Reviews

It is my suggestion to you that you must watch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  at the Royal Exchange in Manchester as a wormhole to universal epiphany. I say this especially for people that have no intention of going whatsoever.

Theatre can be an alienating place and often the very notion of going there separates us out from each other. According to many a definition, even admitting to going into one marks you out as middle class and part of some other group, an aspirational badge of honour. Theatre did not feature in any formative years for me, except a school visit to Bolton Octagonthat I was never to enter as we ended up getting punished for coach bound misdemeanours and had to sit writing lines on separate aisles of the bus, with an angry teacher and no Merchant of Venice in sight.

I have spent many a Sunday in a Catholic Mass, and one or two other denominations when the Cubs walking day ended in unfamiliar territory. Never did Mass of any type bring the intensity that was to be found in the Bridgewater Hall this freezing Sunday in March. Billed as an epic celebration, that barely does credit to what was the most phenomenal religious experience I can remember having since Wigan won the FA cup with an 90th minute winner. To experience that Wembley elation I had to spend decades of trials and tribulations, to learn pain and pleasure in a collective, an education of a lifetime that led to a glorious crescendo and subsequent collapse.