Manchester Theatre Preview 2018

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Sat 10 Feb 2018 - Sat 23 Jun 2018

As the curtain rises on 2018 and the pantomime season draws to an end, it is a good time to look ahead at what Manchester's theatres have lined up for the new year.

Here is a personal pick of what is waiting in the wings for 2018:

Contact Theatre

Situated between the Whitworth Art Gallery and university buildings, Contact has been awarded £3.85 million by Arts Council England. It has secured additional funding from Manchester City Council and Bruntwood and help in kind from Manchester University, Foyle Foundation, the Granada Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Wolfson Foundation and the Oglesby Charitable Trust.

Whilst Contact's Oxford Road home spends the next two years undergoing a major expansion and refurbishment, Contact's team will move into a temporary home nearby and hold events and festivals in new locations.

Vogue Ball
10 March 2018

Where "Club culture meets high art", Vogue Ball, will strike a pose at Manchester Academy 2, Oxford Road, on 10 February.



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Having opened the theatrical side of its theatrical life in 2015 with The Funfair, Manchester's £25 million centre for the arts, continues its theme of politically engaged, stimulating and challenging drama, under the direction of artistic director for theatre, Walter Meierjohann

Extraordinary Rendition
7 - 9 March 2018

A theatrical experience, which lasts for 15 minutes, does not sound like good value for money until you learn that Extraordinary Rendition is for one audience member at a time.

The setting is a cabin built from the same materials as Camp X-Ray - the temporary detention facility at Guantanamo bay, and with the same internal dimensions of a detainee's cell.b



It is an experience, which we may well be relieved only lasts for quarter of an hour.



Royal Exchange

Frankenstein
9 March - 7 April 2018

It's 200 years since Mary Shelley's novel was published but the story of a scientist who creates a monster is more topical than ever. In 2018, we are constantly being warned that 'the robots are taking over'. The Royal Exchange production in March and April, is an adaptation of the novel by April de Angelis, and will be directed by Matthew Xia.

It will be interesting to compare and contrast it with the adaptation by Nick Dear, which Danny Boyle directed at the National Theatre in 2011, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. It might also renew interest in the Hollywood film Frankenstein (1931), which featured Boris Karloff as the monster.



Mountains: The Dreams of Lily Kwok
22 March - 7 April 2018

The studio at the Royal Exchange will stage a sweet and sour tale. Helen Tse is part of the enterprising family who own the Sweet Mandarin restaurant in Manchester's Northern Quarter.

Her bestselling novel of explosive family secrets has been adapted for the theatre by In-Sook Chappell. The story travels from the poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930s Hong Kong and finally to the UK.



Lowry, Salford Quays

Mary Stuart
17 - 21 April 2018

Mary Stuart (or Maria Stuart, in German) is a verse play by Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805), about royal rivalry in sixteenth-century Britain.

Mary Stuart is imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle. Her cousin Queen Elizabeth 1 wants to neutralise any claim Mary has to the throne. Will Elizabeth's defence of her throne result in Mary's execution?

Having been staged at two London theatres - Duke of Yorks and the Almeida, Robert Icke's adaptation of Mary Stuart, visits the Lowry as part of a short tour.

It will also call at Theatre Royal, Bath, Arts Theatre, Cambridge,

The toss of a coin will decide whether Juliet Stevenson or Lia Williams play Elizabeth and Mary, on a particular night.

This House
24 - 28 April 2018

A minority government is dependant on the votes of Northern Irish MPs for its survival. James Graham's play is not inspired by Theresa May's current administration but rather on the 1974 - 1979 Labour government, which clung to power before losing a vote of confidence in the House of Commons.

This House was premiered at London's National Theatre in 2012 and received its West End debut at the Garrick Theatre on 19 November 2016. It was also screened in cinemas worldwide as part of National Theatre Live in 2013.

In addition to the Lowry, the 2018 tour of This House includes Theatre Royal Bath, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Nottingham Theatre Royal, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Theatre Royal, Plymouth, Norwich Theatre Royal, Malvern Theatres, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, Lyceum Theatre, and Sheffield.
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Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train
16 - 19 May 2018

Stephen Adley Giurgis play is set in Rikers Island, New York's top-security prison. It is another drama coming on its way to Manchester, which began its life in the Big Apple. - in this case off-Broadway, in Labyrinth Theater Company, in 2000. It was nominated for the Olivier Award, Best New Play for 2003.

Stephen Adley Giurgis other plays include The Mother f*r With The Hat and %%The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot.
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Royal Exchange

Happy Days
25 May - 23 June 2018

Having played the glamorous and vulnerable Blanche Du Bois at the Royal Exchange in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Maxine Peake returns in a different kind of twentieth century classic.

Maxine Peake, who is Associate Artist at the Royal Exchange, will play Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. Winnie is literally sinking deeper into the ground, whilst she continues to expound on the trivialities of life, with her husband Willie (who is in a cave).

Beckett's stage directions state that Winnie is "about fifty, well-preserved", despite being "embedded up to her waist in exact centre of mound."

The play was first performed in New York in September 1961. The Royal Court Theatre production in 1979, was directed by Beckett himself, with Billie Whitelaw (1932 - 2014) as Winnie.

Happy Days will see Maxine Peake reunited with Sarah Frankcom, who directed her in A Streetcar Named Desire, The Skriker and Hamlet.

2018 will be a another busy year at the Royal Exchange for Maxine Peake, as her own play Queens of the Coal Age will be staged in June and July.



Whilst the city's 2018 theatrical productions are well underway, the Manchester Theatre Awards will celebrate the best of Manchester's 2017 theatre on 9 March 2018, at The Lowry.

The ceremony will again be hosted by hosted by actor and comedian Justin Moorhouse.

In 2017, Julie Hesmondhalgh won Best Actress award for her role as a cancer patient in the American play Wit at the Royal Exchange

Daniel Rigby was crowned Best Actor for his part as Manchester computer scientist Alan Turing in Breaking the Code, also at the Royal Exchange.

Will the Royal Exchange carry away the main acting awards this year?

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!date 10/02/2018 -- 23/06/2018
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