John McGrath, founding artistic director of the National Theatre of Wales, has taken over as chief of the essential Manchester international festival. For his first season he welcomes work from Berlin, Cairo, Karachi – and, blimey, women. His programme looks promising – though it has a shaky start.
Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari’s Party Skills for the End of the World bears the marks of a show edited after recent catastrophes, not least in Manchester. The idea seems to have been to bring together apocalypse and triviality – presumably with the notion that we spend our lives fiddling while Rome burns. But the result is short on fear, long on balloons.
Walking along metal walkways past glass-fronted rooms – each a tiny theatre of instruction – I had two glee-filled episodes. My first task was to make a martini. In a light-filled bar, I beamingly shook ice-cubes. Later, I joyfully learned how to land a punch. Chin, solar plexus, groin I yelled, lunging in boxing gloves towards a punchbag styled as a trim sand-coloured chap. It helped to have some targets in mind. My ferocity earned praise from the instructor.
I failed to master the picking of a lock, which would have been useful. My winsomeness threshold was not high enough to face sitting down with those who were learning how to spin a cushion on one finger – or to look cheerily at a steward sporting a jester’s knot of balloons on his head.
Still, what broke me were the final moments, when the audience was obliged to listen to a sermon about what we might dread in our closing days. Dementia; the loss of family, friends and home; the possibility that your children won’t like you. Hard to see how listening to the obvious can count as acquiring a new skill. Or make you feel you are at a party.
• At Centenary Building, Salford, until 16 July
