Plenty unites the Guardian’s sports reporters and cultural critics. Both make a living observing the apex of physicality. They have to make sense of what they’ve seen at lightning speed to meet deadlines. So why not swap gigs for the day? The sports team were delighted to be working in warm venues; the critics unabashed about their disregard for the rules of the game. But more importantly, genuinely striking insights ensued, whether about Elton John’s appearance at Dua Lipa’s gig being the equivalent of Aston Villa making a Hail Mary sub of Jhon Durán, or the rugby ball being like a black hole sucking the players into its orbit. Perhaps we need to open transfer season between desks more often. Laura Snapes
You don’t get this at Exeter v Sale. Rock’n’roll, baby!
Becky Hill at Exeter Westpoint Arena, 18 October, by rugby union correspondent Robert Kitson
Reporting on sport and live music should be pretty similar, right? Noisy crowds, eye-catching talent, a diversion from the heavy-lifting of serious news. Hmm. This is the first time I’ve turned up for work to find an angry-looking fire blazing at the venue and staff already scraping projectile vomit off the carpet in the foyer. You don’t get this at Exeter v Sale. Rock’n’roll, baby!
I fish out my notebook and briefly pretend to be a proper journalist. Luckily, the fire – caused by a lifting truck bursting into flames – is swiftly extinguished and the show can go on. Someone has poured heaps of absorbent spill powder on the diced carrot, which is helpful. Nothing like a sticky floor to remind you of dodgy student gigs back in the day.
This may also be the time to start plotting an exit strategy. When Lewis Capaldi played here early last year, some punters complained of a three-hour queue to leave the car park. On the upside, at least some starrier names are now visiting Exeter. The majority turn their tour buses around at Bristol or Bournemouth, seemingly content to leave the rest of the West Country to chew straw and talk to our animals.
That said, with the gig already under way, surprising numbers of people are still tucking into pints of cider outside. This site also plays host to the Devon county show, the annual highlight of the local agricultural calendar, and is in no imminent danger of being mistaken for the Royal Albert Hall. So fair play to Becky Hill for rising above it all. Our down-to-earth dance diva already merits our thanks.
But no matter how local, some of us have stumbled deep into alien territory. “Are you ready for the Afterglow, Exeter?” Hill shrieks once we’re inside. Eh? Judging by the forest of mobile phones being thrust into the air, everyone else knows her back catalogue slightly better than me.
And, look, maybe every reviewer should be required to declare the last three gigs they have personally paid to see. Some would argue my guitar-driven trio – Billy Bragg, the War on Drugs, Del Amitri – does not ideally qualify me to pontificate on the UK dance diva’s long-awaited first arena tour. “Have you listened to the album?” Hill asks her audience, rather plaintively, at one stage. Maybe she’s spotted my phone is still in my pocket?
The digested read? Hill seems genuinely nice, if slightly reluctant to attempt a few more dance moves à la Dua Lipa and, potentially, elevate her show to another stratosphere. She has fabulous hair and, even in a big metal shed in deepest Devon on a damp Friday night, she can definitely sing. The crowd mostly seem to be appreciative without ever going bonkers.
“Are you ready to fucking party?” implores our heroine, still seeking more energy. It is easy to see her connecting with serious clubbers on a steamy night in Ibiza. But they don’t have to contend with our looming car park hell. Good luck for the rest of the tour, Becky, and mind that vomit on the way out.
If this were theatre, it would be a West End extravaganza
NFL: New England Patriots v Jacksonville Jaguars, Wembley Stadium, 20 October, by chief theatre critic Arifa Akbar
All drama is based on conflict. Without it, there is no action or story. As a theatre critic, I know this mantra well. But it is not until I arrive at the heaving splendour of Wembley stadium for my first live NFL game that I remember it can equally be about spectacle. The opening moments contain the ceremonial splash of a state parade. Men in military-style uniforms march up to the sidelines. A massive union jack and star-spangled banner are unfurled. It is candy-floss pomp: this is not a contest of two nations and the stakes are low because neither Patriots nor Jaguars have qualified for next year’s Super Bowl. But if this sublime and ridiculous pre-game scene-setting is to rouse, dazzle and distract from that fact, it does its job.
An adrenalised Jaguar mascot bungee-jumps above the field while players run out of the mouth of a cartoon wildcat. If this were theatre, it would be a lavish West End extravaganza produced by Sonia Friedman with Netflix or Disney money behind it. It has the immaculate choreography of a musical: the cheerleaders shake their pom-poms and swoosh their hair and gather for an arrow-shaped “roar” – a modern can-can that is as high-octane as the mascot’s antics. The players crouch in runners’ postures before each burst of action.
Across three hours, the game has a staccato drama: tension comes in plosive point-scoring. It could drag were it not for the moving parts. There is a contemporaneous commodification of the live event on the screens, which flash with adverts, instructions, player closeups and recaps. Comperes juggle between commentary and entertaining the crowd with the elongated words of WWE ring announcers.
If this is about performance, it is about the performance of masculinity, too. The players are the mythic heroes who range timelessly across the literary canon, from Arthur Miller’s Biff Loman (Death of a Salesman) and Tennessee Williams’ Brick (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) to F Scott Fitzgerald’s Yale football champ, Tom Buchanan, and Philip Roth’s Jewish sporting hero, the Swede, who shows us that football is one way the “outsider” can become wholesomely all-American.
Its allure is clear to see on this field, with players who look like modern-day gladiators. Here is star quarterback Trevor Lawrence, with his Samson-like locks; Evan Engram, with tattooed sleeves that look like William Wallace’s war-paint; and Parker Washington, who brings the most scintillating moment of the game with a 96-yard punt return. They are like gods in their own realm, aloof and apart from the tinsel around them. They have purity of purpose, and their defensive or offensive moves are overt displays of aggression. The crisis of masculinity increasingly explored in stories on stage is nowhere to be seen here. The old-school hero is fully intact on this field.
I have always found the tribalism of team sports unnerving; it seems to me like a real-life conflict between us and them. As a child of immigrants, growing up in the racially hostile Britain of the 1980s, team sport seemed like proof of belonging, or otherwise, with fury on the football terraces and the definitive either/or of Norman Tebbit’s cricket test. That might be an anachronism now, but it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Yet I have felt the power of this tribalism, too, rooting for the Pakistani cricket team as a way of asserting my heritage, and for Arsenal in childhood allegiance to north London.
It is different here, though. Supporters sit among each other, many colours in one block: a man in a Lawrence jersey next to one in an Aston Villa scarf next to a group of young women dressed in animal print, in support of the Jaguars. Animosities are absent, the crowd cutting across all ages. The game does not seem as emotionally freighted as a result, but has the good-natured feel of a festival.
The Jaguars lag for the first half, but there is a turning point and they romp to victory (32-16). I have been forewarned about NFL’s arcane rules but that is no obstruction to the drama. It is like losing a grip on the plot but being carried along by the spectacle. It doesn’t always have to be about conflict.
As a music novice, I depart pretty awestruck
Paul Weller at O2 City Hall Newcastle, 24 October, by football correspondent Louise Taylor
In my peculiar little world, evening work assignments in north-east England at this time of year are synonymous with the need to keep warm, and I possess the duvet coats, thermals and glove collection to prove it. Indeed, resistance to winter weather is so central to the job that a useful piece of advice for anyone contemplating a career in football reporting is to sit outside on a cold night and type on a laptop for a couple of hours.
So, for this interloper, it is a luxury to sit in a sold-out Newcastle City Hall and listen to an impressively eclectic two-hour Paul Weller set. A normal night match, 10 minutes’ walk away at Newcastle United’s St James’ Park, involves hitting a 10pm first-edition print deadline and requires roughly half my report to be emailed in at half-time, followed by a further chunk after 70 minutes. The introduction and payoff (the top and tail of the report) are sent at, or ideally slightly before, the final whistle. Next comes a post-match rewrite, including quotes from the managers, emphasising any news lines.
Here, as a music novice, I am spared the need to file live and thus expose my ignorance of the nuances of woodwind, brass and baritone, and can simply enjoy a reminder of why I’ve always loved the Jam and the Style Council. I’m less familiar with Weller’s more recent stuff but depart pretty awestruck by the depth, breadth and sheer range of his repertoire. Long before the end, my appreciation of the knowledge, not to mention writing skill, of Guardian pop critics Alexis Petridis and co has been throughly amplified.
A proper music writer’s review would presumably mention Weller’s declaration, made as he introduces the evocative Have You Ever Had It Blue, that the concert is dedicated to “the people of Gaza”. This is followed by the Modfather’s unequivocal description of events in that part of the Middle East as “a genocide” and “evil”.
If a Premier League manager said something similar – or appeared, à la Weller, accompanied by a Palestinian flag – the sports pages would be ripped apart, and the energy invested in hammering out a story in pursuit of deadline would be enough to light up a small town. Armies of controversy-averse, brand-protecting “communication experts” strive to ensure football coaches avoid venturing into politics, but Weller’s views on Gaza – endorsed, incidentally, by widespread City Hall applause – are reiterated during most of his performances these days.
The differences with football do not end there. As an anonymous face in the crowd, I feel free to clap enthusiastically as the audience dance in the stalls. At a match this would be considered deeply unprofessional, since sportswriters are expected to maintain strict impartiality at all times. Tonight, Weller belies his 66 years by performing Shout to the Top, That’s Entertainment, Town Called Malice et al with the boundless energy and verve of his 20th-century self.
I don’t know much about football, but I’m totally gripped
Brighton v Wolves at Amex stadium, Brighton, 26 October, by chief rock and pop critic Alexis Petridis
I did not grow up in a big football family. My dad wasn’t around much, and he didn’t seem particularly interested in football anyway. My uncle was, to the extent that he even ended up working for his local team, but his local team was Panionios, in south Athens, and we lived in Yorkshire, so his enthusiasm wasn’t going to exert much influence on me. I dimly recall being taken to a Sunderland game by a relation, but the details of why and when are lost to me. I can remember seeing a really pissed bloke slumped on the pavement outside Roker Park, singing Lip Up Fatty by Bad Manners at the top of his voice, which I guess dates it to the early 80s, but that’s about it: it clearly didn’t make much of an impression.
So I take my seat at the Amex stadium with a certain hangdog air. I’m sitting next to Guardian reporter John Brewin – who looks aghast when I tell him I don’t really know much about football and am expecting to be bored. But I’m really not, to a degree that startles me. I’m wary of stating the obvious here, but watching a game in person is a completely different experience from watching it on TV. I can somehow see what’s going on better. It brings a visceral clarity I’ve never experienced before: there’s something about witnessing first-hand the sheer speed of Brighton midfielder Kaoru Mitoma when he gets the ball, or the cool slickness of Danny Welbeck’s finish as he scores the first goal – he gives off the air of someone sticking a letter in a postbox – that I find completely involving.
It helps that it is an exciting game. It’s supposedly a foregone conclusion. “The story is that Wolves are crap at the moment and Brighton have this wunderkind new manager, [Fabian] Hürzeler,” John tells me; even before the wunderkind rocked up, the last time they met, Brighton were 4-0 up within 55 minutes. But it doesn’t turn out like that at all. Initially, everything seems to be proceeding as expected. Brighton dominate the first half, culminating in Welbeck’s goal, although, with the benefit of hindsight, the number of chances they fail to put away before that should have indicated that things weren’t quite as cut and dried as assumed.
Wolves are better in the second half – even I can tell they are playing with more attack after a couple of substitutions – although a goal by Evan Ferguson seems to seal the game. But you can’t fault Wolves’ tenacity: they just keep plugging away. Rayan Aït-Nouri scores almost immediately after Ferguson, then a disastrous pass by Mats Wieffer – at precisely the point it looks like Brighton are about to score a third – sends Wolves surging forward again in the 93rd minute, handing them an equaliser.
Leaving the ground, I hear people talking about the frustrating lack of cohesion in Brighton’s playing, which they suggest is down to the absence of injured captain Lewis Dunk. I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that I’ve been completely gripped by something I’ve never been gripped by before. I couldn’t be more pleasantly surprised.
Opera is absurd – and very long
The Turn of the Screw, Coliseum, London, 29 October, by chief sports writer Barney Ronay
We need an idiot. To be fair, the editorial steer on this assignment, sending a career sports hack to the opera, was a bit more nuanced than this. Just take it as it comes. Don’t feign expertise. Just be yourself. Describing physical performance is what we do all the time in sport. I have reported on thousands of live events over the last 20 years. I’ve seen Andrea Bocelli serenade Leicester City’s Premier League title celebrations, which was good and also didn’t last very long. I have looked on vaguely as an endless scroll of operatic singers belt out national anthems in echoey new-build stadiums.
But I had never been to the opera, or wanted to. I can see the performers are hypertalented voice athletes, expressing through this highly formalised medium a genuinely wild emotional register, which isn’t too far off the kind of thing sport tries to do in its best moments. But the prospect of having to sit through what could be any number of hours (four? seven?) while people sing a story at each other has always seemed objectively painful to me.
Sport reporting can often be a formulaic, zero-sum affair. As the crowd begins to filter into the Coliseum theatre’s lovely soft beige and brown interior, it is hard to avoid some familiar pre-performance thoughts. Who is going to win the opera? Should the ENO team try to get the crowd involved early on? There was talk pre-curtain of a novice conductor making her full debut here. Would Charlotte Corderoy do the basics well, settle in, and just look to find her feet at this level?
There are two things worth saying straight away. Opera is, as expected, absurd on a very basic level. This not a bad thing. Lots of hard, interesting, endlessly refined cultural activities have this quality. Cricket is absurd. The 100m hurdles is absurd. Opera is at least instantly and unapologetically absurd.
It turns out that the worst part of going to the opera is the opening second, when the curtain goes up and a man immediately starts singing his thoughts, at which point you realise this is just going to keep happening for a really, really long time. Everyone is going to sing all of their thoughts to everyone else all of the time. The German man who seemed to spend most of Euro 2024 outside Essen train station shouting every single one of his thoughts at passersby could walk on stage here and the audience would simply nod and say: “Hmm, interesting exposition.”
The big thing about Benjamin Britten is that the libretto is in English, so you can at least understand the dialogue. This doesn’t necessarily help. Before long people are singing things like “You must be Mrs Grose” and “Who is at the door?” and “That’s my desk”. No shit.
Happily, the necessary suspension of disbelief kicks in. There are thrilling and quite scary solos. The way the music drives the drama from one part to the next is absorbing. The visuals are great, in particular the projection of moving images on to a grimly portentous architectural set. There is still zero humour, not even “theatre humour” where people laugh in braying tones to show they understand Shakespeare’s puns. But this is probably for the best. Because the second thing worth saying is that this is a drama about child abuse.
That was Britten’s interpretation of Henry James’s original novel, positioning this element right out in front as the key narrative peg. What you get is a show that graphically represents the grooming and sexual abuse of children and adults, while telling you in its tone and phrasing that this is simply a richly textured gothic horror.
Britten’s opera focuses its gothic energy entirely on the physical and emotional abuse of Miles, a pre-pubescent boy, by the deceased paedophile valet, who also abused anyone else in his eyeline, and who is still present in ghost form grooming his charge. Basically this is Jimmy Savile with songs. The problem is these things are presented without nuance or depth. It’s all painfully prosaic. We literally watch a child being seduced by a paedophile, who strokes his face and looms in close over him. We see an onstage rape, which is, yep, definitely nasty.
No doubt it would be possible to sound intelligent by saying this is all very difficult and challenging. But it lacks any really vivid signifiers as to what it’s wider meaning is supposed to be. To suggest, as James perhaps does too, that the entire drama might be taking place in the mind of an unstable female (Women! What are they like?!) isn’t complex or a brilliant literary device; it’s just exculpatory shittiness.By the end, it seems odd that this piece of art is still being performed at all, that we can’t simply have something new. Gen Z, if they ever get to the opera, aren’t going to put up with this. I would even advise people to avoid seeing it if they have come into contact with this kind of trauma in their own lives, as it has nothing to say that will make any kind of sense out of this.
No doubt there are many who will disagree with the thrust of this review, will see it as bleating wokery, cancel culture. It isn’t really. You can generally separate the artist and the art. You could make the case that all we have here is a drama about the mystical power of children or some such. But it doesn’t feel like that. Sometimes, if something makes you feel creeped out, that’s just because it’s creepy.
It reminded me of rummaging in my bag for my keys
Saracens women v Gloucester-Hartpury, StoneX Stadium, London, 27 October, by dance critic Lyndsey Winship
Broad daylight is not the natural milieu of a dance critic, but here we are pitch-side, taking notes on a fourth round premiership clash between Saracens Women and Gloucester-Hartpury. I’ve never watched a rugby match before, and to the outsider, this game, with its hookers and blindside flankers, sounds like some sort of quidditch. But what I saw was 80 minutes of brief dramas, flashes of grace and a frustrating amount of stop-start stasis.
Coming from theatre, I found myself yearning for flow. Every few minutes the play stops, a ball goes out or a medic comes on, and there’s a blast of Kaiser Chiefs to fill the gap, or the announcer plugging an upcoming fireworks display. But sometimes you get this beautiful cascading momentum, bodies chasing the ball and chasing each other: a pass, a trip, a roll, a recovery, another run, in seamless motion – until interrupted by a storming tackle.
As someone who deciphers bodies for a living, I enjoyed the intended, and unintended, choreography on the pitch. The set pieces, the line-outs especially – the adrenalised patter of quick-stepping feet, the surge as a jumper is lifted, soaring upward ramrod straight, stretching out arms and time (just for a millisecond) before being swallowed back into the team. But also the murmurations of the players, waves of Saracens’ black shirts like a tide ebbing westwards, as pink-clad Gloucester-Hartpury pushed them away from their goal, taking an early lead; the way the ball is like a mini black hole, sucking everything towards it, a tight cluster at the centre, but also a swirling galaxy of players moored to its gravity. The interlaced bodies of the scrum could be almost a constructivist choreography à la Bronislava Nijinska, or sometimes just a clumsy scramble of bums and thighs. Also, in the way you can’t really see what’s going on, it reminded me of exasperatedly rummaging in your bag for lost keys.
The game’s fortunes shift constantly, like this sport’s seemingly ever-changing balance between collective strength and plucky individuals. Gloucester-Hartpury are 12 points up; the pendulum swings with a try from Saracens’ Bryony Field; Gabby Senft scores another; then Saracens lead by nine, but by half-time they’re 12 points down. In a stadium fit for 10,000, a crowd a 10th of that size for this women’s game feels sparse. You need the audience for drama to come alive. It’s not until there are 10 minutes to go and the home team is 35-38 down that survival instinct seems to kick in, on and off pitch, and the slider goes up on the supporters’ noise level.
The game is like this – a lull of energy, a seeming stalemate, and then all of a sudden everything’s at stake, life or death. A runner breaks free: “Go hard! Go hard!” a teammate shouts. Last season’s champions Gloucester-Hartpury had not had two successive defeats this season until now. At the final gong, Saracens win 49-38, and I have found unexpected beauty amid the brute strength.
A bit like when the home team wins a corner
Dua Lipa at the Royal Albert Hall, London, 17 October, by sports writer Jonathan Liew
This is actually the second time I’ve seen Dua Lipa. Six years ago, she was the pre-match entertainment at the Champions League final in Kyiv, and let’s just say that that is a gig that comes with challenges. Nobody is there to see you. The space is vast, the sound system largely designed for safety announcements. Lipa’s voice – sweet but fragile – died somewhere around the edge of the penalty area. Several of my colleagues didn’t even look up from their laptops.
In a way, this has been a recurring motif of Lipa’s live career: a kind of roaming existence, constant away fixtures, the search for a constituency. Big stadiums seem to flatten her a bit. Glastonbury this summer didn’t quite work. How do you generate devotion when your whole shtick is a kind of arch detachment? What is your natural habitat when you’re a star of the pandemic?
Which brings us to a warm and shimmering Albert Hall and this made-for-TV special. This is Dua as Serious Artist: one night only, a pitch for scarcity over volume, even a kind of anti-Eras vibe. Go girl, give us a 53-piece orchestra, every single track off Radical Optimism, your radically mid new album – no One Kiss, no New Rules. Give us a Gaultier dress and gloves that go up to your biceps.
A serpentine walkway cuts a swoosh across the stage, somehow allowing her to walk towards you and away from you at the same time: classic Dua, beckoning you in with one hand and pushing you away with the other. The show sags about a quarter of the way in and again three-quarters in, and by absolutely no coincidence these are the most Radical Optimism-heavy parts.
Some of the ornamentation works well – French Exit gets a nifty jazz-club reboot – but for all the bells and whistles, these are songs that really weren’t strong enough in the first place. The effect is somewhere between an extremely polished cruise ship performance and that bit in a football game when the home team wins a corner and everyone reluctantly stands up.
Naturally, there is an insoluble problem here. Dua longs to contain multitudes, to be one of those rounded, versatile, shape-shifting modern pop stars capable of being all things to all people. You see it in her brand endorsements and her book club, her piecemeal forays into activism. But, ultimately, she has only ever really served one purpose: songs about dancing for people who really, really want to dance.
And in this vocation, she remains unmatched by anyone on the planet. Houdini and Levitating at the start. Dance the Night and Don’t Start Now to finish, the climax of a breathtaking encore in which Elton John is winched on stage with all the audacity and flourish of Aston Villa throwing on Jhon Duran as an 85th-minute substitute.
A piece of advice, from someone who once dreamed of writing generation-defining novels and now types jokes about football for the Guardian: there comes a point where you have to give up on being taken seriously. Sure, do the Albert Hall for the cachet. Add some strings to Houdini if you think it will impress people. But in the end, lean hard into the stuff people actually want. Which is songs about shit men and dancing so hard you stop crying. Because this stuff is going to be your ticket to immortality. Nail it and your natural habitat will be anywhere with a speaker, your natural constituency anybody with ears and toes to tap.
I feel as if I’m on the Starship Enterprise
England v Germany at Wembley Stadium, London, 25 October, by classical music critic Flora Willson
“You know where you’re going, don’t you?” says the woman who hands over my press pass. I mumble apologetically. Does it count as impostor syndrome if you’re an actual impostor? They surely don’t get many Wembley first-timers at the media entrance. Or many classical music critics. But here I am, FA-accredited and clueless, for a women’s international friendly.
I’ve already run the gamut of girls in tinsel-edged England cowboy hats, groups taking selfies, burger vans, merch stands, lines of stewards and police. Loudspeakers bark instructions like a PE teacher turned dictator. Vast screens pulse constantly. Compared with most classical music venues, Wembley feels like the Starship Enterprise.
Inside, the media suite is already full of people typing frantically. After years of indecipherable scribbling in darkened auditoriums, I hadn’t considered bringing my laptop. But it’s obviously not the main thing I lack. “Do you know what formation they play?” one journalist asks his colleague. “I’d probably go 4-2-1-3,” she replies. I try not to panic. I don’t know which team they mean. I couldn’t distinguish 4-2-1-3 from any other formation. And no, I can’t explain the offside rule.
I head outside in search of atmosphere – more familiar territory – and find an array of industrial sprinklers watering the pitch. Nothing much happens. But suddenly the lights go down, thousands of phone lights twinkle and there are fireworks, pounding drum’n’bass and roaring from the crowd as an enormous England crest is unfurled. Then a fidgety hush.
After that, the match starts abruptly. I miss it while trying to spot the brass band I can hear. Idiot music critic, I hear you cry! But missing the vital stuff is horribly easy. Everything happens at astonishing speed, players moving in clusters of whirling legs and breakneck turns, numbers on shirts barely legible. My respect for sports journalists – writing as they watch the melee, filing as the whistle blows – reaches a new high.
I catch Germany scoring their first goal two minutes in but don’t see what earned a Lioness a yellow card soon after. An England goal generates a deafening response but is disallowed for reasons I can’t fathom. By half-time, the score is 3-2 to Germany. “This is insane,” mutters one of the real reporters.
In the second half, things slow down. A squadron of paper planes floats past, thrown by bored kids in the upper stands. A guy nearby works his way through a massive cup of jellybeans. There are substitutions, near-misses, occasional goals. At one point Germany’s coach waves his arms furiously from the sidelines. As far as I can tell, no one takes any notice. The big screen informs us there are 47,967 people there – just over 50% capacity. Some are already leaving.
And then it’s over: 4-3 to Germany. Downstairs, a sad-looking man in a cardigan presides silently over the press conference room. “We had too many unforced errors,” concedes the Lionesses’ coach, Sarina Wiegman. By the time I emerge, the crowd has gone. The stadium rings with the low buzz of six lawnmowers, its hallowed pitch now just so much grass.
A dark tale – so dark, it’s hard to take notes
Lizzie the Musical at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester, ends 17 November, by sports writer Tanya Aldred
As a cricket reporter, going to work without having to wear an anorak is a good start. The unfamiliarity of this new experience continues in the warmth of Hope Mill’s snug bar, decorated with fairy lights, rugs, chandeliers and old red velvet theatre seats with just the right amount of sag. Those gathered for a pre-show drink are definitely more female than your average County Championship crowd – though, as at the cricket, a handful sit comfortably alone with only a (very nice) coffee for company.
We’re all here for Lizzie the Musical, based on the true story of Lizzie Borden, who was tried for – and acquitted of – the murder of her father and stepmother in 1892. The Massachusetts public – in fact, the wider US – couldn’t get enough of the scandal. It ticked every titillating box that a burgeoning mass media could blow out: a bloody axe; respectable, if repellent victims; a society spinster suspect; a burnt dress.
Fascination with the story has been long-lasting. This show premiered in New York in 2009, and is back in Manchester after a sellout run at Hope Mill last summer. A four-woman cast, fuelled by an electric all-woman band, belt through the murderous buildup and the subsequent court case, with a succession of furious tunes.
All four leads hold the stage with gumption, even during the less catchy numbers: the beguiling Katie Tonkinson as meek neighbour Alice, hopelessly in love with Lizzie; Emilie Louise Israel as sharp older sister Emma; and Kayleigh McKnight in the title role, seamlessly switching from heavy sorrow to righteous fury. But the standout turn is Eve Kitchingman as Bridget, the Borden family maid. Performing the part for the first time, as a stand-in for Jennifer Caldwell, she lets emotions peel across her face, a roll of the eye here, a purse of the lips there – the all-knowing observer of the piece.
The seats rise rustically, and steeply, from almost the lip of the stage, in the manner of Old Trafford’s party stand. The intimacy of the venue works particularly well for such a visceral production (though I haven’t worked out how to take notes in the dark). This is complemented by a simple set that makes the most of the industrial beams latticing the ceiling, filling them with doves who will meet a nasty end, while projections are beamed on to the screen. The choreography is thoughtful – I love the scene set around the coffee pot – and the long skirts and low-slung belts are worn with riot grrrl attitude.
Watching a musical about a double murder – even if the grisly bits happen offstage – and listening to lyrics about incest (the desperately sad This Is Not Love) raises more complex emotions than is usual on day two of Derbyshire v Glamorgan. But the high-energy finale matches the glory of a tight last-over finish, only with no statistics to comb through afterwards and no danger of rain stopping play.