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Hope Mill Theatre
Until Saturday 14th September
*** Raw Emotion & Compelling Viewing ***
Tonight we went to see CANAL STREET LONELY HEARTS CLUB at Hope Mill Theatre.
Jonathan Harvey the writer of tonight’s production, has written the sounds track of many of our lives. ‘Beautiful Thing’ affected us all in the 90’s with its timeless love story and increased the sales of peppermint foot lotion tenfold! We had the endless comedy lines of Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie in the early 2000’s. Then later Beautiful People, which in my view should have run for many more series. He now writes for Call the Midwife and Corrie. The 1995 Lonely Hearts Clubs first incarnation was based in Rupert Street (London), but he brings the play up-to date to Canal Street.
It tells the story of x2 brothers - Marti (CAMERON MC KENDRICK) who’s gay & Shaun (JAMES SPRAGUE) who’s straight. Cameron produces a stand out performance that I could relate to in many ways. He kept me glued to the piece and loved his miss-fit lifestyle of chaos and debauchery. I think his acting career will be incredible and can’t wait to see what he does next.
James is equally compelling and kept the audience's attention. James has to show his emotions and his anger level jumps from 1 > 10 in a heartbeat.
Dean (NICK COLLIER) bounces onto stage in drag and later as the lonely heart scally persona who’s sick of the scene and wants a real connection. We felt his lines needed some work to give his character some depth.
Clarice (LUCY HILTON-JONES) took myself and fellow reviewers a little bit of time to get used to. Her character we have learnt represents someone with mental illness who is in the care on the community programme that the Tories introduced. She’s fending for herself in the big bad world.
Lonely neighbour GEORGE (RIAH AMELLE) bumbles along as she dips in and out of the apartment trying to make friends with a strange over-familiarity. I think we’ve all met a ‘George’ in our own lives.
The setting is an apartment on Canal Street. There are themes of family, drugs, clubbing and neighbours with mental health. It’s pretty heavy going throughout. The ending wraps up faster than Marti trying to devour his midnight feast of a kebab! It’s not how I thought the play would culminate and this surprised me. Some might find elements of the performance triggering. It’s not the happy ending the characters are all searching for. Harvey manages to add in plenty of funny one liners and Manchester references.
Famed play wright Jonathan Harvey has created memorable works over the years. He often pens standout episodes of Corrie which many people might not know. With this in mind - CSLHC does feel like a very good stand-alone TV episode that I wish was a little longer. I definitely wouldn’t have been grabbing the remote to turn over watching this play! You could almost imagine the Eastenders ‘DUFF-DUFFS’ at the end of the show! Not as ‘fluffy’ a storyline as I was expecting.
We did leave Hope Mill thoroughly entertained.
book now via below:
https://hopemilltheatre.co.uk/event/canal-street-lonely-hearts-club/
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