Even These Things at the Royal Exchange Theatre

Thirty years on from the IRA bombing that changed Manchester city centre forever, the Royal Exchange Theatre returns to the event through an ambitious new play that feels both deeply local and quietly universal.

Written by Rory Mullarkey and directed by James Macdonald, Even These Things unfolds across three timelines - 1846, 1996 and 2026 - weaving together stories of grief, pregnancy, migration, love, trauma and reinvention against the changing backdrop of Manchester and its Irish communities. Anchored around Angel Meadow across two centuries, Mullarkey also quietly interrogates the city’s ongoing reinvention - from industrial poverty and Engels’ “Hell upon Earth” to glossy urban regeneration.

Despite the sweep of its themes, the play’s greatest strength lies in its fascination with ordinary life. The big moments - bombings, death, displacement - sit alongside recognisable snapshots of everyday existence; the memories of queuing for a phone box in the '90s, shoppers drifting along Market Street, awkward conversations between strangers in the park - those small, everyday moments through which people experience history, trauma and change.

The 1996 sequence is especially affecting. Katherine Pearce’s Jenny narrates the slow build-up to the bomb exploding almost like diary entries, while fleeting character snapshots unfold around her - anonymous city centre figures caught in the routines of a Saturday morning. A couple eating breakfast. Shoppers drifting through town. Someone heading to the pub. Performed by a phenomenal community ensemble, the scenes become a vivid portrait of Manchester in human form - funny, diverse, busy and deeply familiar. There’s warmth and nostalgia here, but also something surprisingly moving about the way the play captures the city itself - its humour, resilience and sense of community. At a moment where public discourse can feel increasingly fractured, Even These Things becomes an unexpectedly hopeful portrait of togetherness.

Elaine Cassidy is mesmerising throughout, particularly in the 1846 storyline as Annie Donovan, delivering a fierce and darkly comic monologue about avenging the death of her beloved pig - she completely commands the room. The humour throughout feels warmly observational and distinctly Northern, earning consistent laughs from the audience.

Macdonald’s production is stripped back but playfully inventive. Designer Laura Hopkins’ staging allows entire city centre scenes to be wheeled on and off the stage in full view - tables, breakfasts, benches, passers-by - creating a transient sense of Manchester constantly moving around the audience. A toy-sized recreation of the bomb on Corporation Street, complete with police suspended above the stage in a makeshift helicopter, cleverly captures both the scale of the disaster and the intimacy of individual memory. Even a brief technical malfunction involving a stubborn second-hand car became part of the evening’s charm.

By the final timeline, the pacing slows into extended silences and unresolved conversations, reflecting a play ultimately concerned with cycles - of cities, relationships, history, life and death - and the different ways people carry and process trauma across generations. Manchester emerges not simply as a setting, but as something living - constantly rebuilding, remembering and carrying its history forward.