It’s hard to write about love.

In doing so, there’s inevitably a discomfiting awareness that whatever could be written on the matter already has been, and that any attempt to approach the subject anew is fated merely to repeat what has been expressed more eloquently, more passionately, many times and by many others. It’s hard, too, to write about Manchester, and in much the same way. Few other cities regard themselves with the constancy of Manchester’s relentless self-admiration, so that increasingly, it seems, what the one-time powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution most assiduously manufactures is itself.

The principle achievement of Rory Mullarkey’s Even These Things is that the play writes of both love and Manchester, and, on the whole, does it well. Taking its cues from the to-and-fro between the city and its Irish diaspora, neither does it shy away from the complications in that relationship, not least those which arose in the dust of the IRA bomb which tore the city centre apart 30 years ago.

Mullarkey sets out his stall in a beguiling opening monologue with all the richness of Joyce, the Liffey-like stream of its captivating linguistic excesses anchored to the Irk by a quicksilver Elaine Cassidy, hectic with hunger and bereavement in her role as the pregnant Annie Donovan, intent on avenging the murder of her pig. Flirting with the fourth wall, demanding of her present day audience, “Do you judge me, gentle folk?”, Cassidy draws us in towards the claustrophobia of the mid-19^th century Angel Meadow, then a slum which quartered some 30,000 souls.

Dying in convulsions of violence and birth, her soliloquy effectively prefigures the second act, a piece of community theatre in its truest sense, drawing on a cast from across the ten boroughs, choreographing the city on the fateful morning of June 15.

Toying with the double-edged sword of the city’s exceptionalism, it captures the grace that redeems it from the unseemly swagger of the likes of the Gallagher brothers; a warmer, more gentle undercurrent of saturnine self-deprecation. It’s a variety of humour best exemplified by the hangdog likes of Les Dawson and Victoria Wood, and one that’s delivered with dry warmth by Katherine Pearce’s on-stage narration. Exercise book in hand, wryly amused, she could almost be the city’s presiding spirit.

The intricate patterns of Mullarkey’s interwoven lives, embroidered with the local specificity of a good pantomime, are spun deftly by James MacDonald’s direction, abetted by a silent ballet of dark-garbed scene shifters. Over and above Mullarkey’s way with words, rising to its greatest heights in a tongue-in-cheek definition of who can claim to ‘really’ come from Manchester which tapers off into an absurdity of exclusivity, MacDonald produces a number of fine theatrical flourishes. The Piccadilly Gardens Victoria, anointed by pigeon droppings, looks down upon proceedings with all of her customary weary disapproval, while a bird’s eye view of the city is suggested by the tactical deployment of Dinky toys. Lastly, and surpassingly, the bomb itself is movingly represented by a tableau in slow motion, as the participants are brought together, only to be blown asunder, and another pregnant figure is raised off her feet.

For me, the full circle of the present day conclusion, with its hints of metempsychosis in the redeveloped Angel Meadow, falls a little short of the enviable aplomb of the first two acts. Such, perhaps, is the way with endings that are, of necessity, open. All the same, there’s something in the play’s disinclination to be tidy, both in its unpicking of the myths of the 1996 bomb and its allusion to the more recent attack on the Arena, that’s admirable. More, in the unspoken parallels it invites with other communities, some more recently arrived, there’s an intimation that, just as the Irish have completed the difficult journey from vilification through acceptance and on to celebration, such is the eventual trajectory of the other nationalities who have chosen the city as their home.

In the end, it’s – perhaps surprisingly – another Manchester Irish voice whose lyricism Mullarkey’s three-act billet doux to the city evokes. As Morrissey put it before he became unmoored from empathy, “No, it’s not like any other love. This one’s different, because it’s us.”

By Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent

Main image: Elaine Cassidy in Even These Things at the Royal Exchange Theatre (c). Courtesy of the Royal Exchange Theatre.

 

Even These Things is at the Royal Exchange, Manchester until June 15, 2026. For more information, click here.