That Day we Sang

That Day we Sang, Manchester Opera House, 2011

Cast: Rachel Bingham, Andy Brady, Lorraine Bruce, Raif Clarke, Ruth Carr, Jemma Drake, Vincent Franklin, Dale Gerrard, Gerard Horan, Ian Marr, Tim Morgan, Alison Pargeter, Jenna Russell, Martin Savage.

Writer & director: Victoria Wood

Musical director: Nigel Lilley

This was the reason for my only overnight stay in Manchester, by coincidence staying in a hotel that had been made from the building where the events in this play took place. It was part of the Manchester International Festival which does really interesting things but wants to mix the local in with the international. I don't remember much about the production although I remember the plot as Victoria Wood later made it into a TV drama (with Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball). It's never been revived.

The musical director gets a mention because I grew up in the road behind the one my family home was in (where my Mum still lives). He was a bit younger than me so I didn't know him but I certainly knew his family: his parents were big in the local AmDram, and his Dad owned a music shop in a nearby town. He worked with Victoria so much that there's a picture of him in the recent biography of her, and since then he's done Sondheim. I strongly suspect I wasn't the only gay in the village.