The Dancehouse: Manchester – 22nd May

I was on holiday in Porthallow, which if you haven’t been to the South Coast of Cornwall in a beautiful spot but fucking miles away! It basically takes three hours after you have got to Exeter, so all in all took more than eight hours to drive there. I had booked tickets to see this play a couple of months ago and was taking a mate of mine, Chris Slater along to see it because it was his birthday. Little did I realise that driving back from Cornwall would take so long.

NINE hours and 5 minutes! I set off at 10.15 am on Friday morning the 22nd May – a bank holiday weekend! I got home at 7.20pm and we only stopped twice, both times very briefly. I knew that the play was a sell out and they had put a call out to anyone that had been given free tickets to reconfirm so they could sell them – thankfully I had paid but I called Brian Gorman anyway just to tell him I would be late. He is the show’s writer and someone I had met a week or so earlier to offer some help and advice, but that’s a different story – bottom line was they knew I was coming and would a.  Not sell my ticket and b. Let me in after the play had started – which was a big ask as we were on the front row.

It was starting at 8pm and I was in Bowdon. Lorraine stayed in the car while I went in, quickly washed, put some appropriate gear on and jumped back in the car. I called Chris who was now walking out of his house on Park Road Timperley, 5 minutes from the tram station.

Lorraine dropped me at Altrincham station at 7.30 – thankfully a tram left 5 minutes later – I picked Chris up at his station 5 minutes later and sweated all the way to St Peter’s Square!

We ran/trundled the ¾  mile  from there up to the Dancehouse on Oxford Rd,  informed the box office who ran us upstairs to our seats at 10 past eight. As my bum touched the chair Lee Joseph walked on stage as Tony Wilson and the play began – to the second! phew!

What I saw over the next two hours blew me away.

Brian and Giles (Bastow – producer), had invited us to the aftershow – so we hung around in the bar for an hour or so afterwards chatting to everyone and then headed to the Black Dog Ballroom just round the corner until about 4am

What a night!

You can read all about the show on Louder Than War here: New Dawn Fades

Nigel Carr© 2015