Open for just over four months, Manchester’s Home is already exceeding its forecasts for visitors and the new Autumn and Winter programme looks set to bring in the audiences across theatre, film and visual arts.
UK and world premiers from established and emerging artists, writers and producers will include Blanche McIntyre’s bold reimagining of the translation of Ted Hughes’ Oresteia, featuring a fifty plus local community choir chorus, a novel children’s fantasy, incidents of travel in the Multiverse and a new version of Macbeth in a co production with the Young Vic.
On the theatre and dance side, under the auspices of Walter Meiejohann, an ambition programme begins this week with an reworking and re imagination of the Beggar’s Opera, John Gay’s classic musical satire, under the title of Dead Dog in a suitcase and other love songs.
October sees La melancolie des dragons which we are told features three rockers stranded in a car with a women on skis and a dog who come up with the vision of creating an amusement park.
Later that month, the world premiere of a stripped down version of Aeschylus’ Oresteia translated by Ted Hughes featuring a chorus of fifty six volunteers acting as the chorus of the city, all directed by Blanche McIntyre, and Golem asking the question of our times, who controls our technology.
Christmas sees the UK premiere of Inkheart, a story about reading and the imagination, a girl who has lost her mother, and a father who makes characters come to life based on the best selling novel by Cornelia Funk.
Into 2016, and a new dance fused version of Macbeth starring John Heffernon, fresh from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and a gripping version of Samuel Beckett’s endgame with former Coronation Street star Chris Gascogne and David Neilson.
It might now have a new home but Home is not giving up yet on its successful site specific production. Two feature in 2016, The Passion to be performed round the corner at Campfield Market and Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring, an extraordinary quartet of work that explores our relationship with time which will be played out at the Old Granda Studios.
Maybe though the most looked forward to performance could well be Simon McBurney’s Encounter, first performed at the Edinborough Festival, with the audience promised a ride into the depths of the Amazon forest as the play traces the footsteps of Loren McIntyre who found himself lost amongst the people of a remote tribe in Brazil.
The new season promises a thought provoking visual art programme with the North West premiere of Incidents of Travel in the Multiverse, as award winning artists Al and Al take us through an epic sci fi odyssey complete with music from Philip Glass and Safe, based on Todd Haynes motion picture which charted the journey of a housewife who becomes allergic to everything around her.
There’s a packed film programme as well.Among the highlights, a season that focuses on the cinema of the Weimar Republic, a film retrospective of the Manchester screenwriter Jim Allen and maybe not to everyone’s taste, the films rarely seen outside of the United States, of James Benning.
All the details of the above plus much more can be found on the Home Website.
