There is something claustrophobic about the long, low gallery at the heart of Murrays\u2019 Mills in Great Ancoats. It is not far from the stylish urban refit that is the eastern quarter of modern Manchester. But it feels a century away from all the upmarket warehouse loft conversions only streets away.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is apt that this place, where recession halted the tide of redevelopment, has been chosen as the venue for what promises to be a memorable stage adaptation of Charles Dickens\u2019 grim industrial novel Hard Times<\/em>. For the medium will become the message as the audience are promenaded through the mill to encounter the different episodes in Dickens\u2019 grotesque and scathing indictment of a world in which the higher things in life are sacrificed on the altar of economic necessity. As savage cuts in public spending loom it is a world which now seems nearer than it has for decades.<\/p>\n \n The play\u2019s director Chris Honer walked me through the mill which is littered with the odd bit of old machinery, broken wheels and great textile hampers \u2013 remnants of the days when the building was the pride of Adam Murray, the great Victorian spinner of fine yarn, in what was amongst the world\u2019s earliest steam-powered cotton factories. It will not be hard for audiences to feel themselves immersed in the grimy, backbreaking, primitive prosperity of Dickens\u2019 Coketown.\u00a0 The low ceiling will only add to the sense of oppression.<\/p>\n \n Honer is director of Manchester\u2019s Library Theatre which is homeless for four years while it waits for its new home to be built after being evicted from the city\u2019s Central Library last year. \u201cIt\u2019s prompted us to look at making drama in places that don\u2019t normally have theatre,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n The audience will arrive at the mill to a living tableau of life in Dickensian Britain, beginning with performers from the circus whose seedy exuberance is the catalyst for much of the questioning of the utilitarian ethic which brought industrial and commercial success at such a human cost in Victorian Britain.<\/p>\n \n From there they will walk through the long gallery through \u00a0the school of the hardline educationalist Thomas Gradgrind, the factory of the self-satisfied businessman Josiah Bounderby and the slum tenements of the down-trodden loom-workers in a cross-section of a 19th century mill-town.<\/p>\n \n Hard Times<\/em> is a bleak novel, even if imagination and love \u2013 qualities alien to the bullying Gradgrind \u2013 do have a triumph of sorts. It is a tale that will resonate with a contemporary audience for its drudge hero, Stephen Blackpool, is an extraordinarily decent man who is fundamentally a victim of the economic and social circumstances in which he finds himself trapped.<\/p>\n \n They will recognise, too, Dickens cartoon-like grotesques such as lickspittle clerk Bitzer whose every action is calculated for material gain, the emotionally illiterate Mrs Gradgrind who memorably says \u201cI think there’s a pain somewhere in the room, but I couldn’t positively say that I have got it\u201d and the union demagogue Slackbridge. \u201cDickens attitude to organised labour is problematic,\u201d observes Honer wrily. But most of the story inescapably contemporary, so much so, the director adds, that there is no need to point up parallels by having the wealthy callow young London gentleman James Harthouse played as though he were George Osborne.<\/p>\n \n The new dramatisation adaptation by Charles Way places a more modern emphasis on the resilience of the women which forms the background to the novel but otherwise, says Honer, the play \u00a0will lead the promenading audience on \u201ca compelling journey through damaged childhoods, overbearing businessmen, circus wonders, forbidden romance, industrial strife, a bank robbery, and redemptive love\u201d. Who could ask for more?<\/p>\n \n The production will feature, in addition to professional circus performers, music by Colin Sell, the resident pianist on Radio 4\u2019s I\u2019m Sorry, I Haven\u2019t A Clue, and a supporting cast of local people as extras, including one who worked at Murrays\u2019 Mills in its heyday. <\/strong><\/p>\n \n Hard Times opens on Wednesday 8 June, and runs nightly (except Sunday) until Saturday 2 July.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is something claustrophobic about the long, low gallery at the heart of Murrays\u2019 Mills in Great Ancoats. It is not far from the stylish urban refit that is the eastern quarter of modern Manchester. But it feels a century away from all the upmarket warehouse loft conversions only streets away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[717,79,723],"class_list":["post-3827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-culture","tag-recession","tag-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3827"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8247,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3827\/revisions\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}