The Stage

Manchester International Festival line-up revealed

Published Wednesday 21 March 2007 at 16:20 by Alistair Smith

This summer’s inaugural Manchester International Festival is to feature a theatre collaboration between comic Johnny Vegas and Jerry Springer - the Opera creator Stewart Lee, a Chinese circus musical with a score by Damon Albarn, a concert adaptation of a Salman Rushdie novel, and live appearances from music stars such as Lou Reed.

Festival director Alex Poots has brought together artists from across theatre, dance, classical and popular music, the visual arts and film to create a line-up with 25 new commissions, ranging from dancer Carlos Acosta premiering two new works, to music producer William Orbit composing his first ever orchestral suite for the BBC Philharmonic.

“Manchester is the birthplace of modern industrial society and my love is the contemporary world,” Poots told The Stage “There’s this history of the city you can tap into, rather than saying let’s be the Edinburgh festival or let’s be the Proms and aping something else. First of all, we don’t need another festival in Britain if it’s going to be like the others and, if Manchester is going to create a festival, it should have a new identity.

“This is a festival of original, new work of world premieres, where artists from across the visual arts and performing arts come together.”

The highlights of the programme, unveiled in its entirety this week, include Monkey - Journey to the West, with music by ex-Blur frontman Albarn, and Interiors - a play about interior decorating featuring Vegas and directed by Lee. According to Poots, the piece will be unlike anything the comic has previously tried - “Dark, but also very funny”.

Meanwhile, a stage adaptation of the novel The Pianist, which was recently turned into an award-winning film, will be presented in a warehouse space at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. It will be narrated by actor Peter Guinness, directed by Neil Bartlett and will feature Mikhail Rudy on the piano.

Manchester-based Contact Theatre will collaborate on a new work entitled For All the Wrong Reasons, with Belgian theatre group Victoria, while puppet company Faulty Optic will present Dead Wedding, a dark puppet reinterpretation of the Orpheus legend. The two winners of the Bruntwood Playwriting Competition will also have their works - Monster and Pretend You Have Big Buildings - showcased as part of the festival.

Visual art will cross over into theatre with Il Tempo Del Postino - Group Show, which will see a star cast of visual artists creating a series of works on stage at the Manchester Opera House across three performances. Audiences will have to buy a ticket as if they were attending the theatre.

“We have given the festival to the artists,” Poots added. “That’s the big message. Everything has started with the artist. I have gone to an artist that I really admire and I’ve said, ‘Have you got anything new to say and if you have, can we help you both from a producing and a financial point of view to make it?’. Then when they say, ‘We need X, Y and Z’, we find it in the city.”

The festival, which runs from June 28 to July 15, is expecting to take £2.5 million at the box office and has raised £6.5 million in public and private funding, making it financially larger than even the Edinburgh International Festival.