Lots of activities fall victim to Manchester’s infamously wet weather. But theatre performances aren’t usually one of them. Yet last week, I found myself in a stormy Salford Quays, being told by a soaking-wet stage manager that the play I was supposed to review was off because the actors’ umbrellas kept threatening to break.
Unlike most plays, Contact is performed outdoors – and fair weather is an unusually important factor in the play’s success. Thankfully, the second time I ventured over to Media City, the clouds had parted and the sun was shining: creating the perfect climate for outdoor, immersive theatre.
As I arrived, the group that became the play’s audience were sprawled across the steps in front of the BBC building, sorting out the smartphone app essential to how Contact works. This tech provides the audio for the play, which is synced across each of the audience’s and actors’ phones. The actors never speak aloud – we hear their voices in our ears through a pre-recorded soundtrack.
Audio-walking theatre has been growing fast due to the pandemic, as theatres have been closed and social distancing measures enforced. It’s something that Manchester has embraced, with two audio-theatrical offerings launched this year already.
Chloe Gentles and Cellan Scott in Contact (Phil Tragen)
The elements that make up these plays – listening through headphones, being outdoors, walking around, engaging with passers-by, the weather – are all distinct and unusual things to bring to theatre under any circumstances. Combining them all into one performance seems ahead of its time.
The experience of being both watcher and watched, audience and performer, is very strange. It’s the sort of thing that would fit brilliantly in the arty, edgy Edinburgh Fringe. However, participating in such immersive live theatre definitely requires a confidence (which I’m not sure I have).
Contact, originally a French play written in three weeks at the start of lockdown and now brought to Manchester, is about Sarah, who, when out on her daily walk, meets her guardian angel. Her deepest fears and anxieties then start to bubble to the surface. The audience follows Sarah as she sits, walks, and thinks. It’s a strange experience, as the clearly demarcated lines between reality and fiction blur. Walking past people drinking and eating, the audience becomes part of the performance, and creates its own spectacle for passers-by.
Manchester-based theatre company ThickSkin have created an audio-walking play series called #WalkThisPlay, with the first episode ‘Keep Going then Vanish’ set in a big loop around central Manchester. The play physically drives you around the city as you search for something you’ve lost, that you keep forgetting, that you know you need to find. As you walk, your location triggers the next part of the story.
What’s most exciting about these plays is the opportunity to experience theatre again after such a long time. #WalkThisPlay doesn’t involve any live performance from professional actors, but as you walk around, listening to the evocative voices of Danielle Henry and Esme Bayley, you become the live element of the experience, immersing yourself in the world of the show. This is heightened in Contact by watching actors perform live in front of you: I couldn’t help but shiver with anticipation as the play started. There is no substitute for live performance.
Chloe Gentles in Contact (Phil Tragen)
Aliveness becomes all-encompassing in outdoor theatre like this. Smells, the breeze on your face and in your hair, a spot or two of rain: all become noticeable. As you walk, directed through your ears, you take in your surroundings in a different way. ‘Keep Going then Vanish’ directs you through the “black and white alley” of St Ann’s Passage, to stop in front of the old Theatre Royale, and to listen to the voices of those buried beneath St John’s Gardens.
The technology surrounding the experience is both simple and complicated. The #WalkThisPlay series uses GPS tracking on your smartphone to map your movements, and when you reach a hotspot, the next part of the story plays. Contact relies heavily on very tight syncing of the audio in the audience’s ears to the actors’ performances. It’s possible as well to listen to the show in a different language, but still exactly synced with the performance (just as foreign language films are dubbed into English and vice versa).
These plays are very different experiences. #WalkThisPlay, simply an audio play with technology enabling you to interact with the story, is more internal and more personal. You aren’t sharing the experience with anyone (although it would be easy to do the walk with friends, each listening on their own phones). Contact, with its live performance, seems an elevation of #WalkThisPlay, pushing the concept further (perhaps than is comfortable).
They exist as a way to experience theatre in a year without it, but more than that, they’re charting a path forward in what theatre could be in the future. This is what I’m excited for.
Contact featured images: Phil Tragen 2021
Contact is running until 27 June in Salford and central Manchester. For more information and tickets, head to the show’s website.
#WalkThisPlay’s first episode is available for free on the Echoes app. The second play, ‘Monuments’, will be available from 30 May.Click here for more details.
Theatre
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – a masterclass in comedy, colour and movement
Danny Jones
To start with, we’re going to begin this review by advocating for going into stage shows with as little knowledge as possible because it only dials up the already exaggerated nature even further – we knew next to nothing about Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat before seeing it in Manchester.
And we truly think it helped.
Now, when we say nothing, we’ve obviously heard the title plenty of times over the years as it remains one of the most celebrated musical productions on the planet, and you don’t need to be an avid theatre buff to know who Andrew Lloyd Webber is. The point being is that all we knew was its reputation.
Going along with a second party several decades older than us who shared the same blindspot and just never quite understood what all the fuss was about makes the next part even funnier: we both loved it.
Colour, colour and more colour.Some impressive yet superbly simple production value.Our review of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Opera House in Manchester. (Credit: Press Tristram Kenton)
We’re not going to dive too heavily into the story as we’re sure plenty of you who are more well-versed in the genre don’t need a synopsis regurgitating for the umpteenth time, but what we will say is that we’re somewhat glad we weren’t aware of its religious themes and numerous biblical references.
Not because we have any particular issue with Christianity nor adapting stories within theologies to turn them into entertainment, but because as atheists we probably would have been less keen to choose this particular text over another.
However, this is why we’re thankful for going in blind as we fear many others have missed out on this long-standing vibrant, energetic, all-singing, all-dancing twist on the tale of Genesis for decades simply due to being non-believers/agnostic.
That being said, we can confidently assure you that not only can you put your thoughts on faith to one side for the duration of the performance but, for us at least, it felt like it was more of an undercurrent than anything else and had little bearing on what a truly joyful evening for all ages.
You also get hand-held through it through the eyes of the children being retold the story right in front of you by the expert narrator, Christina Bianco, whose interventions and comic timing were lethal on a crowd already easily cracked up by a punchline or two – but she had the best of the lot.
Where else to begin than with Joseph himself, played by Adam Filipe, who although we’ll admit to being layman on the subject until last night, feels almost born to play the role.
Not only did he bring respite to an otherwise frenetic (in the best way possible) onslaught of singing with his ability to deliver certain lines as nothing more than perfectly enunciated and emotional speech, but his voice was on point throughout and the way he made full use of the stage from the start was great.
One particularly immature slide up the curved wall of the set in the opening five minutes and we knew all we needed to know about not just movement but the rest of the cast too; pretty much non-stop movement and expression virtually at all times.
The dancing – particularly a rather hilarious ‘can-can’ confusion – was top-notch throughout and no matter which bright, flowing costume he or the ensemble was wearing during a specific number, they all looked the part and didn’t put a foot out of place.
Even a more serious interlude was welcome.We’d have loved more yellow-forward moment and backdrops in the palette but that’s just us being picky…Credit: Press Images
But much to our delight, there really wasn’t one standout performance that stood head and shoulders above the rest, simply because they were all brilliant.
Whether it was the Jacobs and Sons company of brothers bringing both melodrama and some comic relief, or the score of female dancers delivering an elegance and added level of pageantry to proceedings, they all played their part.
However, every time one or more of the kids took to the stage a show-stealing moment was ripe for the picking and they all seized their opportunity, be it in unison or in the select few solo moments in the spotlight. An audience is always going to get up for youngsters shining front and centre.
But, we suppose if we absolutely had to give another special mention to another member of the production and single them out, there’s only one person it could be…
Having previously played the lead role back in 2016 following his X-Factor success, Joe McElderry returns to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and the Manc crowd in the role of the Pharoah and boy was he good having passed the baton and shifted gears. So good and so funny.
As well as an expert command of light, colour and choreography, the one thing we were surprised by was just how well-placed the comedy was throughout.
Not too much, not too little and nothing too contrived – a hard balance to strike and one that helps ease in those rare typically theatre-goers prone to a touch of cringe.
All in all, we sincerely urge you to go and see this show for yourselves, especially if you’re like us and have never given it a chance before. You won’t regret it.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is on in Manchester until Sunday, 9 March. You can still grab tickets HERE.
In case you were wondering who stole the show in @JosephMusical at the @PalaceAndOpera, they all did… but we'll admit the Pharoah is a bit of a legend. 😅👏
Hit theatre production set at a house party to visit Manchester on UK tour
Daisy Jackson
Alright then, 24 hour party people, we’ve found a theatre production you might like the sound of – it’s called The House Party, and it’s set in (you guessed it) a house party.
This smash hit production by pioneering theatre company Headlong is set to land at HOME in March as part of the arts venue’s 2025 theatre season.
It tells the tale of a wild 18th birthday party, where Christine is trying to pick up the pieces of her best friend, a newly-dumped Julie (who happens to be the birthday girl).
Themes of class, power and privilege are all explored with a raw intensity as the cast on stage plough through shots and dive head-first into a night that will change everything they know.
The House Party, which has received glowing reviews from previous showings, is filled with ‘privilege, desire and destruction’.
When it stops off in Manchester, its cast will include Bridgerton’s Sesley Hope as Christine, Synnøve Karlsen (Miss Austen, Last Night in Soho) as Julie, and Tom Lewis (Gentleman Jack, Patience) as Jon.
The ensemble of Frantic Assembly performers includes Ines Aresti, Oliver Baines, Cal Connor, Micah Corbin-Powell, Rachael Leonce, Jaheem Pinder and Jamie Randall.
The House Party is written by Laura Lomas and is a reimagining of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie for today’s generation.
It’s directed by Headlong’s artistic director Holly Race Roughan, who directed the Royal Shakespeare Company’s world premiere of David Edgar’s major new political play The New Real.
The House Party. Credit: Ikin YumThe production will be at HOME. Credit: Supplied
Movement direction will come from Frantic Assembly’s Scott Graham.
Prior to the UK tour of The House Party, Headlong celebrated its 50 year anniversary, including the hit production of A Raisin in the Sun which played nationwide.
The House Party will be at HOME in Manchester between 25 and 29 March, 2025 – you can get your tickets HERE.
Anna Willis -
29th May 2021 
