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2007 in the North WestDateline: 30th December, 20072007 saw a great deal of theatrical activity in the north west. In addition to the usual rich diversity of both home-grown and visiting productions, we have seen the inaugural Manchester International Festival make a considerable impression on the world's arts festival scene, the Royal Exchange Theatre has resurrected the richest playwriting festival in the UK with a new sponsor, Manchester's new writing festival 24:7 had its most successful year yet in its fourth year and Liverpool staged a number of events in the lead-up to its double celebration both for its appointment as European Capital of Culture and its 800th birthday in 2008. The following is a personal impression based just on the productions I have managed to see during the past twelve months. MIFIn August, the Manchester International Festival opened in front of a star-studded audience who crossed the red carpet in front of the Palace Theatre to see Monkey: Journey to the West, based on the Chinese legends that were used as the basis for the popular 70s TV show Monkey. Created by Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng with music by former Blur frontman Damon Albarn and design and animation by Gorillaz designer Jamie Hewlett, this was impressive and spectacular if a little rough around the edges, not least regarding the much-criticised English subtitles that were badly-positioned and badly-synchronised. On a completely different scale but equally impressive and much more moving, actor Peter Guinness and pianist Mikhail Rudy performed The Pianist, based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, in a small, wooden room in the Museum of Science and Industry. This was an incredibly intense and rewarding experience and a refreshing approach to holocaust drama. Bruntwood Playwriting CompetitionThe Royal Exchange Theatre used to run a playwriting competition some years ago sponsored by oil company Mobil. Last year, a new competition was launched along identical lines sponsored by Bruntwood with a top prize of £10,000 plus a main house production and several smaller prizes. Winning entry Pretend You Have Big Buildings by Ben Musgrave was directed for the main theatre by Jo Combes and Sarah Frankcom in July. Although it contained some flashes of good writing, as a whole it never really came together, falling back rather too much on technical gimmickry. The second prize winner, Duncan MacMillan's Monster in the Studio, seemed to get much better reviews (I didn't see this). Musgrave's blog during the lead-up to the production told a tale of extensive rewriting, which may indicate that the winning play wasn't ready for the stage or that it was tinkered with so much by various people that the heart was taken out of it. 24:7This was the fourth 24:7 Theatre Festival for short new plays in Manchester, but it was my first visit. In all, the BTG had three reviewers covering the plays at the festival. As a festival of brand new plays by little-known writers in non-theatre spaces with short changeover periods, a few rough edges are to be expected. However one or two of the ones I saw stood out as being rather more polished than the rest. Concrete Ribbons by artist Michael Trainor and arts marketer Lesa Dryburgh was directed by renowned local actor and director Wyllie Longmore with a superb cast to create a very funny and polished piece of theatre that deserves a longer life. Richard Vergette gave a perfectly-measured performance in his well-crafted solo play An Englishman's Home. Although not as polished as the other two with some unnecessary padding, in its best moments Mark Griffiths's The Lullaby Witch was quite gripping, with a superb solo performance by Laura Harper. All three of these plays can be seen in January as part of the Re:Play festival at the Library Theatre in Manchester. Visiting productionsSalford's Lowry once more had a very impressive range of productions on offer, from populist shows to world-renowned theatre companies and practitioners. The most exciting was probably the shortest, when Peter Brook brought his production of some short pieces by Samuel Beckett entitled Fragments with an amazing cast consisting of former Complicite members Jos Houben, Kathryn Hunter and Marcello Magni. However there were a number of other outstanding productions, including the wonderful National Theatre production of The Seafarer by Conor McPherson and an unmissable opportunity to see South Africa's leading actor in his own superb play Nothing But The Truth. Headlong's production of Angels In America by Tony Kushner was certainly not perfect, but was easily good enough to introduce this remarkable piece of theatrical writing to a wider audience. Dublin's Corn Exchange's production of Dublin By Lamplight by Michael West was also worth a visit. The Lowry also hosted the first performances of Jimmy McGovern's first writing for the theatre for many years with the musical King Cotton, which was big on ideas with a talented cast but came over as a work in progress written as some half-finished ideas for a TV play and left for the director to sort out. At the Palace and Opera House, the biggest event of the year outside the MIF was the regional premiere of Mel Brooks's musical The Producers; unfortunately the theatre blocked us from reviewing the production, but it was later reviewed by the BTG elsewhere on the tour. More recently, the Palace hosted a grand opening of Northern Ballet Theatre's impressive and enjoyable new production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Tommy Steele was an ideal choice for the lead in Doctor Doolittle, but it is a pity that the script, songs and settings had been chopped and changed around with so little artistry for this touring version. Resident productionsManchester's Library Theatre has had a superb year in 2007 with some really high quality productions. There have been some great comedies varying from Simon Block's hilarious Not A Game For Boys to Noël Coward's Private Lives, plus the intense drama of Someone Who'll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness and a creditable production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, not to mention a very impressive family Christmas show with Tom's Midnight Garden, adapted by David Wood from the novel by Phillipa Pearce. The output of the Octagon in Bolton has been rather more uneven in its 40th anniversary season. Whilst far from perfect, the best production of the year was probably its newly-commissioned And Did Those Feet about Bolton's FA Cup Final appearance at the new Wembley Stadium in 1923. Lisa's Sex Strike was an interesting and largely successful modern version of Lysistrata by Aristophanes with a verse script by Blake Morrison in a co-production with Northern Broadsides. For Christmas, A Christmas Carol in a new adaptation by Neil Duffield was, again, largely successful but flawed. Theatre by the Lake in Keswick opened the year with a superb production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men that really managed to portray the vastness of the American plains in its intimate theatre space. Its summer season included one of the most enjoyable family shows of the year in Phil Willmott's adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days, as well as an impressively intense Days of Wine and Roses in a new adaptation of JP Miller's screenplay by Owen McCafferty in the tiny studio theatre. The biggest star appearance at the Royal Exchange this year has to be Pete Postlethwaite's Prospero in a superbly gripping production of The Tempest directed by Greg Hersov. A Conversation by David Williamson and The Flags by Bridget O'Connor justified admirably their transfer from their original Studio productions to the main house. Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was wonderful in its best moments but the pace was too uneven to sustain its long running time and made it drag a lot by the end - something that happens far too often at the Exchange. 2007 has offered some wonderful highlights and perhaps a few disappointments, but the coming of the MIF and the Bruntwood Playwriting Competition, the continued rise of the 24:7 Theatre Festival and the Liverpool European City of Culture celebrations have increased the diversity of the theatre on offer in the north west and promise to continue to do so in the near future. David Chadderton
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