I’ve not seen the Royal Exchange like this. Ever. I mean nothing about the outside prepares you. But the instant you step inside — first step, first glance — the Exchange has you somewhere else entirely. It’s as if the theatre itself has been woken up, shaken by the shoulders, and told to stop being polite.
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Theatre has often been seen as a medium for groups to find an alternative voice than the mainstream. In Peaceophobia we get exactly that. British. Pakistani. Male. Car enthusiasts. And Muslim.
The world of the silent film star seems to be a bygone era. I cannot recall the last time terrestrial television broadcasted something from that long gone forgotten age, where once upon a time we would be accustomed to the antics of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin or that irascible double act, Laurel and Hardy. In The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel from ‘Told by an Idiot’ at HOME Manchester, we are transported back into that wonderful world where without an utterance of a spoken word, entertainers can become such captivating storytellers.
The Manchester music scene is renowned the world over. There are gigs that still remain important in the fabrics of time. People still talk of the importance of Bob Dylan going electric at the Free Trade Hall in the 19860s or when the Sex Pistols rocked up in 1976 at the same venue. Everyone seems to have been at the legendary Stone Roses gig, when they announced themselves at the Hacienda in the mid 1980s. I myself know of the importance of attending gigs by Happy Mondays or Oasis before they’d woven themselves into the consciousness of fans. And then there is Nina at the NIA in 1991, which amazingly was recreated at HOME as part of the 2020 PUSH Festival.
I’ve met Nishla Smith before. More coincidentally it is in the exact place that I’ve encountered her majestic voice doing the same festival. Smith is back, once more taking her place in HOME Manchester’s much vaunted PUSH Festival. This time round its another personal retelling, in What Happened to Agnes, she recounts a family secret, through song and animation and her own unique way of telling a simple story.