Tag: Girl Gang Manchester

Millennial Pink – Work in Progress at PUSH FESTIVAL 2025

Small Theatres

Devised and Performed by Girl Gang Manchester

HOME

Girl Gang Manchester have been around since 2016 making all sorts of work and operating as a collaboration of artists, activists and academics working together to celebrate popular culture and feminist activism. Millennial Pink sees them turn up the volume on the turntable and explore bedroom pop culture and that baptism of fire that is transitioning from girlhood to teenager to young women.

The stage of Theatre 2 at HOME is transformed into a messy teenage bedroom ready for a sleepover and that’s exactly the vibe of  this production as the performers snuggle on beds and share stories, break into song and try out synchronised dance moves. The overwhelmingly feelgood factor in this show is the generous and collaborative approach of all the performers on stage and dotted through the audience. If these millennial have learned anything from their experience growing up whether positive or negative it is that we are all better and stronger coming together and supporting each other.

As to be expected from Girl Gang Manchester, this is a production high on audience participation whether it’s reading out cue cards, singing along to karaoke or learning some dance routines. By the end of the show there are a lot of people onstage, myself included as the stage becomes a dance floor for everyone who remembers what it was to be a teenage girl. This is a show high on energy and exuberance that manages to thread the delicate line between celebrating the positives and calling out the slut shamers and the casual misogyny and double standards in our Society without ever sounding preachy. I loved the energy and the passion throughout this production and although the sound needs some tweaks to ensure every performer can be clearly heard, this is a show I would definitely want to see again.

PUSH FESTIVAL 2025 HOME 31st January-1st February 2025

GIRL GANG MCR

The Taming of the “Shrew”

Shakespeare, Small Theatres
The cast of The Taming of The Shrew at Hope Mill Theatre. Image credit: Shay Rowan.

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Amy Gavin and Hannah Ellis Ryan

HOPE MILL THEATRE

The bawdy babes are back with another co-production from Unseemly Women, HER Productions and Girl Gang Manchester. Here this all female and non-binary collective take on Shakespeare’s portrayal of gender roles and a women’s place in a marriage. Under the spirited direction of Amy Gavin and Hannah Ellis Ryan this production zeroes in on the enduring horror of coercive control and the mind numbing impact of gaslighting. As the Bellas teach their drunken patron Sly a lesson he won’t easily forget, the audience get to watch as the action moves from a neon pink burlesque club to Padua where the “Shrew” Katerina and her sister Bianca are wooed by a selection of potential suitors.

Katerina is a force of nature who takes no prisoners and does not mince her words. As her father offers a large dowry on her being married before her younger and more malleable sister Bianca, Petruchio decides he is up the challenge of taming this wildcat. Multiple suitors are also vying for the hand of Bianca and as Shakespeare loves a confusing twist, the wealthy Lucentio is mascarading as a tutor to woo Bianca while his servant Tranio pretends to be his Master. Katerina is forced into marriage and her new husband sets in place an abusive plan to ensure his new wife is broken in like a wild horse.

Emily Spowage and Shady Murphy in The Taming of The “Shrew” at Hope Mill Theatre Image credit: Shay Rowan

The whole production has a feel of Baz Luhrmann meets Blackadder on a Hens night out in the Northern Quarter. The costumes look fabulous and strikingly individual. Zoe Barnes has been incredibly creative and adds real visual impact especially in the Vivienne Westwood inspired wedding dress which Shady Murphy is forced into. In fact everything about this production feels considered and creative from the lighting by Tom Sutcliffe to the sound by Hannah Bracegirdle and movement by Yandass Ndlovu.

It’s great to seem a dozen female and non binary performers on stage doing their thing and strutting their stuff. There is a real immersive feel to this production with the audience seated traverse and with some seated at candle lit tables in the burlesque club itself. The pole dancing by Leah Eddleston and the bluesy vocals of Megan Holland really add to the nightclub vibe.

Shady Murphy as Katerina nails her performance as the confident force of nature brought to her knees by an abusive husband. She is at turns vibrant and vociferous before being broken and cowed by her husband. Emily Spowage as Petruchio is also utterly compelling as the leering Lothario who verbally spars with his bride-to-be before his chilling shift into sadistic bridegroom who has his whole household flinching as they observe his cold cruelty.

This is a brilliant take on one of the Bard’s more difficult plays. In particular the scenes where Andy Williams Can’t Take My Eyes of You is used and at points dramatically slowed down, really ramps up the quiet terror of coercive control. The scene where Petruchio argues the sun is the moon and challenges Katerina’s very reality now plays as gaslighting behaviour. Gavin and Ellis Ryan have kept the original text and by not shying away from it have enabled this cast to reframe the narrative for the sisterhood. Sly Christopher may be a misogynistic boor in the manner of a Bernard Manning but here he sits bound and with a gag in his mouth.

HOPE MILL THEATRE 19th -30th June 2024