Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
New Dawn Fades City Varieties, Leeds/Touring
JOY Division are as synonymous with Manchester as rain and Coronation Street. So it makes sense for any play about the influential band to feature the city as a secondary character.
But in New Dawn Fades writer Brian Gorman pays more attention to it than to the legendary outfit, dedicating more time to to local luminaries Friedrich Engels, John Dee and Roman general Julius Agricola in the first act than to the group.
Family issues and dragon-fuelled history amount to a vacuous spectacle that ill-fits the theatre, muses SIMON PARSONS
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
KEITH RICHMOND relishes a superbly conceived modern version of Aeschylus’ drama of murderous family succession
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship



