Review: Whistles and cheers for She Productions

There are two things guaranteed to pull a Hull audience, writes Michelle Dee, and that is local heritage and local music. So it seems with a packed house for the final night of Heads Up before the festival looks to 2017. It’s Different Girls is a new musical about Hull group Mandy and the Girlfriends […]

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Review: ‘Nothing’ explores the issue of teen suicide

Responding to Hull’s new status as a filmmaking hub, Ensemble 52 – traditionally a theatre company – has taken a move closer to the world of film, writes Michelle Dee. The company’s short film debut ‘Nothing’ featuring Christopher Colquhoun begins to explore the issue of teen suicide, from the viewpoint of those left behind. Inspiration […]

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Review: Twisting turns of Bellow Theatre

You never see the twist coming, mark of a good storyteller that, writes Michelle Dee. On one side of Bellow Theatre’s Bare Skin on Briny Waters, is the rather fanciful ‘Sophie’ played by Maureen Lennon. Sophie is wrapped up in fabled tales of Scheherazade with a marriage steadily going south. On the other side sits […]

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Review: Heads Up Introducing with John Godber

Which film would the third most performed playwright in the country pick as the one that has influenced him the most? The voice of Hull culture Michelle Dee went along to Kardomah 94 to find out. Apparently the smart money had been on Sharknado 2. I’m sorry shark fans but that was never going to […]

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Review: The 56 moves audiences to tears

Michelle Dee reviews The 56. “Nobody dies at football matches in fires. It doesn’t happen.” On May 11th 1985 at 3.40pm a small fire broke out on the main stand during Bradford City’s last game of the season. Thousands watched the events unfolding at Valley Parade, live on Grandstand. Lung is an award-winning company who produce verbatim […]

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Review: Emotional connection to art explored

You could reasonably expect a workshop called Making Art out of the Everyday, to be a crafty cotton reels, silver foil, washing up bottle kind of affair. Michelle Dee went down to Artlink, all ready to get busy with the sticky-back plastic. What she found when she arrived was that this was going to be […]

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Review: Denmarked – melodic tones and mythmaking

Secrets shared with a social worker only to become common knowledge at school the next day, Transformers and Coke, a recurring dream, wearing Nicks not Nike, a timely intervention through finding Hamlet, these are just a few of the stories Conrad Murray shares in Denmarked, writes Michelle Dee. Opening the seventh Heads Up Festival is […]

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Heads Up Festival opens this week

HULL’S  own Heads Up Festival springs back into life on Wednesday with a performance of the critically acclaimed DenMarked by Conrad Murray. The production, at Kardomah 94 on Wednesday, October 5 at 7.30pm, is an autobiographical performance told through storytelling, singing, rapping and a loop station. Created by Conrad Murray and developed with Battersea Arts Centre, DenMarked […]

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