MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Road
Leeds Playhouse
THE HALLMARKS that brought Jim Cartwright to national prominence with The Rise and Fall Of Little Voice are all there in his debut play Road.
Premiered in 1986, and set in a working-class northern town decimated by the Thatcher government, it's largely written as a series of monologues, with roguish narrator Scullery (Joe Alessi) introducing the road’s inhabitants on Hayley Grindle’s split-level stage.
He's the thread of continuity for a patchwork of lives that initially jar in tone, with the ensemble of 10 actors portraying teenagers getting ready for a night out, a darkly comic skinhead turned Buddhist and a poignant elderly woman who struggles with fading memories.
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