This competition has now closed and the winner has been drawn and informed

The Octagon‘s second play in their new season is the late Harold Pinter‘s classic and timeless, The Caretaker. Written in 1960, it was an immediate hit with critics and audiences; receiving awards and standing ovations.

THE PLAY:
Two brothers and a tramp fight and manoeuvre in a territorial battle for supremacy; their histories, personalities and unyielding wills become embroiled in a classic power struggle. (more…)

Date Reviewed: 20th February, 2009
Venue: The Opera House

Ellen Kent‘s latest partnership production with the Russian Classical Ballet Theatre brings us dancers from the Ballet Theatre of Kharkov. Admirably she supplements them in the crowd scenes with pupils drawn from the local Stagecoach Theatre Arts in Salford and Didsbury. (more…)

The Royal Exchange Studio season continues later this month with The Fragility Of X, which follows a woman and her autistic teenage son as their lives reach breaking point.

This is a new play about boundaries, freedom, relationships and art. It is described as unblinkingly unsentimental, funny, alarming and provocative. (more…)

Date Reviewed: 19th February, 2009
Venue: The Lowry

It’s easy to run out of superlatives when trying to describe the sheer spectacle that is Cirque de Glace. From the heart pounding opening to its stunning and memorable close, this is an amazing combination of circus skills, ice skating and storytelling. (more…)

Library Theatre
13 February to 14 March 2009

Rock ‘n’ Roll is the latest, play from Tom Stoppard, writer of Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead and the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love, amongst many others. Autobiographical and unashamedly intellectual, it freely mixes discussions of communism, theories of consciousness, the Prague Spring and its aftermath, and is held together by a love of rock music. It is by turns engaging and entertaining and never less than enthralling. (more…)