Some things are just meant to be special! Take The Almighty Sometimes for example. It’s an award winning play from an award winning playwright in Kendall Feaver. It boasts a stellar cast that includes Julie Hesmondhalgh and Norah Lopez Holden. It’s produced by those folk at the Royal Exchange, who just cannot seem to put a foot wrong these days. So it’s no surprise then to find that The Almighty Sometimes was a stunning success.
It was inevitable that race would be put under the microscope in Eclipse Theatre Company and Royal Exchange Theatre co-production of Black Men Walking, which started its national tour at the Royal Exchange this week. Written by Testament, it’s a story of Thomas, Matthew and Richard, three black men, who walk the first Saturday of every month. They walk and they talk and inevitably the subject of their skin colour dominates their conversations. Yet, it is more than that, it’s a story of shining a light on Britain’s forgotten black history.
It was the year that brought me back to the wonderful world of theatre, reminiscent of that scene in Godfather Part Three where Michael Corleone stands somewhat exasperated and says “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”. Obviously my reintroduction to the stage has been somewhat less bloody, but nonetheless, it was not a passion that I had planned to be indulging to the extent that here I am on a blog dedicated to the machinations of my good self and the arts.
Mancunians know a thing or two about protests. We’re famous for it. The city still remembers the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, where the city’s inhabitants had gathered to campaign for reform. The resulting tragedy, in which 15 people died, was enough to prompt change in the folks that sit in the Houses of Parliament.
Why does the barbarism of war inspire so many to seek comfort in song?
Writer Lizzie Nunnery explores this in her tale of the ravages of war, seen through the eyes of a little girl. Part of the British Council’s World Stages project, Nunnery has teamed up with Ukrainian director Tamara Trunova and it premiered at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre.