Martin Gibbons is about to tread the boards at the Lowry in A Song For The Lovers.

Monkeywood Theatre present their 24:7 Theatre Festival hit, from Thu 9 – Sat 11 October. The play has been redeveloped and redirected since its 24:7 outing in 2006 especially for The Lowry’s first ever Studio Season.

Cofounders, Sarah McDonald Hughes, from Flixton, and Francesca Waite, from Didsbury, met as Theatre A level students at Xaverian 6th Form College in Rusholme and formed Monkeywood Theatre Company with fellow actor Martin Gibbons, from Teesside, in 2003. Their previous work includes Closer, by Patrick Marber, and Coach G, which received rave reviews.

A Song For The Lovers is a funny, compelling story about an unlikely friendship and an impossible evening. Over the course of one night in a deserted club in Manchester, three desperate characters search for an escape route that is drifting further and further away from them.

We caught up with Martin three days before opening night, to find out why we should see Monkeywood Theatre’s latest production.

1. When A Song for the Lovers premiered at 24:7 in 2006 it received brilliant responses. Since then it has been extensively redeveloped, rewritten and redirected…and is even better! So anyone who has seen it before gets the chance to see it again quite new, the same but different!

2. It’s about the connections that 3 desperate characters make with one another over one evening in a deserted club.  It cuts to the heart of what we’re all about – reaching out, wanting to connect, wanting to stay, and wanting to run.

3. It might make you laugh, and it might make you cry. We promise it’ll definitely make you feel something…

4. Its one hour long. That means it finishes by 8.45 and you can be in the bar before 9 – hell, we might even join you for a pint after.

5. You may learn the odd fact about bus and train travel in Manchester. Useful, no?

-Martin Gibbons

A Song For The Lovers opens this Thurs 9- Sat 11 October and can be booked at the Lowry website.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Features, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.