Monthly Archives: July 2013
The Machine
As Salford-born Josie Rourke, director of this Manchester International Festival drama, observes “A play about chess sounds almost terrifyingly dull.
Venturing towards Valhalla
Act 1
On the warmest day of the year so far, I sat on the rooftop patio of the Manchester International Festival pavilion bar fuelling myself with fish and chips and swilling down with a pint of festival ale in preparation for the heroic task ahead of me. I had volunteered to review Wagner’s Siegfried.
A Field in England
In his own introduction to the film, director Ben Wheatley describes A Field in England as “pretty fucking mental”. For all the right reasons, that’s exactly what it is.
In Balance With This Life, This Death
When I was a serving soldier, inter-corps rivalry was everything. The British Army encouraged soldiers to take a fierce pride in each level of the structure, right down to platoon or section level.
Pushing The Boat Out at The Whitworth
There’s nothing quite like having an international festival on your doorstep to make you feel a bit of national importance.There’s even people up from London for Christ’s sake, people who’ve got on a train to get here and everything!
The Old Woman
Now this is what makes the Manchester International Festival cool. Let a visionary director loose on an obviously wild and crazy, but absolutely dazzling, idea, with defiantly large-scale production values and determined support.
Sinéad O’Connor talks to Northern Soul
After a career spanning more years than I care to remember, it’s not often I get nervous before interviewing someone famous.
Art for All: Thomas Horsfall’s Gift to Manchester
Once upon a Victorian time, Manchester was a city of cotton mills.
The Suffering of a Suffragette
For a man who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Composer’s Award aged 17, composer and director Tim Benjamin is a charming and modest man.
A Song That Needs To Be Heard
For months after I read Sebastian Faulks’ novel Birdsong, I was haunted by feelings of claustrophobia. His retelling of the horrors experienced by the tunnellers during the First World War stayed with me to the extent that I have never felt ready to re-read the book.
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