The superb Greater Manchester Fringe Festival gets underway tomorrow, 1 July to 31 July with many of the acts performing at excellent venues across Manchester. If you find the Manchester International Festival to be to up itself, then the GM Fringe may be the perfect alternative for you. The Fringe first appeared in 2012 with […]
Podcast Review of One at HOME Manchester
“Nasi is on a ladder. Heʼs not coming down any time soon”. As we file into the theatre Nasi is there in front of us, standing high up on the very tall ladder. His demeanor is casual and relaxed but unconvincing. This tense sight amplified by the sense that we had intruded midway through a […]
Podcast review of Mark Thomas in Check Up: Our NHS @ 70
Mark Thomas is a comedian, political activist, investigative journalist and boasts of once being described as a ‘disgusting individual’ by former Lib Dem Leader David Steel. So when he came to Manchester for his latest show, ‘Check Up: Our NHS @ 70’, The Meteor jumped at the chance to check it out. Thomas is well […]
Mark Thomas loves Manchester for its ‘radicalism and creativity’
Outspoken comedian, activist and anarchist Mark Thomas is bringing his current show, ‘Check Up: Our NHS @ 70’ to HOME, Manchester, 8 pm on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 March. The Meteor spoke to Mark on his previous visit to Manchester when he performed at the Lush Showcase. He talked about his thoughts and feelings […]
DJ moonlights as Metro Mayor
Last Wednesday night DJ Andy Burnham treated constituents to an in-depth journey of his musical back-catalogue, spinning sweet plates of plastic in the Chorlton venue Electrik. Burnham’s artistic journey to the lofty heights of a desk at the back of a bar has been a long and arduous one, especially since his occasional wanderings into […]
The UK Border Regime: the ‘hostile environment’ dissected
Like many other UK citizens, I owe my existence in this country to family members who migrated here. My father and his family sailed here from India in 1948, escaping the horrors of partition, to settle in Farnworth. My maternal grandmother migrated from Ireland to Salford, seeking to escape the grinding poverty she grew up […]
Philosophy Café: ‘Should democracy tolerate those who wish to destroy it?’
In what feels like a time of increasing social and political uncertainty, I have found myself employing a few strategies to keep my mind from imploding. They include thinking about the ‘big’ questions, as they tend to withstand the relentless plot twists of the theatre of current affairs, paying more attention to the questions posed, […]
Review: Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
Mary Quaile, a Manchester Irish trade unionist and one of the first women to be elected onto the Trades Union Congress, led a women-only delegation to the Soviet Union in 1925. Their objective was to investigate the lives of women and children in the new socialist state. Mary left school at 12, like most working […]
Cabaret activist urges Mancunians to oppose latest NHS privatisation ruse
A novel cabaret approach to political education around our health service, urged the audience to get involved and oppose the incremental privatisation of our NHS. With songs and anecdotes recalling his past few years of “accidental activism”, Steven Carne entertained and informed the crowd at the Anthony Burgess Foundation, last Friday. He set the show […]
For the many, not the few: Manchester’s Gaiety Theatre
Today theatre in Manchester, apart from exceptions such as Three Minute Theatre, is increasingly for the well-heeled, speaking to their agenda and excluding many working-class people and their hopes and dreams. But it was not always thus. In his new book Staging Life: The Story of the Manchester Playwrights, John Harding explores an era that […]