at O’Connor’s unmistakable silhouette without reducing her to imitation. The result is an aesthetic that honours her spirit rather than attempting to recreate it.

Jennifer Nugent in THE SURGE
Image credit: Tom Visser.

The ten mature dancers bring their skill and passion, blended with years of technical and life experience to this labour of love and it shows in every nuanced and physically demanding movement. As a ninety minute dance piece, not every sequence lands with equal force. Some extended ensemble passages begin to circle familiar emotional territory, slightly diluting the production’s otherwise fierce momentum. Yet even these quieter moments feel purposeful, reflecting the repetitive cycles of pain, resilience and renewal that shaped O’Connor’s life. In Just Like U Said It Would B they are like whirling dervishs set free in a chapel at midnight. Lisa Race is compelling in I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got while Karine Plantadit seems to fragment during the haunting Tiny Grief Song. Bold, vibrant moments like Red Football and Mandinka have much of the audience yearning to join in.

What ultimately makes THE SURGE so affecting is its refusal to canonise its subject. There is no sanitised martyrdom here. Instead, the work embraces complexity, inviting us to remember a woman who challenged institutions, expectations and audiences alike, often at enormous personal cost. It asks us not simply to mourn Sinéad O’Connor but to consider why voices like hers remain so necessary.

By the closing moments, the stage seems charged with something approaching collective remembrance. The applause that follows feels less like appreciation for technical accomplishment than gratitude for an act of artistic courage. THE SURGE does not attempt to explain Sinéad O’Connor. It honours her by embodying the uncompromising emotional truth she carried throughout her life. Like the woman herself, it refuses to soften its edges, and is all the more powerful for it.

AVIVA STUDIOS 25th 27th June 2026

The Joyce Theater 16th- 27th September 2026

PRIVATE LIVES

Large Theatres

Written by Noel Coward

Directed by Blanche McIntyre

Royal Exchange Theatre

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The wonderfully acerbic sparring of a Noel Coward play will always ensure at least a semi decent night out at the theatre. This new production by Blanche McIntyre rises to the top like a perfectly placed olive in a good Martini. However it perhaps offers one that leaves the audience more stirred than shaken. Here the warring couples may deftly fire their insults but ultimately McIntyre never allows the barbs and violence to descend into palpable danger. It is perhaps telling that by the end, the stage is littered with uncrushed grapes and dainty rolls of cold meat instead of shards of glass and broken ashtrays.

The interplay between Steve John Shepherd and Jill Halfpenny as the couple locked into this love/hate relationship is capable of sparkling like a well cut diamond that can slice through glass but stops short of inciting the full horror of domestic cruelty. Shepherd is excellent dropping comic lines and acerbic asides with perfect timing. All laconic, louche style that perfectly evokes a rakish matinee-idol of the period, he is simply a joy to watch. Jill Halfpenny gives a more inscrutable study of Amanda, at times cool and emotionally distant, then full of kittenish charm before she unleashes some formidable claws. They make for an attractive pairing but their onstage chemistry does not always convince as a couple who can neither live together or be apart.

The unfortunate other spouses in this messy marital ménagerie are Victor and Sybil. Daniel Miller is a perfect foil as the dependable but stuffy “cotton wool Englishman” who embarks on the honeymoon from hell as his bride elopes with her ex and he ends up lumbered with the hysterical Sybil. Shazia Nicholls certainly leans into the shrewish dramatics of an abandoned bride but never fully convinces as the naive young bride wed to an older dashing suitor. The costume designs are on point for the period but somehow make this bride look rather matronly beside the older but much more stylish Amanda. In the final scene Miller finally unravels and rather like Basil Faulty and his very own Sybil, the two spurned partners descend into the marital mayhem as Elyot and Amanda sit back and watch gleefully like tricoteuses at the guillotine.

The set design by Dick Bird perfectly evokes the style and class of the world as seen by Coward. Sleek chrome gleams alongside the sharp black and white decor in the first half while a cosy but messily chic Parisienne apartment is the setting for the couples second attempt at domestic bliss. Both effectively serve a production in the round to illustrate the ring of a wedding band and the circular pattern of a couple locked in the hamster wheel of a toxic relationship. There are however some issues with this revolving set. It can be highly effective in providing some high points of theatrical drama as it moves to the emotional tempo of the production but it is highly frustrating if you end up at other points with half the performers faces obscured by parts of the set.

Private Lives is stylish, intermittently sharp, but ultimately too well-behaved for a play that should leave scorch marks. The laughs are guaranteed given Coward’s ability to write snappy dialogue that still entertains. Yet when violence erupts it fails to shock and gets watered down into clumsy antics where the only truly lasting damage is inflicted on the grand piano. In a modern world so keenly aware of the lasting harm of physical and psychological domestic abuse, McIntyre may feel compelled to be well-behaved and mindful but Coward’s original text was never intended to be morally sanitised.

Royal Exchange Theatre 27th March- 2nd May 2026

A Christmas Carol

Large Theatres

Adapted by Deborah McAndrew

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A warm, witty, and wonderfully human A Christmas Carol seasoned with some Yorkshire grit.

Leeds Playhouse once again unwraps its annual festive treat, and this year’s A Christmas Carol is a glowing, golden bauble of a production. Set in Victorian Yorkshire wool mill, it’s traditional enough to satisfy the purists, yet peppered with just enough invention to keep the tale feeling spry, spirited, and surprisingly fresh.

From the moment the ensemble spills onto the stage, singing carols with crisp winter harmonies, there’s an infectious sense of festive togetherness. The production leans into the story’s communal heart: figures materialise from the shadows to become narrators, townsfolk, ghosts, and even Scrooge’s own conscience, creating a fluid world where past, present and future overlap like swirling snowflakes.

At the centre of it all is Reece Dinsdale as a sharply etched, quietly devastating Ebenezer Scrooge. The performance is refreshingly understated; rather than a cartoon miser, we’re given a man worn down by choices, loss, and habit. This gives the eventual thawing of that famously icy heart real emotional heft and makes his giddy transition into festive joy all the more delightful.

The Ghosts are a particular triumph. Bea Clancy as The Past arrives with a gentle, moonlit glow, weaving memory and melancholy together with a dancer’s grace. Claudia Kariuki bursts in with boisterous charm, a living embodiment of abundance and goodwill, sweeping the audience into laughter with every generous gesture. Their performance is a real scene stealer and when surrounded by the human dancing baubles, this is a real highpoint in this production that evokes part big Hollywood musical, part grand burlesque production. And the wraithlike Ghost of Christmas Future is evoked with spare, elegant, and utterly silent drama that is visually haunting and remains chilling in its simplicity, a reminder that even the most festive tale has its shadows.

Claudia Kariuki as The Ghost of Christmas Present. Image credit: Helen Murray

The Cratchit family, The Fezziwigs and Scrooge’s nephew, Fred are all the embodiment of good nature and strength in adversity. Their scenes perfectly highlight everything that Scrooge has loss in his quest for financial success. The deaf actors in the Cratchit family are highly effective giving some beautiful moments such as Nadia Nadarajah giving a silent but deadly takedown of Scrooge while Stephen Collins brings a gentle warmth to every scene as Bob.

Visually, this production is a feast. The set design by Hayley Grindle conjures Victorian Leeds with warm lamplight, crisp silhouettes, and a set that expands and contracts like the folds of a storybook. Costumes shimmer with earthy, Dickensian texture, while clever lighting shifts the tone from cosy hearthside scenes to eerie graveyard gloom in an instant. Music plays a starring role with brass band music in the background and live accompaniment on stage threading through the piece, giving it the feel of a carol concert wrapped in theatrical magic.

If there’s the occasional moment where the pacing softens or a sentimental beat lingers a little too long, it’s easily forgiven in a production that so wholeheartedly embraces the season’s spirit. This isn’t a radical reinvention, nor does it try to be. Instead, it’s a lovingly crafted, community-minded Christmas retelling that understands exactly why audiences return to Dickens year after year. Director Amy Leach knows the Playhouse audience well from her tenure as Associate Artistic Director and as always is a deft hand at creating work that is incredibly inclusive which never veers into tokenism.

Warm, witty, and full of heart, Leeds Playhouse’s A Christmas Carol is a festive hug in theatrical form. A show that sends you back out into the night believing, just a little bit more, in kindness, generosity, and second chances.

LEEDS PLAYHOUSE 20th Nov ’25 – 17th Jan ’26

The Rock’n’Roll Panto 2025: Jack and The Beanstalk

Large Theatres, Pantomime

Jack and The Beanstalk at Liverpool Everyman. Image credit: Ellie Kurtz

Written by Chloe Moss

Directed by Kash Arshad

LIVERPOOL EVERYMAN

Review: Jack and the Beanstalk at Liverpool Everyman – a riotous, rebellious beanstalk bonanza.

Liverpool Everyman‘s annual rock ’n’ roll panto has always been more punk spirit than polished pageant, and Jack and the Beanstalk is no exception. In fact, this year’s offering may be the purest distillation yet of the theatre’s trademark magic: equal parts gleeful anarchy, local in-jokes, powerhouse vocals and the kind of good-natured silliness that could thaw even the frostiest Merseyside December.

From the moment the fabulous Adam Keast bursts onstage as Fairy Spacecake, it’s clear we’re in very safe and very outrageous hands. This is a show that doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as tickle it, tease it, and invite it on a night out down Hardman Street. The ensemble, every one of them actor-musician dynamos, bounce between instruments with the casual swagger of people who can absolutely shred a guitar solo and belt out a big ballad without breaking a sweat despite the non breathable costumes and the plethora of wigs.

Liam Tobin as Vera in Jack and The Beanstalk at Liverpool Everyman.
Image Credit: Ellie Kurtz

Malek Alkoni as Jack our hero is a hapless dreamer who initially seems less at home in panto than his comrades but gains confidence as the show progresses. Liam Tobin is the Everyman panto dame, Vera, who turns up in outfits loud enough to be seen from space and delivers zinger after zinger with sharp comic precision. Amy Bastani is delightful as Jill and delivers some great vocals and harmonies. Even Daisy the cow (Elaine Hua Jones) has a scene-stealing number clad in a fabulous costume by Katie Scott. The ubiquitous star is Everyman panto stalwart Adam Keast who is a master of sly innuendo, always delivered with insouciant twinkly, charm.

The script, as ever, is a glorious mash-up: camp, cheeky, locally flavoured and just the right shade of ridiculous. You’ll get your beans and your beanstalk, sure, but you’ll also get a surprisingly sharp political aside, a slapstick chase sequence, and a musical playlist so crowd-pleasing it should probably come with a government warning. Expect everything from disco to pop-punk to a power ballad so earnest it might genuinely move you.

What makes the Everyman panto special isn’t just the gags or the tunes, it’s the warmth. The company radiates joy, the audience throws it back, and before you know it you’re on your feet, shouting, singing, and momentarily forgetting that you’re a fully grown adult who came in for “something seasonal” and is now screaming encouragement at a quirky Goose.

The set ramps up the fun with a beanstalk ascent that’s impressively bonkers, more DIY-in-the-best-way than Disney, and all the better for it. And when the giant finally appears… well, let’s just say the Designer Katie Scott clearly had a very good time and the result is delightfully unhinged.

In short: Jack and the Beanstalk at Liverpool Everyman is a raucous, big-hearted triumph that is exactly the kind of festive escapism that reminds you why pantomime, done properly and with plenty of swagger, remains one of theatre’s greatest communal pleasures. A giant of a good time.

LIVERPOOL EVERYMAN 15th November ’25 – 17th January ’26

PERFECT SHOW FOR RACHEL

British Sign Language, Large Theatres

Directed by Rachel O’Mahony

Part of S¡ck Festival

CONTACT MCR THEATRE

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Perfect Show For Rachel by ZooCo is a piece that glows with the kind of truthfulness most productions only gesture toward. It is equal parts a live theatrical experiment, a portrait of family and a celebration of difference – not difference as a hurdle to be explained, but as a source of humour, beauty, unpredictability, and creative force. If you’ve ever watched a piece of theatre and thought, “This could all be improved if a single audience member was given total creative control”, then Perfect Show For Rachel delivers your fantasy in all its anarchic, heart-squeezing glory.

At the centre of the show is Rachel, a Director with learning disabilities who lives in a care home. It is her wants, whims and wonderfully unfiltered decisions that shape the entire evening. The rules are simple: Rachel picks what happens next by pressing one of 39 buttons in front of her and everyone else – cast, crew, and a theatre full of wide-eyed onlookers have to get on board with her choices. There is something delightfully subversive about seeing seasoned performers waiting in earnest for Rachel’s next instruction like students waiting for the supply teacher to hand out stickers.

The cast of Perfect Show For Rachel.
Image credit: Ikin Yum

The humour is baked into this unpredictability. One moment we’re in a nightclub, the next there’s a monologue about friendship or a skit about farts. Then we’re playing human skittles or at a Kylie Minogue concert. Watching the cast pivot gracefully (and sometimes less gracefully) from one idea to the next is half the fun; watching Rachel delight in her own power is the other half.

But beneath the joyful absurdity beats a genuinely moving heart. Perfect Show for Rachel is not just a gimmick, it’s a celebration of Rachel’s autonomy, creativity, and presence. The production quietly dismantles the idea that theatre needs to be controlled, polished or predictable to be meaningful. In fact, the show’s most affecting moments come precisely from its unpredictability: the tender pauses, the tiny negotiations, the shared laughter that ripples across the room when something goes unplanned and the cast doubles down with absolute sincerity.

The ensemble’s generosity is extraordinary. They listen, they follow, they honour each choice Rachel makes with unforced respect. The flexibility required is Olympian; the warmth is palpable. For a piece that could easily tip into gimmickry, ZooCo instead crafts something that feels radical in its simplicity: a show shaped by a woman whose voice is often overlooked in wider society, placed at the unarguable centre.

Perhaps the show’s greatest achievement is the way it quietly challenges traditional theatrical power dynamics. Who gets to decide? Who gets to lead? Who gets to be witnessed? Here, the answers are beautifully, deliberately redistributed. And in doing so, the production becomes more than a tribute. Instead it becomes an act of radical inclusion, woven through with affection and wit.

In the end, Perfect Show for Rachel is not “perfect” in the polished, predictable, dramaturgical sense. It’s perfect in a far more meaningful way: it’s honest. It’s alive. It’s a reminder that theatre is at its most thrilling when it surrenders to the messy, joyous logic of being human.

CONTACT MCR THEATRE 19th – 22nd Nov 2025

Breaking The Code

Large Theatres, Uncategorized

Written by Hugh Whitemore with a new epilogue by Neil Bartlett

Directed by Jesse Jones

A Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Landmark Theatres and Oxford Playhouse co-production in association with Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and HOME

HOME MCR

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This timely revival of Breaking the Code offers a moving, finely judged portrayal of genius under siege. Hugh Whitemore’s play about Alan Turing; the mathematician, Enigma Code war hero, and victim of Britain’s criminalisation of homosexuality might be almost four decades old, but in this production it feels achingly relevant and startlingly humane.

At the centre is a beautifully modulated performance by Mark Edel‑Hunt as Turing. He resists the temptation to play Turing as an eccentric caricature and instead finds something wonderfully fragile and real. His speech patterns, social awkwardness, and flashes of impish humour combine to give the role a quiet power. The moments when intellect falters in the face of love or shame are especially affecting as life unravels. This is a truly mesmerising performance as Edel-Hunt gives us a stuttering misfit who visibly soars when describing mathematical theorems and who yearns for love and affection.

Director Jesse Jones keeps the staging spare and fluid, allowing the story’s emotional logic to unfold like a mathematical proof. The use of minimalistic design and subtle lighting anchors the production in its historical moment while underlining Turing’s eerie prescience about the modern digital world. The simplicity allows for a fluid and believable transition through the numerous vignette pieces which weave together this study of Turing the man and the genius.

The rest of the cast are impressive with Susie Trayling as Turing’s mother and Joe Usher as his ill-fated lover bringing moral texture and earthy warmth, ensuring that this is no sterile biopic but a living, breathing human drama. There are some simply beautiful interactions in this production that do justice to the writing but the standout moments are with Peter Hamilton Dyer who plays Turing’s colleague, Billy Knox at Bletchley Park. The two actors play off each other with a precision and wit that is simply theatrical alchemy.

Mark Edel-Hunt and Peter Hamilton Dyer in Breaking The Code at HOME MCR
Image credit: Manuel Harlan

The new epilogue by Neil Bartlett updates the original 1986 play by taking into account Turing’s 2013 pardon and the development of “Turing’s Law”. This may have felt like a necessary update that brings the story into sharp relief for our times. However and perhaps due to watching this production in Manchester where Turing is already celebrated with such pride and fondness, this felt unnecessary. The additional exposition jarred with Turing’s final moments on stage, played with heartbreaking restraint which quietly reminds us all how brilliance can both illuminate and isolate.

HOME MCR 28th Oct – 1st Nov 2025

ROMEO AND JULIET

Large Theatres, Shakespeare

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Ellie Hurt

Liverpool EVERYMAN

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The star-crossed lovers have been reimagined countless times, but the Everyman’s latest take on Romeo and Juliet proves there’s still fire in one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies. Director Ellie Hurt has shaken the dust off the Verona cobblestones and transplanted them into a world that feels strikingly contemporary, without losing the pulse of Shakespeare’s poetry.

The Everyman’s thrust stage, with its intimacy and edge, works wonders for a play about red hot passion colliding with simmering feuds. The opening brawl brims with a raw, streetwise energy that instantly declares this is not a Verona of ruffled sleeves and dainty sonnets, but one where violence is sadly as casual and lethal as in any British city today.

Alicia Forde delivers a Juliet played with a sharp wit and a teenager’s quicksilver emotional shifts, she resists the tragic heroine mould and instead feels vividly alive; by turns funny, impatient, fierce, and achingly young. Zoe West as Romeo is a mixture of impulsive swagger and genuine vulnerability that is utterly absorbing. The electric chemistry between these star crossed lovers burns not in polished declarations, but in stolen glances and nervous laughter, which makes their sudden plunge into tragedy all the more painfully poignant.

The production is peppered with smart choices as a perfectly cast Elliot Broadfoot delivers Mercutio’s bawdy humour with the timing of a polished stand-up set. Kelise Gordon-Harrison as Benvolio is vibrant with youth yet wiser and more reflective than his peers. Eithne Browne brings real depth and humorous empathy to the Friar.

Kelise Gordon-Harrison and Elliot Broadfoot as Benvolio and Mercutio.
Image credit: Pamela Raith Photography

Live music underscores scenes with a throbbing, modern urgency from a score by Dom Coyote with music from Joy Division, Kate Bush and Jimmy Somerville interspersed with a hymnal poignancy delivered by the Chorus. The lighting design flips seamlessly from neon brashness to candlelit intimacy. The costume design fuses modern street fashion with that of Tudor times, with every costume having flashes of blood red suggestive of the impending tragedy.

But the Everyman’s greatest triumph here is clarity. For a play often drowned in its own reputation, this staging makes the story feel inevitable and freshly shocking. This could be a balcony in old Verona or a balcony on a council estate in Toxteth or Moss Side. By the time the lovers fall, you’re reminded that tragedy is not about inevitability, but about the exquisite, wasteful cruelty of timing.

This Romeo and Juliet doesn’t just retell a familiar tale—it makes you feel its sting anew, as though hearing that ancient line for the first time…never was a story of more woe.

LIVERPOOL EVERYMAN 13th Sept- 4th Oct 2025

Juliet Ellis A Symphony of Flesh and Bones

Large Theatres, Photography

A Symphony of Flesh and Bones. MIF25
Image credit: Juliet Ellis

Devised by Juliet Ellis

South Warehouse, Aviva Studios

Juliet Ellis delivers a deeply meditative and heartfelt work in A Symphony of Flesh and Bones, in which she explores Buddhist philosophy alongside her use of film to question what it means to inhabit a body. Ellis uses photography and film of her father, a former bodybuilder, and her brother, a retired cage fighter to bring authenticity and tenderness to themes of masculinity, aging, and familial legacy.

Both intensely personal and universally resonant, this is a work whose impact lingers as beautiful images in a highly impactful setting. The images are striking and beautifully composed. The multi-screen layout mirrors a mandala’s visual symmetry, ephemeral, interwoven, and spiritually resonant. The blue-toned imagery evokes Buddhist symbolism of infinitude. The layers of screens that surround all four sides of the space adds to their impact and makes for a beautiful installation.

This is however where this production becomes frustrating and unsatisfactory. There is a slightness to the spoken element of this piece which is not helped by Ellis just reading out her thoughts from a printed document. The piece runs at 90 minutes and therefore the images on screen often linger for longer than needed and the pacing tends to drag. The staging and lighting are beautifully conceived but ultimately this piece feels confused, sitting somewhere between a TED talk with high production values and an art installation you feel obliged to observe at the artists’ pace. It’s a real shame as this would have worked brilliantly as a durational piece running on a loop with a recording of the artists’ thoughts playing with the audience being able to move around the space or lie on the floor just looking up at the screens.

AVIVA STUDIOS 11-13th July 2025

A SINGLE MAN

Ballet, Contemporary Dance, Large Theatres

Based on the novella by Christopher Isherwood

Directed by Jonathan Watkins

The Hall, AVIVA STUDIOS

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jonathan Watkins’ new ballet adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man unveils itself as a quietly potent exploration of grief, love, and queer identity. The creative gamble of splitting the portrayal of George, physically through Ed Watson’s danced embodiment and emotionally through John Grant’s live voice pays off beautifully. It’s a collaboration that refuses the easy path, forging a live multilayered dialogue between body and soul.

Ed Watson, formerly of the Royal Ballet, brings raw emotionality and a life-worn authenticity to George’s every gesture. His performance pulses with the contradiction of restraint and release: disciplined form that fractures under the weight of loss, yet never becomes self-indulgent. When he moves, there is a tangible, visceral pull of emotional snapshots of his dead lover Jim. There is a touching beauty in his connection to his lost lover that is delicately but powerfully conveyed. Moments when the ensemble peel his lover from his arms feel like the palpable wrench known to anyone who has loved and lost.

John Grant’s original songs, composed with Jasmin Kent Rodgman and performed live by the Manchester Collective linger around the edges of the set like memories that refuse to be tucked away. His lyrics map out George’s interior life: moments of tender self-awareness, bitter regret, and the faint glimmer of hope. This duality between the seen and unseen, the spoken and unsaid gives the piece a rare emotional depth. There are however points in the lyrics where they move too much toward exposition of the original text as if not quite trusting the dancers and the audience to fully grasp the narrative.

John Grant in A Single Man
Credit: Johan Persson

The choreography, directed by Watkins with visionary care, balances the elegance of classical ballet with a contemporary urgency. Flashbacks, abstracted movements, and physical abstractions of inner pain are choreographed with a poet’s intuition. They evoke the 1960s California while remaining rooted in George’s emotional landscape as a gay man who must mourn his lover and navigate his grief in private as a love that dare not speak its mind.

Visually, the production is a lavish and intimate feast. Oscar-winner Holly Waddington’s costumes are very 1960s and use colour to real effect. Splashes of red for Charley and Kenny are a nod to the red of lifeblood and passion. The bodysuits the ensemble cast frequently strip down to are waxy pale and marbled in the muted colours of decomposition. Chiara Stephenson’s sculptural set combines stylized restraint with emotional resonance. The ash grey construct of a sprues containing everything required to function in daily life subtly alludes to George’s attempt to mask and try to play at normality. The screens that reappear mimic a vortex and serve well to mark out the segments when George retreats into his memories. The play of light and form enacts the interplay of memory and reality, and the staging honours George’s solitude while also embracing the small, human moments that break through despair.

In the context of MIF’s wider “Dream Differently” programme for 2025 which champions hybridity and emotional complexity then A Single Man stands out as a highlight. It is less a huge spectacle than a subtle, achingly human meditation on loss. The final moments feel hopeful and redemptive. Perhaps we can all do well to hold a sense of possibility that the pain of grief can be redemptive and like kintsugi pottery we can be broken and yet emerge stronger.

AVIVA STUDIOS 2nd – 6th July 2025