Things To Do In Manchester – Making A Long Story Short

Death of a Salesman: All Talk and No Action

All talk and no action, until the second half.

2 stars

Returning to The Royal Exchange after his success as aging patriarch King Lear in 2016, Don Warrington plays Willy Loman… another aging patriarch. Years spent as a travelling salesman all over America does nothing for Loman in his dotage, and Willy is confronted by the crippling reality of loneliness in his last few hours.

Yo-yoing between the crumbling present and the rose tinted past, we see that Willy was idolised by his sons Happy (Buom Tihngang) and Biff (Ashley Zhangazha). In turn they are adored by Willy, who believes that his sons (Biff especially) can snatch up all the opportunities America has to offer, if only they would reach out to grab them. Willy wants to live vicariously through his sons, and all the characters in this play are continuously disappointing when the veneer slips, and they see each other for who they are.

Death of a Salesman Biff — Left to right: Buom Tihngang as Happy and Ashley Zhangazha as Biff

The crippling pressure of expectation placed on Biff’s shoulders is palpable. The sons are eager to please. Too eager, in Buom’s case: his puppy dog acting leaves much to be desired, there is little else to his younger character than a caricature of a smile and, ‘I’ve gained weight dad, can you tell?’

His present day character leaves much to be desired, too.

I wonder if Death of a Salesman is so laden with subtext that the characters suffer. Are they relegated to surface level personalities in order to emulate Arthur Miller’s agenda? Happy’s character has ‘ruin[ed]’ women, he womanizes, lies, ditches his father to chase skirt. Willy’s stock phrase ‘isn’t that remarkable?’ start to grate a bit too, too often being touted around like it means something.

Buom wasn’t much better in The Royal Exchange’s production of Guys and Dolls, but Zhangazha impressed me then and impresses me now. He manages to zap some real tension into the production. Scenes between Biff and his mother Linda (Maureen Beattie) are especially fraught, but tinged with sadness and love.

Death of a Salesman 2 — Don Warrington as Willy Loman

Willy is tired. He has put his 30+ years into the business, and where are his returns? Doesn’t The American Dream promise something in return for all those long hours and late nights? At the grand old age of 63 the rose tinted spectacles slip. Sleepless nights are spent wondering where it all went wrong, with a focus on Biff.

If only he had made something of himself.

The performance was around three hours long. For all of Arthur Miller’s rich subtext, there’s a bit too much that is said, instead of acted. Warrington does little more than shout his lines, stumbling around the stage, occasionally raising a shaking, decrepit hand. I imagine it would be hard to give nuance to a character who is perpetually outraged, shocked, and disillusioned for three hours. It’s all talk and no action, at least until the second half, where the performance thankfully picks up in pace, no longer confined to one singular setting.

It is hard, I think, to appreciate the characters as individuals because they are all so steadfastly part of Miller’s mechanism: subject A represents this about The American Dream, and so on and so forth. It becomes predictable. When Biff discovers his father has an affair while on the road it is not quite the revelation it is made out to be: The American Dream is corrupt.

Is nothing authentic in this play? The subtext is just that: the characters are living a lie but this too comes across as unoriginal and contrived. What could have been a gritty play about a family at breaking point is reduced to an allegory.

Pioneers in the Pit: A Review of Queens Of The Coal Age

Queens Of The Coal age is Maxine Peake’s exploration of the real life female force behind the anti-pit closure fight in Britain.

1993. 12 pits are closed following years of pit closures, years of unfed mouths, years of women seething by the kitchen sink, years of the fight against Thatcher. Four women band together and occupy the Parkside colliery as a call to arms. One clear message: take a stand.

I went into Queens Of The Coal Age knowing that Maxine Peake wrote the play, and vaguely knowing it had something to do with coal pits. The programme told me the rest: Peake spoke to the women against pit closures in a 2016 interview she conducted for her 45 minute radio play: Queens of The Coal Age.

After failed attempts from Dot (Jane Hazelgrove), Elaine (Eve Robertson), Lesley (Danielle Henry), and Anne (Kate Anthony) to protest the pit closures (which began in 1984) the woman banded together and occupied the Parkside colliery.

The women, disguised as teachers, are taken on a tour of the pit by the manager Des (played by John Elkington).

Elaine: ‘We actually did an official tour. To be honest, once we got down, we had no idea what to do next. And oh we were tired. I’d not slept all the night before.”

Des instructs the woman to get into the lift. I’m sure I’m not the only one who wondered how the director (Bryony Shanahan) would pull it off. Wracked with nerves, and Dot with claustrophobia, the women step onto the lift platform.

Gravitas should be given to Elliot Griggs (lighting designer), Pete Malkin (sound designer), and Jennifer Jackson (movement director) who managed to transport the women from centre stage at The Royal exchange to the bottom of a coal pit within seconds. If I had just stepped into the theatre and watched the scene unfold, I would have known what was happening.

Finally down in the pit, the women rejoice.

Annie: ‘I put my pit gear on and then we got to the cage, and as soon as it set off down I got hold of your hand and I said, “Elaine, we’ve cracked it.”‘

As it becomes clear the women will not be moved, Des disappears evaporating around the women’s laughter.

Arthur Skargills wife — Anne played by Kate Anthony

Justifiably, Anne is the leader. Wife to Arthur Scargill (President of the National Union of Mineworkers 1982-2002) she has the most to lose by rebelling publicly. For their first act of rebellion, the women tidy up the office they have taken as their home. After the paper flower is put into the vase there is not much else to do, except pick at each other.

What follows is four days of sleeping on the ground, fighting with the pit boss Ramsey (also played by John Elkington), and general exhaustion. Dot, Elaine, Anne, and Lesley go hours without food and water. The onlooker might wonder, why did they do it? Hidden in the depths of the mine, they do not know whether their rebellion has peaked public interest.

Peake’s interview gives us some answers.

The women’s motivation was as feminist as it was political.

Betty: ‘My ex had always told me that I was thick, and I was stupid, and it were no use explaining things to me because I wouldn’t understand. All of a sudden because of the strike- and we’d gone speaking all over – I suddenly realised I know as much as some of these people at university; in fact, I know a bit more I’m sure.’

Dot: ‘ […] if there’s something wrong, you try to fix it. It changed a lot of women – there were writers come out of it, poems, songs, there were all sorts come out of that strike – so we achieved something, even if we didn’t stop them closing the pits. Something was evolving, women were changing.’

Peake’s humour sparks like fire crackers in the darkness, illuminating the women and their stories. Elaine is often the butt of the joke, the other women finding fun in her knicker contraband and her lust for the coal darkened pit men…

She is the only childless rebel in the pit. She is apart from the others, and knows it. Peake frames the coal pit closure strikes as an assertion of women’s power, a renouncement of the ties that bind the ladies to their homes, and an assertion of it. Family and duty to the cause is linked so closely that they have to be separated, one has to come first. Dot found her family on the rally lines, and so she left her kids at home to rebel against the system. She is the first to want to leave. A bout of guilt overwhelms her, and she admits that she sometimes wishes she never had kids. The divide is too much.

Anne: ‘Dot said to me, “I’m tired, Anne, I’ve had enough.” And she says, “I’ll go out on my own,” and I says, “No you’re not. We’ve come down as four, we’re all going out as four.”‘

Peake’s writing for Queens of The Coal Age reminds me of a passage from The Ruins in which the main character lowers a lantern down a pit and watches as it illuminates the walls it passes, and then gets smaller and smaller until it hits the bottom and everything around it is flooded with light.

Things To Do In Manchester: The Comedy Store

Is The Comedy Club worth the price on the ticket?

The Comedy Store is located at the heart of Manchester: sandwiched between the nightclub ARK and the Japanese restaurant Sakura, this comedy round-up is the perfect compère to a night out in Manchester.

I visited on Saturday, the ‘Best in Stand-Up’ night, and paid £15 for my student ticket. Standard tickets cost £24.50 (including fees). The night was comprised of five comedians: I was surprised because the website did not mention that the compère is included in the number of acts. There is also the À La Carte ticket option (£44) as well as a ticket which provides guests with a glass of Prosecco for an extra £5.

So, is The Comedy Store worth the price on the ticket?

The atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive: groups of people milled outside the store and around the bar chatting and drinking. The decor is understated, the most striking design being the bright red lips which make The Comedy Store’s logo. Pictures of previous comedians are pinned to the wall, which gives an indication as to The Comedy Store’s long running history and pride.

Polaroid pictures of past comedians are pinned to the wall

There is a charming authenticity to The Comedy Store. The audience sits in a basement in close proximity to the low stage, occasionally straining to hear the comedian over the rumble of the overhead train.

The logo of The Comedy Store was the most striking decoration

The comedians (Danny Mcloughlin, Dane Baptiste, Eleanor Tiernan, and Mike Gunn) tackled the issues of today: insane uncles, the differences between men and women, and inheritance after a bereavement. Mike admitted that when his father buys something, he despairs, wondering what use he will have for it in the future.

Danny, Dane, and Mike handled the hecklers well. In conversation with one of the audience members, Dane said that he did not smoke weed to which the man shouted, ‘Liar!’ His girlfriend turned to look at him accusingly, until the audience member shrugged his shoulders.

Eleanor was far more nervous than the other performers. Her jokes did not land in the way that the other performers’ did. Her one liners seemed to ramble on so much that I forgot the beginning. Her set was just that: a list of one liners, the stories in them not really linked together, at least not as effortlessly as the other comics’.

Mike was by far the best performer. His bawdy, crude humour had the crowd in stitches. He struck a cord by mentioning the sort of things children make at school: egg cartons covered in glitter, lop-sided drawings with the world’s smallest calendar stuck on the bottom. He summed his thoughts up in one question: ‘What the fuck is that?’

Despite a few bumps in the road (short silences, and moments where I wondered if Eleanor had forgotten her next story) The Comedy Club is well worth the price on the ticket. The comedians were so funny, and the atmosphere was so easy, that I felt like I had only been there for ten minutes (the event runs for two and a half hours with a fifteen minute break). If you are still indecisive, there are cheaper tickets. On ‘Stand Up Thursday’ night, standard tickets are just £12, and concessions are only £8.

My only regret is not buying the T-shirt.