REVIEW: All I See is You at the Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester

We’ve all felt the irresistible pull of love. The sensation that the world could melt away, but if that one person was left behind with you all would be ok. However, what happens when that love is between two men in a world where the law forbids it. That world is our world, 50 years ago when being who you were warranted a prison sentence. 

Bobby spots Ralph and immediately falls in love, but after they’re caught having an intimate encounter by Ralph’s father, Ralph calls it off and they’re forced to live apart leading polar opposite existences. Bobby chooses to follow who he is and ends up dominating the secreted Manchester gay scene, whilst a closeted Ralph pursues his ambition of becoming a school teacher and courting a woman in order to deny his true identity from himself and others. However, when the two men finally see each other again they’re love is instantly reignited and they embark on a passionate affair. But in a world where their love is illegal, it’s only a matter of time before they’re reported, forced into interrogation rooms, maltreated, and talk of jail sentences and aversion therapy arises. 

REVIEW: Proof at the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester

Proof. That’s all any of us search for as humans. Affirmation. We seek to be validated for our own successes, to prove, in our own personal way, that our own position in society is absolute; and in order to survive we provide proof that we are worthy. However, what happens when your proof gets questioned by the ones who mean the most to you?

David Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning play sees Catherine; the daughter of this generation’s most celebrated mathematician, come to terms with the loss of her father, and the fear she might be succumbing to the same early onset dementia that took him from her; whilst also dealing with her sister Claire flying in from New York to help the post-mortem dust settle and the sudden increased presence at the family home of Hal; her fathers ex student. However, soon enough Catherine’s sanity is started to be questioned by those around her, and her claims of mathematical discovery are challenged as by products of her own mental instability and deemed as her father’s intellectual property and not her own. Through the fractured narrative of flash back, present day and within Catherine’s mind, Auburn takes you on a twisted journey chartering the genial exploration of Catherine’s own sense of self worth, whilst not only questioning how she can prove herself as a mathematician (whilst standing in the shadows of a great,) but also prove her own sanity.