Once More, with Feeling: re:play Festival 2014

Now in its seventh year, the Library Theatre Company's annual re:play festival is a chance to see some of the best of the last year’s new or fringe theatre that you might have missed the first time around. Eight full-length plays, plus one work-in-progress and a handful of script readings will be held at the Lowry, Salford, towards the end of January and into February in a celebration of Manchester and Salford’s new theatre – and, while it's always offered a diverse line-up, re:play this year is proving more eclectic than it’s ever been, with physical theatre, sketch comedy and verbatim theatre all making an appearance. 

Lucia Cox, of House of Orphans theatre company, is one of many directors “thrilled” to be involved in this year's re:play. Her adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ One Hand Clapping (20-22 Jan) is the first-billed show of the festival, and she describes it as “funny, dark and dissatisfied... It’s about a young married couple living in a fictional northern town; the husband has a photographic memory so he decides to go on a quiz show and ends up winning an awful amount of money.” Of course, nothing is ever as good as it sounds: “There’s a bit of twist at the end… it becomes this dark, dark comedy.”

In keeping with the 'Northern' theme is The Rise and Fall of a Northern Star (20-22 Jan) – the only piece not being performed in The Lowry Studio space. Instead, writer and performer Stella Grundy and director Ian Curley use the backstage Lowry dressing rooms to create an intimate space for just 30 people in which to tell the tale of the fictional Madchester icon Tracy Star. “This is a star before the make-up goes on, before the showbiz clean-up… that’s why we thought of the dressing room,” Grundy explains. “It’s very, very intimate. We scared people when it was first performed – she’s quite a dangerous character. It’s like being in a room with someone who’s slightly losing it. 

“Tracy Star has got my story in her,” Grundy continues. “I created this character so it frees things up for me to look back on my life in a more subjective way. Tracy Star could have existed. That’s what we’re interested in.” The performance also includes live music (though Grundy stresses that the show is “not a musical”), and promises “a bit of a shock ending.”

The programme also includes a highlight from last year's 24:7 festival – Rob Ward’s one-man show Away From Home (30 Jan and 1 Feb), about the relationship between a male escort and a premiership footballer. All Our Friends Are Dead (28 and 30 Jan, 1 Feb) is the darkly surreal and chaotic creation of comedy duo Katie Norris and Sinead Parker, and the festival’s first ever sketch comedy. Adding to the growing range and variety is the more sombre To Walk In Your Shoes (27-29 Jan), which uses verbatim theatre and documentary photography to tell the real stories of asylum seekers in Britain, while the film noir-inspired The Man Who Woke Up Dead (23 and 25 Jan) and the uniquely surrealist Lunch (23 and 25 Jan) both use physical theatre and expert choreography to create bold and unpredictable worlds, each entirely their own. 

In case eight full shows weren’t enough to be getting on with, re:play also boasts the free, experimental theatre piece Handles (31 Jan). This work-in-progress delves into lives lived though social media, where live tweets from the audience will be included in the show as its creator Tom Mason explores our ideals of online self-image.