Box of Tricks – Live Art Alive

HOW SOON IS NOW?

Written by Siân Owen

Directed by Adam Quayle

The Lowry Theatre

★★★☆☆

How Soon Is Now? is an ambitious new production by Box Of Tricks. Writer Siân Owen celebrates the indie club scene of Nineties Manchester while also attempting a deep delve into female friendships on the dance floor and in the club toilets. There are big themes and much heartfelt dialogue about family trauma, coercive relationships and the daily stressors of working in the NHS. There is some real merit in some of the dialogue but the play ultimately never quite hits the mark it’s striving for.

The play is a celebration of the healing power connection, identity, belonging and an indictment of the increasingly complicated business of simply being human. Set in a nightclub on New Year’s Eve 1997, it has mates Angie and Polly out celebrating when they meet Welsh small town ingénue Jean who is lost and traumatised. Time moves back and forth to give fragments of all their stories while being interspersed with indie classics. When it catches fire, How Soon Is Now? has genuine emotional pull. There are moments of warmth, humour and vulnerability that suggest a production with something important to share. However this two act production struggles to hold attention as the dramatic arc feels fragmented sitting in this jukebox musical of undeniably great songs.

Ambition can sometimes be a double-edged theatrical sword and this production reaches so determinedly for significance that its message becomes somewhat diffused. Ideas are introduced with enthusiasm but not always given the space or dramatic precision to fully land. The result is a show that occasionally feels like a New Year celebration where not all the fireworks display light up as intended. The first Act goes out like a damp squid and suggests this production could have sparkled and had more impact with no interval and a shorter running time. The production’s heart is unquestionably in the right place; what it lacks is the consistency and finesse to make that heart beat as powerfully for the audience as it clearly does for those on stage.

There are some nicely judged performances and Darragh Cowley brings real charm and energy as a Manc DJ who spins the tunes and continually breaks the fourth wall to engage with the audience. Laura Robinson makes her professional theatrical debut as shop girl Polly and does a nice job of fleshing out her role and singing her heart out while maintaining a suitably flat Manchester accent. All the cast work hard, with three of them, doubling up as a live band in stage as well.

Kaitlyn Akinpelumi as Angie and Laura Robinson as Polly in How Soon Is Now?

It is always great to see new writing being championed and smaller theatre companies going out on tour, and it’s brilliant to see that work being shown on larger stages like The Quays at The Lowry. There is much nostalgic pleasure here for anyone who was out in those heady nightclubs back in the Nineties and this production has some nice ideas and big ambitions which will hopefully develop and flourish as the tour continues.

On Tour until November 7th 2026

Too Much World At Once

Small Theatres

Paddy Stafford as Noble and Ewan Grant as Ellis. Image credit: Chris Payne.

Written by Billie Collins

Directed by Adam Quayle

HOME

The biggest things happen

In the quietest of ways

And we don’t even notice

Don’t even see it

Don’t make a fuss

Or a dance

Until…

Too Much World At Once is an impressive theatre debut for Billie Collins. This coming of age story has big aspirations; looking at themes around queerness, mental health issues and environmental disaster. There is a real lyricism in the writing and a strong feel for naturalistic dialogue. It’s no mean feat to write a fifteen year old boy who turns into a bird and readies himself to fly thousands of miles to his neurotic sister who is doing her bit for climate change by gathering data on albatrosses on a remote island in Antarctica. Meanwhile closer to home his Mum is struggling to connect and parent in a fractured family, while teaching and trying quite literally to hold the family home together. New boy Ellis is a breath of fresh air to both mother and son, bringing colour to their lives in ways that go beyond his nail polish and rainbow take on school uniform. It’s a lot to cram into two hours on a small stage but director Adam Quayle does a excellent job of bringing the writers’ vision to life. Quayle who is the Joint Artistic Director of Box of Tricks has made this ambitious debut look and feel authentic.

Alexandra Mathie, Paddy Stafford, Ewan Grant and Evie Hargreaves. Image credit: Chris Payne.

The staging by designer Katie Scott is really beautiful in its simplicity. The central dias is shaped like the Earth with a backdrop of decaying wood…orange boxes, simple wooden furniture, bare window frames and driftwood that look like they may have been washed ashore. Overhead hangs a chandelier of driftwood that is reminiscent of the sword of Damacles. This staging is compact but highly effective in driving the narrative of the play. It’s further enhanced by sensitive and imaginative lighting by Richard Owen. At times the soft spread of light looks like the oceans of Earth or the rich splatter shades of guano. The lighting effects are at times simply gorgeous as in the closing moments where the the cast are lit like a rich tableau that is truly memorable.

The four actors are all well cast and give good performances. Paddy Stafford as central character Noble embodies the withdrawn boy who has closed off from his mother and desperately misses his sister. He gives a highly effective performance as he transitions into a bird and the occasional delicate movements of his head evoke a curious, perhaps wary bird. Evie Hargreaves plays his sister Cleo, a research scientist on Bird Island who is pulsating with nervy energy, passionate about conservation but overwhelmed by the harsh reality of the task and her surroundings in Antarctica. Alexandra Mathie is Fiona, their mother and the local science teacher. She is utterly believable as a brusque Northerner who seems more sentimental over her crumbling family home than sensitive to the emotional needs of her children. The force of nature in the play is Ewan Grant as Ellis, a newcomer to the school and excluded by his peers due to his sexuality. Grant exudes the enthusiasm and openness of a Labrador puppy bringing an upbeat and humorous energy to the production. He is the perfect foil to this family who have lost their way and each other.

Collins writes with the confidence of a natural poet. There is an innate lyricism and a sense of magical storytelling in this piece. It will be exciting to see her work develop as a playwright. The central flaw within Too Much World At Once is precisely that…there is a lot of world and not enough about who the characters are within this world on stage. This is an exciting premise for a play but the characters feel underdeveloped at times. The mother has some back story and context yet it is frustrating to watch this woman who sits painting the nails of a boy her son barely knows instead of battering down the doors of the local police when her 15 year old child has been missing for days. A lot of the action in this narrative is driven by what has happened within the fractured dynamics of this family unit yet these are barely touched upon. What has happened in the marriage? A deeply depressed and highly anxious daughter…is she living out her mothers’ unfulfilled ambitions? Most frustrating is the central character Noble as he never feels fully fleshed out…but perhaps he is just a fledgling in a damaged nest.

Director Adam Quayle has done a lot to make a potentially tricky play come to life on a small stage. At times the production can seem unwieldy or too busy as the chorus moves around swooping like birds or moving chairs like they are being swept away in a storm. This would all probably lend itself more effectively to a larger stage. The sound design by Lee Affen adds additional charm as he works magic to bring the world of nature and the elements to life onstage. This is a big play on a small stage but perhaps aptly so…

And this is all I know…that it’s a good world to be small in. And there is so much here to love.

HOME 3rd March -11th March 2023

Box of Tricks Theatre tour

Sparkplug

Uncategorized

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Written and Performed by David Judge

Directed by Hannah Tyrell-Pinder

A Box of Tricks production

Sparkplug had its World premiere on Valentines day when we celebrate idealized love. This new work by David Judge is a true celebration of the complexity of love, race and family. At times tender and compassionate, it also bravely highlights personal experience of the achingly painful racist abuse that is still so ingrained in such a multi-cultural city as Manchester. This is a story of imperfect people in difficult circumstances whose bonds of love are built on something stronger than genetics or skin colour.

This is a very personal story from writer and actor David Judge drawing on his own experience of growing up with a white Mum and Dad from Wythenshawe while being the genetic son of a black man from Moss Side. Judge vividly invokes the family life of his father Dave as a young man driving his Capri around South Manchester while listening to Rod Stewart and dreaming of a relationship with his sister Angela’s best friend Joanne. The love affair that unfolds is messy but very real. Boy gets the girl but she is pregnant with someone else’s baby. The new parents struggle like any new parents but with the added difficulty of being white parents with a brown baby in a community where even grandparents can’t stand the skin he sleeps in. Add an eventual relationship breakdown, the news that Joanne is in a lesbian relationship and that the overwhelmed parents ask their child to choose which parent he stays with. High drama indeed but also the grittiness of real people in real situations that are complex and unsanitised.

David Judge is wonderful to watch, he brings grace and delicacy to the poetry of this piece, while being equally able to make an audience palpably uncomfortable with the racism and homophobia that run through the veins of this story. He has a quicksilver ability to move between characters, each vividly drawn and instantly recognisable. The staccato delivery of words used like punches in a scene of rage, frustration and despair sit alongside the tenderness of a young man’s love for his son that is never shaken by the ignorance in his local community.

The set design by Katie Scott works really well. The bones of a car come alive to create a sense of eras in this family as the vehicle morphs from Capri to Fiat 126 to Sierra and back. The garage settings evokes the memories of family history complete with childhood toys and its soundtrack of Rod Stewart and Micheal Jackson encapsulate that home in Wythenshawe a world away from Moss Side.

Overall this is a really impressive production. I saw Judges’ performance as Pete in The Kitchen Sink at Oldham Coliseum last year and it was really memorable so it’s a pleasure to see him centre stage. As a play it flows well though would benefit from a little editing and more character clarity towards the end. Overall it is a production that sparks debate about identity and how we see ourselves and how that is impacted by those around us. What stayed with me after the the show was the strong bond between young men and their cars, how perhaps we freely choose identity through the car we drive rather than how we are often shoehorned into an identity by the skin we walk in.

HOME 13-23 February 2019

Tour details

Images by Alex Mead, Decoy Media