Mixed Up North revisits North West

Max Stafford-Clark’s award-winning company Out of Joint revisits the region with its acclaimed new play Mixed Up North.

Following previous visits to Liverpool with The Convict’s Opera, Testing the Echo and The Overwhelming, the company is bringing the co-production with the Bolton Octagon theatre to the Liverpool Everyman next month.

Written by Robin Soans and based on real events in Burnley, Mixed Up North follows Trish, who has set up a theatre group for Asian and white teenagers. She brings in a director – the harassed and heavily pregnant Bella – who struggles to share her artistic vision with this disaffected group of young people. As they reach the final dress rehearsal, tensions rise and bonds fracture. But then the theatre group begin to use their own compelling stories.

Explaining how he became involved with the production, director Max Stafford-Clark said: “I was invited to a debate on racism, at which the playwright David Edgar talked about the difficulty for an ethnic group to integrate into parts of society already dominated by another group.

“He suggested that if we really wanted to integrate, we needed to create brand new spaces, and mentioned this theatre group. I thought this was fascinating, so Robin and I and a group of drama students went to Lancashire to meet the people involved, and made their stories into a play.”

On Friday 6 and Saturday 7 November Olivier award-winning Celia Imrie will take over the role of Trish. Her credits include Calendar Girls, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and numerous projects with Victoria Wood including Dinnerladies and Acorn Antiques. The Everyman dates are the only ones on tour outside of London or the producing theatre, Bolton Octagon, to feature Imrie.

Mixed Up North will be at the Liverpool Everyman from 3 -7 November.

To read the Whatsonstage.com interview with Celia Imrie from September this year, click here

The review of Mixed Up North, when it appeared at the Bolton Octagon, can be read here