Large Theatres – Page 2 – Live Art Alive

Through It All Together

Written by Chris O’Connor

Directed by Gitika Buttoo

Leeds Playhouse, Courtyard Theatre

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Through It All Together, Chris O’Connor’s tender, funny, and profoundly human new play, scores a heartfelt goal at Leeds Playhouse. Blending the collective high of Marcelo Bielsa’s transformative Leeds United era with the quiet, day-to-day reality of living with dementia, this world premiere directed by Gitika Buttoo is a deeply affecting exploration of love, memory, identity—and how football, of all things, can help us hold onto our sense of Self.

The result is a beautifully calibrated narrative centred on Howard (Reece Dinsdale) and Sue (Shobna Gulati), a long-married Leeds couple whose lives are defined as much by matchdays as they are by memory loss. Their shared devotion to Leeds United—and to each other—becomes a touchstone as Howard’s dementia begins to unravel their sense of normalcy.

But this isn’t a story of despair. O’Connor balances challenge with a deep humanity, never sugar-coating, but never wallowing either. “There are a lot of stories about dementia that focus only on the decline, the hardship… I wanted to show a more nuanced picture.” The ensuing result is a window into gritty, Northern humour and emotional resilience that suggests there are ways to navigate this new life that are not totally bleak and hopeless.

Reece Dinsdale’s portrayal of Howard is all the more moving for its subtlety. He captures the erratic rhythms of memory loss with clarity and compassion, avoiding caricature in favour of something richer. As the illness slowly progresses there are more post-it notes dotted around the home to ground him as we watch the light in his light in his eyes seem to palpably dim. Shobna Gulati’s Sue is no mere carer—she’s the team captain of this household, full of warmth, exhaustion, fierce loyalty and humour. Together, they embody a partnership that’s far more than caretaking; it’s a testament to shared history. Gulati is wonderfully warm and authentic as a wife facing an uncertain future, but determined to still make new memories with the man she loves.

Excellent supporting roles from Dean Smith and Everal A Walsh flesh out the world outside of the home with energy and wit, from the passionate football pundetry of a wickedly funny podcast to football fans uniting in the pub or on the terraces with unbridled optimism or surly despondency. Natalie Davies is very believable as the daughter whose initial discomfort and awkwardness around her fathers’ diagnosis slowly shifts to something new that has real emotional depth and develops a deeper bond between parent and adult child.

Everal A Walsh and Dean Smith in Through It All Together at Leeds Playhouse
Image credit: Charlie Swinbourne

Buttoo’s direction is deft, never overstated, and her pacing allows the emotional beats to land without lingering too long. Amanda Stoodley’s set elegantly shifts between domestic space and Elland Road reverie, and her inspired stained glass window depiction of Marcelo Bielsa vividly evokes how football serves as church for so many. Annie May Fletcher’s sound design and Jason Taylor’s lighting evoke both the roar and passion of the crowd and the flickering confusion of a fading mind. The production’s authenticity owes much to the involvement of Dr Nicky Taylor, Theatre and Dementia Research Associate at Leeds Playhouse as O’Connor collaborated with people living with dementia throughout the writing process.

This play will resonate with Leeds fans, particularly those still mourning the magic of the Bielsa years and those embarking with renewed hope as Leeds once again play in the Premier League. But crucially, Through It All Together is not really about football but instead “It’s about a family navigating life, loss, and love.” The result is a play that feels lived-in, full of both emotional urgency and the soft, cumulative weight of experience.

Through It All Together is a triumph not because it finds easy answers, but because it honours complexity. It reminds us that memory may fade, but love leaves traces. It’s an ode to resilience, to chosen rituals, to the invisible thread that binds couples, families, fans, and strangers in the same chant, week after week. Whether you’re a die-hard Leeds United fan or someone who couldn’t care less about football, this is a show worth seeing. As O’Connor hopes, “Maybe people will leave the theatre feeling a little more connected to their own families, and a bit more educated on dementia. And maybe, just maybe… they’ll convert to Leeds United.”

LEEDS PLAYHOUSE 23rd June – 19th July 2025

The Walrus has a right to Adventure

Large Theatres

Written by Billie Collins

Directed by Nathan Crossan-Smith

LIVERPOOL EVERYMAN
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Billie Collins is definitely one to watch as their work is evolving at a rapid rate from their debut play Too Much World At Once in 2023 to last years collaboration with Thickskin, the excellent Peak Stuff. Their latest work, The Walrus Has A Right to Adventure is an utterly charming piece that weaves together three stories full of warmth and wit within a big ecological heart. Three central characters each have a startling and life-changing encounter with a wild creature inspired by real life stories. This is a genuine ambitious play that is weird and wonderful in equal measure. Featuring a walrus, a stag, a bear, and a big queer soul this is a quicksilver exploration of our intimate connection to the natural world and the power and beauty of metamorphosis.

Director Nathan Crossan-Smith knits together three wildly different stories with a surprising amount of coherence and emotional punch. At the centre of each vignette is an encounter with the unexpected: a young shelf stacker is confronted by a majestic white stag in Halewood Tesco, a fierce mother bear derails a wedding proposal in Colorado while a walrus decides to inhabit a fishing boat in Norway. These surreal interruptions crack open the lives of three characters grappling with identity, purpose, and possibility.

Tasha Dowd in The Walrus has a Right to Adventure at Liverpool Everyman.
Image credit: Ean Flanders

Tasha Dowd is endearingly grounded as Rio, a Tesco night-shifter whose brush with the mythical stag nudges them toward self-exploration. There’s a tenderness and subtlety in Dowd’s performance that makes Rio’s journey quietly powerful. Each performer also plays multiple other characters through the narrative and each character Dowd inhabits is vividly drawn and deeply engrossing down to the quiver of a hand that evokes an elderly parent or the physical menace of a redneck, second amender. Princess Khumalo’s Hazel is sharper-edged as a young woman suddenly thrown off-course by a man on one knee with a bear behind him. Khumalo brings great comic timing but grounds it in something rawer when Hazel begins to unpick what she really wants. Meanwhile, Reginald Edwards delivers a charmingly dry turn as Oskar, the Norwegian tour guide whose boat becomes a walrus squat. His blend of deadpan resistance and existential bewilderment is a comic highlight.

The set, designed by Chloe Wyn, is sleek and inventive allowing for seamless shifts between continents and climates. Live Foley sound effects (from composer and sound designer Oliver Vibrans) are used to delightful effect, turning rustling trees, crashing antlers, and grunting walruses into an audible playground. The whole staging evokes a vintage radio play unfolding before our eyes. Rajiv Pattani’s lighting keeps the pace slick and the transitions fluid. There is a really beautiful look to the whole production that has a really avant garde European style that evokes an Ivo van Hove piece.

It is a testament to the writer and the cast and creatives involved that the multiple storylines which could easily have felt a little fragmented remains fluid and cohesive. Collins’ writing sparkles with wit, but also isn’t afraid to pause for introspection. The play gently interrogates how we live, love, and consume—and who we become when nature elbows its way back into our human bubbles. Most refreshing is the queer narrative running through Rio’s story. It’s treated not as an issue, but as a tender, joyful part of life…messy, moving, and very human.

Ultimately, The Walrus Has A Right to Adventure is an exuberant, slightly bonkers reminder that ultimately the wisest thing we can do is listen…to the animals, to each other, to ourselves.

The Walrus Has A Right to Adventure at Liverpool Everyman
Image credit: Ean Flanders

Liverpool Everyman 12th-21st June 2025

TESS

Circus, Large Theatres

Written by Thomas Hardy

Adapted and Directed by Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney

HOME MCR

HOME plays host to a visceral, breathtaking reimagining of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. This dreamy production quite literally soars in this genre-blending adaptation by Ockham’s Razor.

Gone is the pastoral restraint of traditional Hardy. Instead, we’re catapulted into a raw, kinetic world where spoken word collides with aerial spectacle, and physical theatre gives pulse to Tess’s inner life. With ropes, rigging, and a shape-shifting set by Tina Bicât that conjures both rural Dorset and Tess’s psychological terrain, this production is as visually inventive as it is emotionally brutal.

From the opening moments, where Tess’s body arcs through the air, we sense a young woman buffeted by forces far larger than herself – class, patriarchy and fate. The acrobatics aren’t just decorative but truly dramaturgical. Every lift, tumble, and suspension reveals something of her journey: the elation of love, the vertigo of injustice, the weight of grief.

Hardy’s 19th-century text is refracted through a contemporary lens, but not diluted. The themes of poverty, privilege, female agency, and the policing of desire all land with fresh urgency. There’s a fury simmering beneath the lyricism of the script which fuses Hardy’s own words with piercing modern clarity. There is a piercing moment on stage as Joshua Frazer as Alec D’Urberville spins imperiosly around Tess in a hoop like a giant gold wedding ring that is both stunning and chilling.

The cast are remarkable – muscular and tender, able to pivot from aerial feats to fragile, unspoken intimacies without ever breaking the spell. Here there are two perfomers as Tess. Hanora Kamen narrates her own story and invites the audience to watch as her tragic tale unfolds. Dance artist Lila Naruse ensures that Tess is heartbreakingly rendered: strong but vulnerable, caught in the ropes of her circumstances even as she fights to break free.

The staging is constantly surprising, using vertical space and movement to express what Hardy wrote between the lines: that the social systems around Tess are as confining as any physical trap. For creative team of Directors Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney this production is clearly a labour of love. They are ably supported by an exquisite soundscape from Holly Khan and dreamy video design by Daniel Denton. Nathan Johnson‘s choreography is just flawless and commands attention in a similar and intimate way to his work with Punchdrunk.

TESS is a triumph of theatrical innovation and emotional storytelling that speaks directly to a contemporary audience. The solidarity of women, the enduring effects of shame, and the quiet power of resistance are all threaded through the performance with care and urgency. Hardy purists may blink but even they’ll be moved by the sheer poetry of this production’s fall and flight.

HOME MCR 5th – 7th June 2025

FIND YOUR EYES

Large Theatres, Photography

Concept, Direction, Photography, Text and Performance by Benji Reid

AVIVA STUDIOS, WAREHOUSE ONE

Finding the Sublime in the Click of a Shutter: Benji Reid’s FIND YOUR EYES

There are some performances that ask for your attention,here Benji Reid’s FIND YOUR EYES does not ask, it commands it. From the first subtle toll of a bell to the final, well-earned ovation, Reid’s self-described Choreo-Photolist offering doesn’t just hold your gaze; it re-engineers it.

Originally commissioned for Manchester International Festival in 2023, it’s a thrill to see a local artist not just holding their own, but unequivocally owning the space as they return to their home city via touring the production to New York.

Reid, once a pioneer in the UK hip hop dance scene, now an alchemist of light and movement—merges dance, photography, and narrative with surgical finesse. This isn’t just interdisciplinary work. This is interdimensional. The camera, usually an archive tool, here becomes a conjuring device. Images are captured live and appear like magic on giant screens. Reid is a silent sorcerer revealing pages of his spellbook in real time.

The genius of FIND YOUR EYES lies in its transparency. Reid doesn’t conceal the trick; he hands you the wand. You see the fans, the foil, the flashes. You hear the barely-there click of the shutter. It’s not illusion, it’s transfiguration. We witness the banal become beautiful: a charging cable turned cyborg crown; a pole dancer becoming a mythic creature caught mid-flight. You don’t just observe the process, you are implicated in it.

Three performers Slate Hemedi, Salomé Pressac, and Zuzanna Kijanowska channel their bodies with a poise that feels both disciplined and transcendent. Hemedi and Pressac unfold themselves like origami, their precision so intimate it feels voyeuristic. Zuzanna Kijanowska seems more phoenix than pole artist as she defies gravity and expectation. These aren’t performances, they are revelations.

The set design by Ti Green deserves a standing ovation of its own: minimalist but mutative, each act unfolding new dimensions, as though the stage itself is evolving in step with the emotional tenor of the work.

The piece is not without pain. It speaks of loss sometimes in whispers, sometimes in shouts of grief, trauma, and the complicated legacy of Black masculinity. Reid’s monologues, stitched with poetic brevity, touch on family wounds, suicidal ideation, and the tender devastation of caring for an ailing parent. It is brave work, and yet never self-indulgent. Under the deft dramaturgy of Keisha Thompson, the deeply personal becomes piercingly universal.

But perhaps the most moving part of FIND YOUR EYES is its reverence for ritual. It treats creativity as ceremony: the lighting of a candle, the lifting of a lens, the building of a world. This isn’t dance as performance but more dance as invocation with the camera capturing moments in time. Reid is not merely a choreographer or photographer-but a high priest of fleeting truth.

In one of the final monologues, he offers the question: “It’s not how do you fly, but why?” FIND YOUR EYES doesn’t answer that question, instead it invites you to experience the lift-off.

AVIVA STUDIOS 25TH-30TH May 2025

WAKE

Beatbox, Cabaret, Circus, Dance, Gig Theatre, Large Theatres, Poetry, Uncategorized

Co-Created and Co-Directed by Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon

Warehouse One, HOME MCR

Growing up Protestant in rural Northern Ireland I went to a lot of funerals. There were wakes with copious amounts of tea, cake and sandwiches and the odd drop of whisky or sherry. They were mostly restrained quiet affairs where your loss was acknowledged with a solemn handshake, a box of teabags or a tin of ham. I always had a sense that our Catholic neighbours had nailed the wake more as a celebration for the dead with music and booze usually leading to a good cèilidh. Apparently I was right and THISISPOPBABY are on the mainland showcasing the rites of the WAKE but with a few extra bells and whistles. My lovely Dad was seen to the grave with the lilt of bagpipes…as of last night I’m wishing we could redo his send-off with some accordions, the bodhrán and maybe an Irish dancer in a sequined g-string with buttock tassles and possibly a world champion pole dancer if the budget would stretch.

Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon of Dublin based THISISPOPBABY have blended the traditional mourning rites with a high calibre camp burlesque show that includes aerial work, Irish dance, slam poetry, break dancing and pole dancing. The result is anarchic and playful rousing invitation to mourn our dead by celebrating life. The production has had several sell out run in Dublin before heading to Sadlers Wells and now Manchester. The Warehouse space is a ideal setting with a tiered stage for the musicians and the pole dancer whereas the circular second stage has a circus vibe and is used for the dance routines and the aerial work. The audience are seated to 3 sides of the circular stage so the sight lines are excellent.

Balloon dance from Wake.
Image credit: Ruth Medjber

THIS IS THE WAKE FOR EVERYONE THAT’S NEVER COMING BACK…

Felispeak is the Irish-Nigerian spoken word artist who weaves a story through the very varied performance styles. Her crisp dry drawl has a laconic charm and there is a real lyricism in her words that is reminiscent of some of our great Irish poets. Some performances burst on stage such as Colombian breakdancer Cristian Emmanuel Dirocie or the mind bending balloon dance by American competitive Irish dancer Michael Roberson and THISISPOPBABY stalwart Phillip Connaughton. Others have a gentler intro such as a beautiful aerial routine by Jenny Tuffs or the plaintive voice and accordian of Darren Roche from the band Moxie in the haunting Raglan Road.

The music here is a roller coaster soundtrack that encompasses traditional melodies and modern Irish classics like The Cranberries Ode To My Family delivered in a gorgeous performance by Emer Dineen. Peppered through these are Bronski Beat Small-town Boy used in a phenomenally confident performance by Michael Roberson. Eurythmics Sweet Dreams sees another striking clubland meets Irish dance while the Peggy Lee classic is rendered unforgettable by a hilariously cheeky performance by Phillip Connaughton.

This is a impressive production bringing together fourteen artists from very varied disciplines and showcases some stunning performances including Venezuelan Lisette Krol, who is a world champion pole dancer and a truly breathtaking performer. Most of all, WAKE is a celebration of how we choose to live while acknowledging death is all around us. In this only possible response is to be open to the joy and accepting of the pain of lost lives that were well lived. This life-affirming production feels like everyone has been on the poitín or Irish moonshine and this is a party for the dead that everyone should join.

AVIVA STUDIOS 17th – 21st April 2025

Kim’s Convenience

Large Theatres

Written by Ins Choi

Directed by Esther Jun

HOME MCR

A few minutes into this production and hunger pangs are kicking in. The vibrant set design by Mona Camille brings this show alive as it really feels like a shop crammed full of snacks and goodies. If this 80 minute production had an interval I suspect there would be a few shoplifting instances as punters might be tempted to forgo the theatre popcorn for a quick trolley dash on stage. This is a feast for the eyes and makes for an utterly convincing Korean/Canadian convenience store that Mr Kim has poured all his energy into making a success for his family.

Ins Choi debuted the play in 2011 at the Toronto Fringe Festival and it later became a runaway hit as a TV series which ran for 5 seasons on CBC and Netflix. This production is fast paced but then it needs to be as it attempts to crammed in pivotal storyline from all the tv series. The result is a janchi of events as this fractured family reconnect. Mr Kim discovers his story is his family not his business, his wife sees her church community vanish in the path of gentrification, their daughter finds love with a childhood friend and their son reconciled with his father after the violent events of his teenage years. There’s a lot to consume and digest in this production and although it has plenty of charm and endearing moments there is a lot of serious and darker elements that are brushed over in this trolley dash through the 5 series.

The cast of Kim’s Convenience
Image credit: Victoria Davies

Here the immigrant experience is seen from the first and second generation experience and how these very different perspectives can cause clashes and divides around what constitutes belonging, identity and success. There are some uncomfortable moments that highlight issues around racism and violence within families that are never really addressed in this cheery upbeat production. It’s a fine line to walk but here the audience seem so affectionate towards these familiar characters that they seem willing to laugh along.

The cast are all highly committed and James Yi as Appa and Caroline Donica as his daughter Janet have great onstage chemistry and keep the dialogue sparkling. Andrew Gichigi plays multiple roles with real charm so it’s easy to delight in his burgeoning relationship with Janet. There is plenty to enjoy in this popular and entertaining show but like many of the fast foods on the display shelves it may leave you with a slightly unpleasant aftertaste.

HOME MCR 8th-12th April 2025

UK tour dates

The House Party

Large Theatres

Adaptation by Laura Lomas

Directed by Holly Race Roughan

HOME MCR

August Strindberg wrote Miss Julie as a naturalistic play in 1888. This classic upstairs/downstairs drama explored themes of class, privilege and aspiration and has been subsequently adapted for stage and screen many times. Almost 150 years on Laura Lomas reimagines the play as The House Party where a group of teenagers gather for a hastily arranged 18th birthday party that unfolds as part wild rave, part a night of heady secrets revealed and part kitchen sink drama…albeit in a very fancy kitchen.

This production sees Artistic Director of Headlong, Holly Race Roughan take the reins in a collaboration with Frantic Assembly. The result is a vibrant, pacey deep delve into youth culture observing what can build strong bonds for teenagers or splinter apart these often fragile relationships. The coupling of these two high calibre theatre companies is a much more successful enterprise than anything achieved by the messy ménage à trois of Julie, Christine and Jon. This production looks great with a clever and sophisticated set design by Loren Elstein and highly impactful lighting by Joshua Pharo and Joseph Hornsby. The riotous party scenes that puncuate the production are beautifully executed by Movement Director Scott Graham from Frantic Assembly. This drives the narrative by both ramping up the tension and vividly illuminating the joy and sense of belonging found on the dance floor.

The House Party cast
Image credit: Ikin Yum.

In this production the three main protagonists are reimagined as Generation Z teenagers who connect over shots and selfies and wield their power through sex and revenge porn. Julie is pretty and privileged and Synnøve Karlsen imbues her with a chameleon quality that allows her to flit between winsome and charming or caustic and loathsome. Weaponising her pain in shocking ways, her capacity to destroy those she loves and sabotage her own happiness is quite the thing to observe. Sesley Hope as Christine is an excellent foil as the best friend from a working class background. Whereas Julie appears quite unhinged by her past trauma, Christine is grounded and much more robust despite her own challenging family background. Tom Lewis is Jon who professes love for Christine but once harboured desire for Julie watching her grow up. He deeply resents her hold on Christine and how he went unnoticed as the son of the family cleaner.

Three teenagers with hopes and aspirations are all equally trapped in their own harmful patterns. Julie only knows how to get attention through destructive behaviours, Christine sabotages her chance to go to Cambridge University and Jon aspires to be a perfect boyfriend yet for all his genuine care he displays callous and misogynistic qualities. All the performers in lead roles give strong and convincing performances though Lomas definitely seems more at home writing authentic female characters.

This punchy drama aims high and is a searing insight into the impact of fast paced, digital culture where lives can be destroyed by simply pressing Send or Share and sentiments are reduced to vacuous soundbites. Unlike the original Miss Julie, this adaptation has a coda which takes place ten years on from the shocking events of the party. I’m unsure how necessary or indeed successful this is as the huge digital clock races forward in time to reveal what happens in the aftermath. As a dramatic device it may have been more effective used as an opener to the production then rewinding back to the party and its explosive sequences.

HOME MCR 25th- 29th March 2025

Tour Dates

CYCLES

Dance, Hip Hop, Large Theatres

Concept and Conception Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante

Choreographer Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy

AVIVA STUDIOS

Eighteen months on from the memorable FREE YOUR MIND which launched AVIVA STUDIOS in 2023 comes CYCLES from company who worked with Danny Boyle. This production from renowned hip hop dance company BOY BLUE sees Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante and Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy back in the building celebrating hip hop dance as an art form. A dance form that now has a fifty year history which started on the streets of The Bronx but is now studied as an art form that can aid depression, PTSD and those who are visually impaired according to University studies.

CYCLES sees eight dancers showcase hip hop dance in its various forms simply as an expression of sheer energy and exuberance that also celebrates technical ability and tight precision choreography. Ninety minutes of dance that encompasses movement in complete unison and creates space for individual expression. Staged on the huge stage in The Hall there is space for fluidity and freedom as dancers come together or seamlessly break apart with points when one literally run cycles of movement along beamed light that looks like the moving turntable of a club DJ.

BOY BLUE performing CYCLES at AVIVA STUDIOS. Image credit: Camilla Greenwell.

This striking production looks and sounds great. The costumes by Matthew Josephs nail street fashion that looks both edgy and slightly futuristic. In the second half the performers don oversized hoods that dwarf their faces giving an androgynous anonymity and look of street menace. There is a starkness to the staging that puts all the emphasis on the dancers. It is only broken by the impactful lighting design by Lee Curran who creates piercing beams of light like helicopter searchlights. The shafts of lights at times cleverly splinter across the stage using the dancers bodies to direct where the light falls. This works beautifully at times but depending on where you are seated there may be moments that are simply blinding.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this production is the fact that the huge Hall at AVIVA STUDIOS was packed out with a diverse and very enthusiastic audience. It can be frustrating and saddening to see some brilliant dance companies play to half empty theatres but thankfully this production celebrating hip hop had no such issues. Hopefully this programming at Factory International will continue to fill the space while also bringing in new audiences.

AVIVA STUDIOS 21st-22nd March 2025

All Blood Runs Red

Large Theatres

Written and devised by Morgan Bailey, Pete Brooks, Simon Wainwright and Andrew Quick

Directed by Tyrone Higgins

Leeds Playhouse

There are some theatre companies whose name conjure up a certain magic and impel you to go see everything they do. One of these is the innovative Imitating The Dog whose work is always seeped in great storytelling using visually creative and innovative methods. This latest production tells a series of interlinked stories with a recurrent theme around how stories get told and what makes some stories get whitewashed from history…can we reclaim them and what might they tell us about ourselves.

All Blood Runs Red takes its name from a plane flown in WW1 by one of the first ever African American fighter pilots who flew in the French Flying Corps at a time when his native airforce still refused people of colour. Eugene Bullard emerges from history as an extremely colourful character. He fled his native Georgia at a time when lynchings were common, he travelled to Paris via Scotland learning some German en route. He was a drummer in the golden jazz years knowing people like Josephine Baker,he ran a club, was a circus performer and then a spy in WW2. In later years he returned to America and was involved in the Civil Rights movement and finally worked as a lift attendant in the Rockefeller building. This indicates a remarkable life worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet the whole essence of this production highlights how easily history can whitewash and marginalise remarkable people based on the colour of their skin.

This is not a linear story of the life of Eugene Bullard. Instead vignettes from his life are interspersed with the lived experience of the Deviser/Performer Morgan Bailey who peppers the production with recollections of how he discovered who Eugene was. On a French film set in Paris, Bailey was playing the role of a young black G.I. in WW2 when he first encountered a book about Eugene Bullard. This production includes Bailey reflecting on his own personal experience of feeling his cultural history and sense of self being whitewashed on set. Woven through the stories of these two men born a hundred years apart is the description of a Parisian lunch where Bailey first suggests telling Bullard’s story with members of Imitating The Dog.

This interplay may frustrate those who may desire a more fully fleshed out history of this fascinating man, however the whole point of the production is to play with the narrative and explore the ways in which stories are told. This is a theatre company that is all about finding new ways to look at stories and bring them alive. Their trademark blend of live theatre mixed with live film-making, digital creativity and sound design brings theatre alive in a unique and challenging manner. This multi faceted and layered production honours a man who emerges from history as someone who defies categorisation and whose life was as rich and varied as this vivid and beautifully constructed production.

LEEDS PLAYHOUSE 14/15th February 2025

On Tour

The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Large Theatres

Written by Martin McDonagh

Directed by Chris Sonnex

LIVERPOOL EVERYMAN

☆☆☆☆

Director Chris Sonnex unleashes the mad and the bad in this blistering tale of revenge for the death of Wee Thomas the cat. Martin McDonagh’s macabre snapshot of life on a remote Irish island during the burgeoning peace process in the Nineties is rich in gallows humour and is a wicked take on Irish sentimentalism and fervent religious and political fundamentalism. Celebrating the absurd in the tradition of Beckett, Sonnex ramps up the bizarre and comedic elements with a torture scene in a nightclub and members of the splinter terrorist group, the INLA, strutting on stage in balaclavas like a psychotic boy band stage singing the Village People’s Go West as they head from Northern Ireland to this remote Western island in Eire. The deceptively simple set design by Ellie Light and lighting by Laura Howard gives a great sense of the remoteness of this cottage on The Aran Isles while also allowing for high impact scenes in the nightclub on the mainland.

In a neat touch the whole cast are Irish and Northern Irish actors with several making their stage debut and some being graduates of The Lir Academy in Dublin where Gemma Bodinetz, previously at The Everyman, is now Artistic Director. The cast clearly relish their roles in a production where the comic book violence permits OTT performances and McDonagh’s quickfire dialogue of quips and barbs is always hi-energy and perfectly paced. Alan Turkington and Taylor McClaine are great foils for each other as the unfortunate father Donny and his hapless young neighbour Davey. Together they wreak havoc as they try to cover up the death of Wee Thomas with the aid of an orange tomcat and an old tin of shoe polish. The ensuing results have echoes of an episode of Father Ted but with gallons of blood and poteen instead of whisky and tea.

The Lieutenant in question is Padraic, a fervent republican and ardent cat lover who is deemed too mad for the IRA and who is now planning his own splinter group in a break away from the INLA. Julian Moore-Cook imbues Padraic with an utterly believable dichotomy of perspectives. At home with Tarantinoesque violence, he thoughtfully offers a menu of torture options to his hostage and won’t hesitate to bomb and butcher yet can wail like an anguished child over his beloved pet. Mairead is the 16 year old Irish beauty who can sing an Irish ballad like a celtic angel while cooly polishing her sniper skills by blinding the local cows. Katherine Devlin is excellent as the republican ingénue who is ultimately more terrifying than the combined force of the INLA.

Liverpool Everyman celebrates its 60th anniversary as a theatre that enjoys a reputation of being bold and innovative. This provocative production continues that proud tradition. McDonagh can divide opinion as a writer of Irish descent born in England yet writing so vividly on still sensitive issues in Ireland. Coming from Ireland myself and growing up during The Troubles I can recognise some of the potential issues but also how well this play reflects the duality and the complexity of human nature. This production does not shy away from the brutal violence or the madcap gallows humour often employed to cope with the horrific but also celebrates the humanity in all of us even when we are at our most inhumane.

Liverpool Everyman 21st Sept – 12th Oct 2024