For Puck's sake

You still have chance to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Exchange, and might I suggest you do. I'll admit I was a bit reluctant to go when I heard there were musical numbers and no interval, but this production blew me away with its innovative approach to Shakespeare's text, dragging the play kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I suffered no problems with the language - much of the Mechanicals' speech has been "translated" into modern English while the Athenians deliver many of their lines as songs and with plenty of gestures, which helped enormously in following the plot. The magic of fairyland comes alive with some amazing sound effects created live on stage using a variety of instruments and improvised noise-making implements, and with some excellent devices and props (the pop-up tent for starters).

The Lyric Hammersmith and Filter Theatre Company present their interpretation in the round, with a clever set (ignoring the weird sunken bath Titania, played by Poppy Miller, and Bottom, unlisted, sleep in) and clever set-ups. The tongue-in-cheek comedy is great and there are some fabulous takes on the various characters: as well as Ed Gaughan as the brilliantly exasperated Peter Quince who talks ten to the dozen, Jonathan Broadbent is a standout as an Austin Powersesque Oberon - though even he doesn't come near Ferdy Roberts' swaggering and sweary lager-swilling Puck (pictured). Just awesome. 

A Midsummer Night's Dream runs until Saturday 4 August. Visit www.royalexchange.co.uk for tickets.

Image: Jonathan Keenan

Crafty way to tell stories

The lovely Manchester Craft & Design Centre is celebrating, having risen from the ashes of a derelict former fish and poultry market 30 years ago. And a good thing too. Not only does the Centre now house 35 artists and designer-makers in 19 studio boutiques, plus a nice new cafe, it is a beautiful building with its ornate glass and metal roof, not unlike other places in Manchester such as Barton Arcade and even the Royal Exchange.

As part of the anniversary celebrations, Saturday sees the launch of the Crafting History exhibition, the culmination of Collecting History. Curated by artist Lucy Harvey - who, it has to be said, loves a found object! - this project has been bringing together people's memories of the market, the early years of what was known as Craft Village and the surrounding Northern Quarter. Tell you what, it's unearthed some lovely stories - I love all the stuff (which you can read on the project's blog) about former stallholder Ellen Gibbons, provided by her son John, granddaughter Patricia and great-great grandson Jack.

The Crafting History exhibition will feature a specially commissioned ceramic installation by porcelain artist Carys Davies, interpreting the tales and memories that have been collected since April. There will also be pieces responding to Collecting History by artists and makers based at the Centre, and these will be auctioned off at a special event in November 2012, with all proceeds going to charity. Says MCDC Director Kate Day: “The launch of Crafting History marks an important milestone in our 30th anniversary celebrations, giving our resident makers and associate artists the chance to interpret the amazing stories and memories people have been submitting.”

During the launch event for Crafting History on Saturday (14 July), there will be free sampling activities (2-4pm), including an embroidery workshop, then, from 6.30pm, the sampler-cultureclash collective will host a free evening of “sampling shenanigans”, including a live audio performance by DJs, musicians and spoken word artists. This sounds like storytelling with a difference, so I'm interested to see what pans out!

See the MCDC website for more and book tickets (they are free, but it's to make sure you get in) for the Saturday evening shindig via Eventbrite.

So much art, so little time

I've been so busy looking at art recently, I haven't had time to write about it, but Mother's been on again, telling me off for not posting anything for weeks, so here you go.

First off, there was the Fortnight project, which I took part in vicariously, hearing about some of the weird and wonderful goings-on from a true participant and accompanying them to a house in Whalley Range then peeking at some projections through a net curtain. Next was the launch of the Richard Creme exhibition in the Link Gallery at Manchester School Of Art - some really great portraits; I really liked this stylistic number...

The following week, I got out of the city and went to Tatton Park for the launch of the Biennial. This is on until 30 September, and you really ought to go, if only to see Olivier Grossetete's Pont de Singe (pictured), which is lovely and ephemeral. I also like The Cartland Institute For Romance Research - a tribute to the pink lady herself, installed within a Bedford Rascal. Nice.

Then I took one of those Pendolino thingies and visited the Hayward on the Southbank to see the David Shrigley (pictured below) and Jeremy Deller shows. Both good - particularly liked Shrigley's satirical cartoons and Deller's cycling activism. I also went to check out my pal David Wightman's show - he does amazing Alpine landscapes with block colours and collaged wallpaper, but I also really like his new pencil line drawings - lovely and subtle. 

After that, I got another train, this time to Nottingham, taking part in an art night at the really rather ace Primary Studios and checking out the Mika Rottenberg video work at the Contemporary. I'm not a big fan of video art, but this was good - thought-provoking yet tongue-in-cheek. Back in Manchester, I went to the Stanya Kahn thing at Cornerhouse - more video and cartoons; the top floor is the best (this is on until 16 September) - and the FutureEverything exhibition at MoSI, which kept me happily entertained with some interactive works.

Then it was back outside, first at Windermere for Les Commandos Percu to celebrate the arrival of that torch wotsit, then at the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival, where I saw the Prometheus Awakes performance and Motor Show, which involved sitting in the pissing rain to watch some crazy dance (though it was pretty inspired). Yesterday, I was supposed to go to the launch of Liz West's Chroma at Blankspace, but I'm all arted out so that will have to wait; next week it's the launch of Crafting Histories at Manchester Craft & Design Centre.

Theatre trip

A year ago pretty much on the dot, the temporarily homeless Library Theatre became the talk of the town when they put on a site-specific adaptation of Dickens' novel Hard Times in Murrays' Mill in Ancoats (as documented by yours truly here). This June into July, they've developed a production for a space within Manchester City Council's new gaff, Number One First Street.

This latest specially commissioned play, Manchester Lines, is set in a lost property office, and this has been painstakingly recreated with objects borrowed and begged from around the rainy city, immediately immersing you in the weird and wonderful world of missing things. As an aside - but a nicely contextual one - a slightly forgetful friend, who has a tendency to leave most of his belongings in taxis and on trains (twice in one day, on occasion), tells me that the actual Lost & Found for the Manchester transport system does happen to be in that very building, but located on the ground floor.

Anyhow, after being taken up to the fifth floor in groups then filling out a form detailing what you have lost (my mind, in my case) and wandering through a corridor filled with interesting found objects, you appear in the theatre space. Unlike Hard Times, you get to sit down for most of this performance - which was a relief for me (hangover the size of Salford, since you're asking) and all the people posting messages on the website fretting about having to stand up for two hours.

The "keeper of lost things" Eugene (played warmly by John Branwell) paints a picture of the comings and goings of various characters who have mislaid items on the Manchester tram system, then gradually these people are introduced to the stage (via slightly unusual means, but I don't wish to spoil things for you) to tell their own tales of woe or whatever. Everybody is losing or finding something, and not just physical objects like umbrellas and handbags: "I can lose a bag if that's what it takes to find a sister", says Shanti (Amelia Donkor) to Pauline (both pictured). There are lost memories, found family members, lost marbles, found identities, lost brothers, found sisters... All the characters are interlinked, either obviously or via the fact that some are in the same tram carriage at the same decisive moment. The segueing into and out of the different stories, especially with an aural backdrop of station noises, really reminded me of last year's MIF sound installation, Audio Obsura by Lavinia Greenlaw (which I describe here), and while it took me a little while to work our how everything fits together in Manchester Lines, it all made good sense in the end.

The acting was great and I especially felt connected with Pauline (Claire Brown) and her son Louis (an exceptional performance from the young actor Marcquelle Ward). However, it felt as if rather too much was going on - aside from all the threads you spend a while trying to connect, there are singing and dancing numbers, and a grand finale involving the audience moving to another room. I'm afraid I wasn't keen on the songs (and I was pleased to learn that they weren't down to Manchester-based poet Jackie Kay, who wrote the rest of the script), and being so close to the actors made me slightly uncomfortable during the choreographed pieces. Still, it's dubbed as "a theatrical journey", and it definitely is an experience, so all aboard!

Manchester Lines continues until 7 July. See the Library Theatre website for full details.


ADDENDUM: My theatre critic pal Laura informs me that actually the song lyrics were written by Jackie Kay, which is a bit of a shame if you hear the Altrincham / ham one. Ho hum.

First Contact

Pretty much at this precise moment two weeks ago, I was halfway through possibly the most nuts thing I've done in a very long time: the 24 Arty People project at Manchester's Contact theatre. As anticipated, I was the oldest there by a long chalk (of the other participants, 22 were in their 20s and one was in her 30s), but it took me a fairly lengthy eight hours before I became slightly delirious and packed my bag to leave (the hysteria had kicked in way before that for some of the young'uns). Still, I stuck it out - I'd already had to endure endless rounds of musical statues (pictured below), pass the parcel and sleeping lions in the wee small hours, then the kind of philosophical discussions you usually have at parties, but after three bottles of wine and copious amounts of punch, so I surmised that it couldn't really get much worse - and in the end I was glad I stayed the distance.

When we finally got wind of what the hell we were supposed to be doing, a mere 12 hours before we had to present it to the paying public, we realised we had been split into groups of varying sizes - from duos to foursomes - and from 8pm on Saturday night a total of eight new pieces of work would be performed at various intervals. My group consisted of another writer (which was a bit weird, we thought, given that both of us could have been writing material for the many performers involved), Gemma Langford, and a musician, Jamal Lewis-Service. We'd been given the subject of "after hours", the themes we'd had to discuss at seven in the morning and some props we'd garnered through the games we played, so we decided to go our separate ways and create individually, then meet back to see what we'd come up with. Although I thought this was a bit of a disparate way of working and had been expecting full-on collaboration, it all came together rather nicely, thanks to scriptwriter Gemma casting us as sleep-deprived people having to put up with each other in a hospital, which gave us the scope to do our own things, but in character. We combined music and spoken word and acting, and we sorted ourselves out with costumes, make-up and a set. So glad I made my school let me do a GCSE in drama instead of PE during the lower sixth. Hopefully the 20-minute piece we performed twice wasn't too hideously painful for our audiences.

We were absolutely knackered by the end, and I got a dead leg (apparently from wearing jeans over an extended length of time, according to the GP), but we all got a buzz off what we'd managed to achieve and it was really nice spending time in the company of my group, and with the remaining arty people. It's a shame we didn't have the chance to properly see any of the other performances (I caught a bit of dancing being practised and heard some songs being written), but it was a real privilege to meet such talented and upbeat folk, and get the chance to perform in such a great space. And the after-show wine tasted so so good, it was worth it for that.