Even These Things review

Amid the hustle and bustle of a sunny Saturday in Manchester in 1996, a solitary, stationary truck stands out. It was parked a stone’s throw from the Royal Exchange Theatre. Now, on that same stage, Rory Mullarkey’s new play, directed by James Macdonald, looks at the scars left by the truck’s cargo – a 1,500kg IRA bomb – on the city and its people.

The play is split into three acts: before the attack, the day it happened and decades afterwards. In the first, an Irish woman in 1846 (played with gusto by Elaine Cassidy) seeks violent vengeance against a woman who murdered her pig. There are hints of Caryl Churchill in quirky lines such as “not for a universe of apricots”, but the 40-minute monologue is too long, and it’s confoundingly difficult to infer what it’s trying to set up.

The play’s centrepiece, featuring a community ensemble, takes us for a tour of city-centre hotspots on the morning of the attack. The hungover get blinding wake-ups from the morning sunlight. A divorcee backstrokes across the stage. A choir of children sing Oasis, bobbing off in their bucket hats at the end like scattered marbles. We see the proud red letterbox that somehow withstood the blast. And a helicopter spots that fateful truck in the middle of it all.

Katherine Pearce narrates this kaleidoscopic circus of life, her wonderfully tender delivery giving each moment weight and significance. But these fragments feel generic, rather than putting the city’s identity distinctly on display. While endearing, the sequence labours the point that this was a normal day, with normal people going about their normal lives.
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