Once in a while something comes along to just blow your minds. Something that is so seamlessly in tune with every facet of the production, harmoniously joyful, that it stops becoming theatrical and turns into something quite magical. The Animals and Children took to the Streets is such a production. A conjuring cornucopia of captivating concoctions that leaves the viewer completely spellbound.
So it’s goodbye to January, who departs with its usual lack of fanfare and it being the month that most people tend to go into some sort of self imposed hibernation, and hello to freezing February as we get set to batten down the hatches as the winter chill continues to rear its unwelcome ugly head. Never fear, dear readers, for we can warm ourselves by cosying up to the delights that wait in store for us in Manchester finest theatres and entertainment venues.
When the director of the production that you have just watched stands up in the ensuing Q&A session and states quite calmly that the novel that he’s adapted is quite controversial, polemic and provocative, then it should come as no surprise that HOME’s scratch production of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission is controversial, polemic and pretty much provocative.
For the first time in HOME history they’ve gone and ripped out seats in their main theatre space and built a brand-new, in-the-round auditorium. That’s the kind of brass neck, I don’t give a monkey’s, I’m gonna just tear up the textbook and raise a rebellious fist in the air behaviour that suggests that The Maids should be something extra special.
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.