The Hired Man

Synopsis

A love triangle taking us right to the heart of Cumbrian life in the run up to the first world war. It’s the story of a young married couple and their struggles - to carve a living from the land and to survive working in the coal-mines - just as the gathering storm of war in Europe threatens their community, their love and their lives.

Our Review:

12 June 2010

It managed five months in the West End back in the mid-80s and it still pops up from time to time here and there but this is, to my knowledge, the first professional production of The Hired Man in Greater Manchester. So thanks to the Octagon for that.

In the event however it is something of a mixed blessing.

Melvyn Bragg and Howard Goodall’s evocation of rural Cumbria in the early years of the 20th century is based on Bragg’s epic family saga, set on the windswept moors and in the dangerous coal mines under the Irish Sea.

Farm labourer John Tallentire (Kieran Hill, with his third impressive performance of the season) and his wife Emily (Bury-born, ex-Emmerdale’s Amy Nuttall) are hired by a local farmer but when work takes John away from home and his new child, Emily is subjected to the advances of the farmer’s son Jackson (John Cusworth).

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Latest User Review

Mike Edwardes - 16 June 2010:

How do they keep Kieran Hill in Bolton, he shoud be performing in the West End !!...

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