Royal Exchange Theatre is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, with “homecoming” running throughout its programme. Walking into the theatre for Even These Things immediately feels significant because of that theme. This production understands exactly what homecoming means for Manchester.
And while the play feels like a love letter to the city, it’s never sentimental for the sake of it. Here, “home” isn’t just comfort. It’s grief, resilience, inherited anger, memory, and the strange way cities carry history long after headlines disappear. Manchester becomes the emotional centre of the production – a place constantly rebuilding itself while still living alongside what came before.
There may not be a more fitting venue for this story than the Royal Exchange itself. The theatre was directly affected by the 1996 IRA bomb, and sitting inside its intimate, circular space while watching Manchester’s history unfold around you gives the production an emotional closeness another venue simply couldn’t recreate. You don’t feel like you’re observing events from a distance. You feel inside them.
This is a world premiere production, and honestly, it feels like one of the most important pieces of theatre Manchester has had in years.
A deeply moving tribute to Manchester and its history.
Elaine Cassidy opens the play as Annie Donovan, a pregnant Irish woman in 1846, standing alone on an almost empty stage on what appears to be a blood-stained sheet. It’s stripped back entirely, forcing your attention onto the storytelling itself.
Cassidy commands the stage. Annie is furious, funny, determined, and slightly unhinged in the most compelling way possible as she speaks about heritage, vengeance, and the death of her pet pig – also called Annie. The writing constantly shifts between dark humour and genuine rage, while Cassidy effortlessly jumps between accents and impressions, bringing other unseen characters vividly into the room.
Against the bare stage, the costume design becomes even more striking. Her ragged 1800s dress feels almost symbolic, as though Annie herself has carried generations of history into the theatre with her.
Despite being a monologue, the scene never feels static. There’s movement in both the language and Cassidy’s physicality, as well as a simmering sense of anger and pain underneath every line. It lays the emotional foundations for everything that follows.
Manchester, June 15th 1996
The second section of Even These Things contains some of the most effective storytelling I’ve ever seen on stage.
Katherine Pearce guides the audience through an ordinary morning in Manchester on June 15th, 1996. Football fans crowd into pubs. Families head into town. Young couples flirt in the food court. School trips weave through the city centre. Ordinary lives briefly intersect before moving on again.
It sounds simple because it is simple – and that’s exactly why it works so brilliantly.
Characters drift across the stage for moments at a time, creating snapshots of city life that feel incredibly familiar even today. The production captures Manchester perfectly: busy, chaotic, funny, warm, and deeply diverse.
That diversity is one of the production’s greatest strengths. People of different ages, races, backgrounds, and abilities all share the stage naturally, reflecting Manchester as it actually exists rather than an idealised version of it. The city itself begins to feel like one of the play’s central characters.
There’s humour running throughout, too. Quiet observational jokes, little moments between strangers, and drunken conversations overheard in passing. The audience around me laughed constantly as we settled into this recognisable version of Manchester life.
And then the bomb goes off.
Even though the tension slowly builds beforehand, the impact of that moment is still shocking. Time appears to slow before the theatre physically jolts, smoke floods the space, and suddenly the ordinary scenes that came before carry an entirely different weight.
The Royal Exchange’s immersive staging makes the moment almost impossible to escape from. The production never sensationalises the attack, but theatrically, it’s breathtaking.
The 1996 section alone deserves recognition as some of the finest theatrical storytelling currently on stage in the UK.
Reflection, grief and what a city carries forward
The final section shifts into something quieter and more reflective.
Set in present day, thirty years after the IRA bomb, Katherine Pearce’s Jenny returns to Manchester, where she meets Kaz, played again by Elaine Cassidy, in a city park. Grass and benches replace the visual scale of the previous act, bringing the production back to something intimate and human.
The writing here becomes less concerned with spectacle and more interested in grief, motherhood, memory, and the complicated relationship people have with the places they return to.
What works particularly well is how much the play trusts its audience. Emotional and historical connections quietly emerge without feeling overexplained, allowing the themes of identity, heritage, and homecoming to settle naturally rather than forcing conclusions.
The conversations surrounding the IRA bomb are handled with enormous care too. Thirty years later, the play acknowledges how history still lingers within a city, shaping the people who continue living there long afterwards.
And ultimately, that resilience becomes the emotional core of the entire production.
Writing, staging and atmosphere
What makes Even These Things so impressive is how confidently it moves between styles.
The first act is sparse and language-driven. The second expands into something visually ambitious and chaotic, filled with movement, theatrical effects, and overlapping moments of city life. Then the final act strips everything back again into reflection and conversation.
Yet somehow, it all feels cohesive.
The writing is exquisite throughout – funny without forcing humour, emotional without becoming melodramatic, and political without losing sight of the people at the centre of the story. It understands that history is made up of ordinary lives and everyday moments.
The pacing is also impressive considering there’s no interval and the runtime sits at around one hour and forty-five minutes. I’ll admit, when I realised there wasn’t a break, I had a brief moment of “here we go.” But the production never loses your attention.
The final line closes the show perfectly, paying homage to the theatre’s anniversary theme: ‘Let’s go home.’
Final thoughts
Even These Things feels less like a conventional play and more like an experience – part historical reflection, part emotional journey, and part love letter to Manchester itself.
Mancunians will likely leave feeling fiercely proud of their city, but this production absolutely isn’t only for Manchester audiences. Nor is it solely for Irish audiences. It’s for anyone interested in how places shape people, how history lingers, and how communities continue rebuilding themselves through grief and survival.
Overall, the play is moving, thoughtful, funny, devastating, and beautifully staged in equal measure.
And more than anything, it’s a reminder of what theatre can achieve when storytelling is trusted to speak for itself.
Even These Things is running at the Royal Exchange Theatre until 15 June. Book your tickets now.
**Tickets gifted in exchange for honest review
Kelsey Haslam is the founding editor of Magenta Adventures Travel Publication and a freelance travel writer with a focus on community-based travel, culture-led experiences, and theatre tourism. She is passionate about spotlighting lesser-known destinations and connecting travellers with meaningful, human-centred stories.
Her published work includes destination features and luxury hotel reviews for leading travel outlets such as A Luxury Travel Blog, Beau Monde Traveler, and Luxury Lifestyle Magazine.
Explore more about Kelsey’s background on the About Page.
