Brighter Still, a performance in Bingley’s Myrtle Park, marks the longest night of the year and the culmination of Bradford’s tenure as the 2025 City of Culture. In keeping with the winter solstice, its represents both its dying embers and its rekindling.
Overcast skies obscure the twilight, but nonetheless there’s a sort of fairground atmosphere on this December Sunday evening. Aptly enough, a cauldron of traditions is stirring. At once a nativity play for Yule, a bonfire night without a martyr and even an al fresco pantomime, the evening draws the assembled gathering into the age-old tradition of storytelling around a communal flame.
Perhaps even more than the performers, the crowd is the country in bickering, convivial microcosm. Families and friends huddle close, flashing selfie smiles. The younger attendees, up past their bedtimes, are alternately bored, transfixed, fractious and awe-struck. Sometimes wrapped up in their thoughts, occasionally they are coaxed into joining in.
Directed by Emily Lim, choreographed by Dan Canham, and performed in the round, Brighter Still anchors a rotating cast of locals – ranging from the cheerleading Luvabulls to the pedalling Freestyle Fanatics – in a nucleus of professionals, taking its cues from the production numbers which bookend the Olympics or punctuate Eurovision. In keeping with this, its score, credited to Benji Bower and Warren ‘Flamin Beatz’ Morgan-Humphreys, balances contemporary trappings against an inclusive coating of all-ages melody.
Credit: Bradford 2025 (James Glossop)
Although scripted, at least in part, by Suhalymah Manzoor Khan, it is scrupulous in opening its circular stage to the broadest horizon of voices, from the young to the old, from the long-established to the newly-arrived. For the most, they are monologues of belonging and pride, but mention of the Bradford 12 – imprisoned for organising against the racist provocations of the National Front – is a timely reminder of those who skulk in the shadows, wrapping themselves in flags. Such necessary discord apart, the celebration bustles with something of a sparkler’s fizz, or – like human fireworks – resolving into temporary tableaux. At the centre of one, stationary but moving, the septuagenarian Bradford Ukrainian Choir sing in the language of their embattled homeland. For me, the spectacle proves most effective when its well-intentioned busyness abates, and, in a minute or three of comparative stillness, the spotlight is reserved for a single, sari-clad chanteuse and the solitary dancer who accompanies her.
Crucially, unlike larger-scale affairs, underwritten by interested parties, it’s a production without product, with no designs on selling its audience anything. Even the brownies and yum yums distributed by the volunteers come with the price of admission. More than this, in a certain light, the production’s minor flaws, its moments of imperfection, only emphasise its message. The enthusiasm outshines the imprecision, the fallibility bridges the gap between stage and park, reaching out with a coaxing insistence that the platform is attainable to all.
Ultimately, Brighter Still illuminates this possibility. It’s a promise, a permission to dream; a living, breathing testament that the flames of inspiration spark beyond the established beacons of the cocksure metropolis, that the spotlight can be turned outward to the towns and villages it might otherwise eclipse.
From the fading glow of its ashes, tongues of flame may already be beginning to flicker.
By Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent
Main image: Luke Waddington/Rabbithole
