Recently HOME Manchester have been knocking it out of the park. They’ve received rave reviews for their summer festivities, with Incoming and Horizon festivals proving to be a hit with audiences and critics alike. Their latest offering – One Night in Miami – is hoping to be just as popular, which sees the imagined account of a fabled real-life event that sees four icons come together in a downtown Miami motel room.
Incoming Festival 2019 is a celebration of the best emerging theatre companies from the UK and beyond and is currently showcasing a week of shows at Home Manchester. If anything sums up the spirit of this festival then it would be Strictly Arts – a young, black-led theatre company – and their production of Freeman, which examines the unspoken link between mental health and systemic racism. It was an evening of brutality intertwined with beauty that left the audience totally and utterly blown away.
Where did the Summer go? It’s been a whirlwind few months that has encapsulated the joys of a typical British season. A cornucopia of malevolent weather, heroic sporting triumphs and a calendar chock-a-block with festivals that cater for every whim and fancy. So, here we are at the start of September and the onset of Autumn, when the nights start to get longer, the days become colder and it all feels less hazy than it once was. Therefore, its with keen feverishness that we welcome Hive City Legacy, currently playing at HOME Manchester, for one last chance to enjoy that feeling that only the Summer months can bring. That outlandish splash of colour, the base-thumping grooving beats and the lyrical machinations that let me have one last chance to be utterly indulgent.
I was reminded of something that my mam told me whilst I watched The Funeral Director play out at Home Manchester: “Death comes to us all. Whether we are Muslim, Hindu, Jew, or Christian. Whether we are white, brown or black. Whether we are straight or not. Whether we support City or we support the other lot. Yeah even them. Death does not discriminate”. The Funeral Director deals with death and discrimination, it’s challenging, provocative and a must see production this spring.
As an honorary member of the Fat Blokes club I was particularly looking forward to Scottee: Fat Blokes at HOME Manchester and giving it the rebellious middle finger to the world for all fat blokes everywhere. However, what I thought would be light hearted was anything but. Indeed this turned into a show that championed those men who are fat, through the personal testimony and killer dance moves of four ordinary blokes who ‘appen to be on the chubby side.