{"id":7091,"date":"2013-01-19T01:50:51","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T01:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=7091"},"modified":"2013-02-04T10:15:08","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T10:15:08","slug":"which-team-do-true-mancunians-support-not-united-or-city-says-a-new-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=7091","title":{"rendered":"Which team do true Mancunians support &#8211; not United or City says a new play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">JB Shorts<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Lowry Theatre, Salford<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">****<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/FC-United-Logo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7167\" title=\"FC-United-Logo\" src=\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/FC-United-Logo-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>There is a myth, peddled by Manchester City supporters, that most footballing Mancunians support their team; Man Utd fans, they claim, fly up each week from London. A survey by estate agents Rightmove gave the lie to that this week revealing that 55.6 percent of Mancs follow United, while just 14.8 percent follow City. But James Quinn has a different view entirely. True Mancs, he insists, follow FC United, the breakaway club formed by disgruntled fans when the Glazer family bought Man Utd and saddled it with $600m dollars of debt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Quinn\u2019s play <em>Red<\/em> \u2013 at the festival of new theatre writing by top tv writers, JB Shorts @ Re:play at the Lowry in Salford \u2013 is a celebration of fan-based football. The writer plays an FC loyalist on the eve of a key FA cup match during which his businesswoman wife is preparing a bid for the catering contract in United\u2019s posh Platinum Suite. It is a surprisingly even-handed contrast of the romantic and the corporate \u2013 pies <em>versus<\/em> prawns, Fosters <em>v <\/em>fizz, plucky part-timers <em>v <\/em>polished professionals \u2013 with some uproarious laughs and coruscating lines about the misfits, lefties, librarians and real ale hooligan socialists of FC. Connor Ryan does deft slow-mo miming to re-enact the on-pitch glory.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In <em>Bombmaker<\/em> by Lindsay Williams (<em>East Enders<\/em>) a Mossad agent is sent to Tehran to assassinate a scientist working on Iran\u2019s nuclear bomb. A dialectic ensues in which the audience\u2019s judgement oscillates over who is the true terrorist, patriot, family man and fanatic. Williams offers no easy answers but Amir Rahimzadeh\u2019s anguished doubt as the scientist elicits more sympathy than Lucas Smith\u2019s cool certainty as the assassin.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The bravura performance of the evening comes from Judy Holt as the ageing glamourpuss celeb in <em>Maddie<\/em> by Dave Simpson and Diane Whitley. Unexpected consequences arise when Maddie flirts with the boyfriend of her sulky teenager daughter, splendidly pouted by Emily Fleeshman who finally asserts herself with an unusual use of ten-speed nipple clamps.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In <em>A Christmas Carol <\/em>by Ian Kershaw (<em>Shameless<\/em> and <em>Casualty<\/em>) Jeni Howarth Williams has a feral exuberance as a desperate older woman with a young nightclub pick-up who turns out to have gone drinking straight from his mother\u2019s funeral. Oliver Wilson as Waz has a touching moment of authenticity giving the eulogy the vicar ought to have delivered but didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Funny, thoughtful and moving JB Shorts are now a much-anticipated annual milestone in the Manchester theatrical calendar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JB Shorts Lowry Theatre, Salford **** There is a myth, peddled by Manchester City supporters, that most footballing Mancunians support their team; Man Utd fans, they claim, fly up each week from London. A survey by estate agents Rightmove gave the lie to that this week revealing that 55.6 percent of Mancs follow United, while [&hellip;]<\/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":[81,436,93,723],"class_list":["post-7091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-football","tag-manchester-city","tag-manchester-united","tag-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7091","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=7091"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7093,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7091\/revisions\/7093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}