Festivals

Manchester International Festival

The biennial MIF came to Manchester for the fourth time in 2013, headlined by a return to the stage of Sir Kenneth Branagh in the title role of Macbeth in a deconsecrated church on the outskirts of the city centre. This was a production that, for me, lived up to all of the hype, building up a wonderful atmosphere with its unusual staging and direction that emphasised the physical, with real fights within breathing distance of the audience replacing the opening reports of the battle.

Alex Kingston gave a decent performance opposite Branagh as Lady M, and Ray Fearon gave another stunning performance as Macduff, almost stealing the show.

Salford-born Josie Rourke, artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London, directed her first production in Manchester with The Machine by Matt Charman about the battle between chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, a totally committed performance from Hadley Fraser, and the team behind the chess computer Deep Blue in 1997.

I found this piece fascinating and very enjoyable with good performances and an impressive design that combined moving scenery with computer graphics, but it received a mixed response from audiences and critics. It was certainly the most accessible piece in this year's MIF.

Less successful was The Masque of Anarchy, little more than a recitation of a poem by Shelley by Maxine Peake which I struggled to follow at the speed of a performance but may have had more success from reading it on the page. The big star of this show, however, was the venue: Albert Hall is a cathedral-sized space, complete with a balcony, over a pub that I never knew existed, even though I've drunk in the pub.

The Old Woman was, to me, just a pretentious lot of face-pulling and silly noises against a strikingly brilliant design—which didn't look very different from the design of the last Robert Wilson production to visit MIF.

24:7 Theatre Festival

Manchester's leading event for new theatre writing hit double figures in 2013 with its tenth event—big plans are afoot for its tenth birthday in 2014.

The festival continues to innovate, this year trying out a devised production with The Young, which didn't work on this occasion, and bringing back its "family friendly" show idea, which gave us a very promising Billy, the Monster and Me.

At least one script was clearly not ready to go before an audience whereas one that was only offered a rehearsed reading, Saving Dave, was better than at least half of those that were given full productions, but it's hard to get this right every time when running a festival like this.

As a whole, there were lots of plays that showed promise but which weren't quite there yet and one that was clearly miles ahead of the rest and that would not look out of place on any major stage in the country. Away From Home by Rob Ward and Martin Jameson was a funny, moving and perfectly constructed and executed piece of theatre with a stunning performance from Ward in the only role.

Other festivals

There were plenty of other festivals in the region this year, including Nowt Part Of at the Black Lion in Salford, Flying Solo featuring performances by a single artist at Contact Theatre, Write Now in its new home at Liverpool's Unity Theatre and the Preston Tringe, plus the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival featured a wide range of performances across the city for its second year.