Category Theatre

Dishoom! – Review

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It is fair to say that to so many folk that grew up in the 1970s and 1980s that watched Indian Cinema, one film stood out from that era – Sholay. It is now considered to be one of India’s greatest ever films. Ramesh Sippy’s curry western kickstarted the era of the Bollywood superhero and in particular the crazy superstardom that Amitabh Bachchan now enjoys. Of course the Big B was not the only star from that hit film, with a stellar cast that included Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri, Sanjeev Kumar and the scene stealing Amjad Khan. So when Dishoom! – a coming of age drama that charts the tumultuous events of one summer in 1978 – set to the banging RD Burman soundtrack of Sholay, it was something that just had to be seen!

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Queen Margaret – Review

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Shakespeare is not everyone’s cup of tea. The Bard dominates the stage, but equally divides theatre audiences, who are either happy to see lengthy RSC styled productions that deal with murder and betrayal or those that think the great playwright is no longer relevant in 2018. And yet theatre houses and production companies cannot get enough of Shakespeare, with it dominating the landscape in not only the West End but also here in Manchester. So you could be forgiven in thinking that Queen Margaret, a reworking if you like of some of the Bard’s historical plays, that it would be another of his productions where it delights his devotees and dismays his detractors. However, The Royal Exchange might just have managed to wow both sets of fans!

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OthelloMacbeth – Review

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Who doesn’t love a good remix? So often the staple of musical geniuses, who take the heart and soul of one track and reinvent it with a layer of beats and other tracks that often form a mashup of the original. OthelloMacbeth is possibly the closest thing I’ve seen to a theatre piece that comes to the very definition of a remix, with Jude Christian the DJ behind the decks taking two classic Shakespearean tragedies and mixing together a captivating version for all and sundry to enjoy.

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Fame – Review

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Nothing more typifies the 1980s than Fame! The Alan Parker musical that was later a hit TV show that chronicled the lives of students attending the High School of Performing Arts. It inspired a generation of people wearing leg warmers and lycra. The film/television series was also quite hard hitting featuring storylines that dealt with homophobia, teenage pregnancies and suicide to name but a few. It also featured the iconic theme tune from Irene Cara that was a chart topper on both sides of the Atlantic. So an 80s geeky kid like myself was never gonna pass up the opportunity to watch the stage version at the Manchester Palace Theatre.

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The Fishermen – Review

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Good theatre, even theatre that reaches those heady heights of greatness, is all down to the art of storytelling. It is unlike many other mediums in that you as the captive audience are completely at the mercy of the performers. The story, the delivery and the theatrics used to tell a tale are all armoury in the arsenal of the storyteller. Get it wrong and you’ve lost the audience. Get it right and you will have people regaling your tale to the world.

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