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CURTAIN UP at Lowry Galleries

‘Curtain Up’, a new exhibition at Lowry, Salford, brings together works from artists Simeon Barclay, Chris Paul Daniels, Denzil Forrester, Rowland Hill, Joy Labinjo, Ryan Mosley, Abigail Reynolds, Bridget Smith, and Ulla von Brandenburg, to explore the collective experience of being in an audience.


Leslie Kerwin visits the exhibition and meets curator, Zoe Watson to find out how she shining a spotlight on the shared thrill of live performance.


It was Émile Durkheim who first coined the t...
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REVIEW: Matilda the Musical

A ‘miracle’ to some, a ‘gangster’ to others, the grown-ups around Matilda Wormwood can all agree on one thing: this is a five-year-old far too smart for her own good. Now on its 15th year of touring, Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin’s ‘Matilda: The Musical’ has revolted against the conventions of theatre to win the hearts of audiences across the world – as well as more than 100 awards along the way. Roald Dahl’s tale of a little girl both unloved and unleashed for her intelligence is now defining a...
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REVIEW: Eric & Ern

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but it is in the script…”


“There’s a script?”


“Not tonight there’s not!”


Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you’re having a lovely evening – and if you’re not sharing a bed with your appropriately-aged best friend, how could you be? In celebration of the comedians’ 100th birthdays, the UK’s leading Morecambe and Wise tribute act has returned after a sellout tour in 2022. Now at Lowry, Salford for a limited-edition run, ‘Eric & Ern’ guarantees a night o...
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REVIEW: The Battle

One side are ‘badger-stranglers’ from Gunchester. The other eat ‘rice with Bovril’. It’s summer 1995, and in the greatest battle between bands in 30 years, Oasis and Blur are in a race to the top for UK Number One Single. In a technicolour bombshell of beats, beatings, and booze, this week at the Opera House, ‘The Battle’ is on.  


What begins as a bitter Brit Awards rivalry quickly descends into all-out war when second-place Oasis announce their next single will land a week before Blur’s. Dre...
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"You get three generations of the same family, all laughing at the same thing - that's just so rare now" - Jonty Stephens

Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel talk to Leslie Kerwin about reliving the magic of Morecambe and Wise on stage.


“Every year we did a show for the Stage Golfing Society. They did a ‘70s variety show and asked if I would do Eric Morecambe,” Jonty Stephens says. Sat buttoned up and thickly-bespectacled in the Lowry theatre bar, he could break into the act at any moment. Next to him, equally crisp with an easy grin, fellow actor Ian Ashpitel perches on his seat.


“And I said, well, I need an Ern...
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Artist Emily Simpson on capturing Salford’s complex and diverse identity in textiles

Born in Salford and having lived elsewhere, Emily Simpson is used to the city’s reputation as Manchester’s indignant shadow.


“Salford is always the other city,” she says. “It has a confusing, complex identity that is often squashed, forgotten, or associated with negative things, because it is quite a complex place.”


The twinned history of Manchester and Salford’s manufacturing, engineering, and the arts give way thanks to the split of the River Irwell, from which has grown two separate id...
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REVIEW: Kind of Love

The concept of ‘it’s not gay if’ has long been a foundational philosophy to humanity’s evolution. Homosexual accusations have been graffitied on toilet walls since Pompeii, and even by the New Labour nineties, being “straight until” remains as on-trend as ever.


In ‘Kind of Love’ by Stewart Campbell, teenagers across the country are still making out, making up, and making mistakes – who cares if Parliament still can’t decide on the gay age of consent?


On a lads trip to Ibiza, gay teenager S...
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REVIEW: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” is an immediate thought on the first watch of ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’. RuPaul’s most famous catchphrase comes from the idea that there is more to a person than what is outwardly visible. The story of two drag queens and a transgender woman tottering through the Australian desert is sharp, flamboyant, and fabulously witty – and buries extraordinary vulnerability beneath piles of glitter and dazzling smiles.  


In the sparkle of the stage, Mit...
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REVIEW - Sadiq Ali: Tell Me

“Victims are male homosexuals and drug users who use needles… any of them could have contracted the Aids virus, and any of them could pass it on.” 


A tinny radio blares across a dimly-lit haze of sweating bodies and tight leather trousers. Red and white lights pulse beneath thumping disco music as partygoers vogue across the stage. It’s 1985, and the terror of the Aids crisis has been temporarily turned away at the door, only for the threat to continue leering across the night nonetheless.
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Sadiq Ali on using circus to challenge outdated beliefs about HIV

When Sadiq Ali was diagnosed HIV+ during his circus training at NCCA, he witnessed the fear and ignorance that still surrounds the virus. He talks to Leslie Kerwin about his new work, ‘Tell Me’, created in consultation with HIV charities Positively UK and CHIVA (Children’s HIV Association) as an open letter response to his experiences told through Chinese Pole, aerial artistry and physical theatre.

Now wrapping up the final week of rehearsals, award-winning performer and activist, Sadiq Ali i...
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REVIEW: Shaun the Sheep's Circus Show

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: three French hens; two turtle doves; and a dozen sheep doing acrobatics on a Chinese pole. Part-circus, part-slapstick, part-live-action cartoon, whatever your age, only one thing is certain: Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show has officially catapulted into Salford.  


Straight from the mind of Australian circus director, Yaron Lifschitz, Shaun the Sheep’s Circus Show sees farmland fun and daring acrobatics collide in a truly un-baaa-lievable...
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REVIEW: Aladdin at Stockport Plaza

In the sparkling thrill of the pantomime, fantasy becomes everyday and the everyday fantastical, and the latest treasure to surface at Stockport Plaza is no exception. The first lesson of the panto is that anything goes, and with a trill of the organ, a bolt of lightning, and a crackle of laughter, the man who drove a van into the canal on Coronation Street is now a wizard in ancient China. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the magic of panto is back. Oh, yes it is!
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Climate change, AI and finding hope in artistic activism

AI meets nature in a new interdisciplinary exhibition at Lowry from January which sees artists, John-Paul Brown and Sophy King, look beyond climate grief into a future of possibilities.


It is 2076 – the climate crisis is fading, the Earth is in recovery, humanity is rebuilding, and the world is breathing a sigh of relief on its second chance at life. Beneath it all stretches the biggest communication network humanity has never seen, a tangled chimera of fungus and A.I. curling deep beneath t...
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REVIEW: Wintering

This year will be the third in a row that Samantha Fernando opens a copy of Wintering, by Katherine May. Throughout its deep and wandering journey that considers embracing the fallow periods of life, the book asks, “What if we made peace with the darkest time of year?”


Samantha’s response? An intimate, glacial orchestral piece, performed by one Manchester’s leading musical ensembles.


Wintering is a special commission by the Wigmore Hall in London and sees the Manchester Collective’s string...
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Samantha Fernando's music is balm for winter's long, cold nights

Amid a blizzard of Christmas markets, holiday shoppers, and one of the coldest Novembers in years, composer Samantha Fernando is stepping out to bring a moment of calm to Manchester this winter. Her latest orchestral piece, Wintering, asks: what if we made peace with the darkest time of year?


Featuring The Marian Consort vocal ensemble and the Manchester Collective’s string quartet, the Wintering tour comes to Stoller Hall on 27 November for an evening of healing, restoration, and clarity....
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REVIEW: Barrier(s)

A great joy of theatre is allowing us to step into different worlds. Deafinitely Theatre is the first professional deaf-launched and led theatre company in the UK and its new production of Eloise Pennycott’s award-winning play, presents an intimate LGBTQ+ love story between deaf and hearing characters.

Between an artful blend of British Sign Language (BSL), live captions and the odd spoken word, a language barrier soon becomes a language of love between neighbours Katie and Alana, who quickly...