The Intimate and the Epic
18 – 24 July 2026
Saturday 18 July
To Manchester by plane
Named after the hugely successful Victorian engineer whose bequest founded it, the Whitworth houses a variety of art exhibitions open to the public free of charge. Its original red-brick building was complemented in 2015 by a glass-and-stainless-steel annex by MUMA (McInnes Usher McKnight Architects), which feels like an organic extension and opens up the building to the adjoining park.
Manchester, Opera House • I was thinking of the late Josh Grisetti, who replaced John Cariani as Nigel Bottom on Broadway, as I approached the UK premiere of Something Rotten!, a 2015 Broadway musical initially scheduled to open at the Birmingham Rep in 2021 before being derailed by Covid. Playing to a standing-room-only audience, this West End-scale production eschewed Casey Nicholaw’s original staging and choreography while assembling a top-notch cast to realise the full potential of a show that comes across as a love letter to the theatre. But beyond the avalanche of in-jokes, the show never lost sight of its own warm-hearted story.
I was particularly happy that the Minstrel had the range to do full justice to the opening song, “Welcome to the Renaissance.” Much to my delight, the audience clearly got the most obvious theatrical winks, even as some subtler ones kept jumping out at me, like the intro to “Her Eyes” from The Producers creeping into the score during a romantic turn. There was even premature applause when the company revealed their “mugshots” in full A Chorus Line fashion, just as in that show. Cory English’s Nostradamus looked like he had simply kept his wig from Back to the Future.
One line from the show — “My religion is theatre” — deserves to join 42nd Street’s “Think of musical comedy, the most glorious words in the English language!” in every avid theatregoer’s creed.
Sunday 19 July
Manchester, Royal Exchange Theatre • Curiously, the two musicals playing in Manchester had opened on Broadway within three days of each other in 2015. Fun Home, the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, is not an easy piece because of its emotionally demanding subject matter and Jeanine Tesori’s thorny score. The in-the-round space of the Royal Exchange Theatre lent this finely judged production an intimacy akin to that at New York’s Circle in the Square. Sadly, the audience was a little sparse for this performance.
Back to Paris by plane
Tuesday 21 July
Paris, UGC Maillot • I expected Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey to focus on the epic at the expense of the human. Nolan went the other way… and the result, for me, was a film lacking both pace and dramatic intensity, set to an exasperating soundtrack that constantly called attention to itself in its obvious will to sound different. There seemed to be a determined effort to downplay the production’s scale through camera placement and movement, subdued lighting, limited crowds, and sets that sometimes looked like models. I remain unconvinced that such an urbane, almost debonair treatment can do justice to one of the founding myths of Western civilisation.
Thursday 23 July
Paris, UGC Maillot • It had been almost exactly 35 years since I had seen Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise. The final scene had stayed with me indelibly, but the rest had grown rather fuzzy. Had it stood the test of time? Absolutely. Arguably one of the best road movies ever made, Thelma & Louise demonstrates how powerful a script can be when it charts the emotional journey of its protagonists without ever losing a beat or softening its focus. The evocative soundtrack also plays an essential role in building towards one of cinema’s most unforgettable final images.
Friday 24 July
Paris, Studio Hébertot • I only knew William Gibson’s 1958 Broadway play Two For the Seesaw through its 1973 musical adaptation Seesaw, so this opportunity to see this small-scale production intrigued me. The original French-language adaptation by Louise de Vilmorin, titled Deux sur la balançoire, opened in Paris as early as 1959, starring no less than Jean Marais and Annie Girardot. There have been a large number of revivals since, including a 1985 production starring Nicole Garcia and Jacques Weber in Jean-Loup Dabadie’s then new adaptation, which has remained the standard French-language text to this day.
The two-character play (three counting the constantly ringing phone) couldn’t feel more remote from the exuberance of the Cy Coleman-scored musical, and its appeal depends mostly on the chemistry between its two actors. In a sparse, basic set in the unprepossessing Studio Hébertot, Charles-Édouard Durot’s brooding Jerry and Ophélie Brett’s good-girl Clara, with the welcome help of a well-chosen song list for the scene changes, managed to infuse some depth and emotion into Gibson’s gossamer tale of how two lonely hearts don’t necessarily make a happy couple.
And so, for now, the lights dim… until the next act.