Even These Things explores the making of Manchester

This year, Manchester Royal Exchange celebrates its 50th anniversary. In her first season as artistic director, Selina Cartmell is inviting artists who have been part of the theatre’s history to return “home” to this 19th-century building that was once the city’s cotton trading centre, still standing in spite of the bombs that shook it in 1940 and 1996.

Manchester playwright Rory Mullarkey wrote Cannibals, his first full-length play while writer-in-residence at the theatre, in 2013. In this new play, commissioned for Cartmell’s “A Homecoming” programme, he again takes inspiration from historical records and brings the people of the city on to the stage in a community chorus.

Even These Things offers a triptych of moments in the making of Manchester. The play opens and concludes in an area known as Angel Meadow. In 1846, this is a dirty  industrial site for bare-knuckle fights. Here, “Pig Annie” (Elaine Cassidy) declares, in an Irish lilt, the attention-grabbing opening line: “Elizabeth Crosby murdered my pig, so I’m going to beat her to death.” In the present day, in this now regenerated park, two women (Cassidy and Katherine Pearce) share opposing views about the “historical charm” of factory conversions and mixed feelings about motherhood.

The central section of the action is dispersed around Manchester city centre on 15 June 1996, the day the IRA detonated a 1,500kg bomb. Across 44 scenes (sparklingly narrated by Pearce), 108 community players present individuals enjoying an ordinary Saturday morning about to be made extraordinary. Finely detailed performances expose the life of the city in the people pulsing through it.

Impeccably directed by James Macdonald, wittily designed by Laura Hopkins, and enhanced by Ian Dickinson’s sound, this is an involving (at times, hilarious) exploration of the fragility and resilience of existence; of the abrasive, enriching relationship between people and place.

Even These Things is at Royal Exchange, Manchester, until 15 June

Photograph by Royal Exchange Theatre