I have a confession to make. I tell lies. I have told them often and without regret. Whether they are teeny, tiny lies to save a friend’s feelings, big, fat ones to get myself out of sticky situations or, the worst kind of lie,...
Read MoreThe Royal Northern College of Music is an ambitious institution. It is ambitious to further its already considerable reputation as a world-class conservatoire and it’s ambitious on behalf of its 700 students, whose...
Read MoreSimon Armitage’s The Last Days of Troy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange is the stuff that dreams are made of. For the dramatist it is the cumulation of a dream that began in the café of Hebden Bridge railway station; for the...
Read MoreChrist, Jesus, the Royal Exchange’s production of Orlando is good. In a canon which dwelled on inner and outer darkness and popularised the stream of consciousness narrative, Virginia Woolf’s fictional biography is...
Read MoreWhen I was 21, I spent an enjoyable year working as an usher at Manchester’s Palace Theatre and Opera House. It was the equivalent of a ‘year off’, a bit of fun with a bit of cash before I became a proper...
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