Monthly Archive for April, 2006

To paraphrase Keith Allen at the beginning of the show, it was outside, it was live and it was Manchester so anything could have gone wrong! Instead it was a resounding success!

Darren Morfitt was well cast as a ‘down to earth’ Northern Jesus. Tim Booth all angular and ‘weird’ made for a convincing Judas. And the city itself mixing old and new buildings made a stunning backdrop from the performance.

The songs were for the most part well chosen and sung. “Love will tear us apart” and “Blue Monday” were among my favourites from the evening. Some of the singers may not have been pitch perfect but that was never the point of those songs.

And the highlight of the show, Darren Morfitt, at the top of the town hall’s clocktower, singing “I Am the Resurrrection”. It was all very moving!

Read more: Easter marked with a passion, Day that Jesus came to the Arndale Centre.

Article reprinted from the BBC website.

Actors are preparing to re-enact the story of the Crucifixion on the streets of Manchester on Good Friday.
BBC Three is staging Manchester Passion, a contemporary retelling of the last hours of Jesus’ life told through the music of Manchester.

Actors will carry an eight-metre luminous cross through the streets to Albert Square on Friday night.

Members of the public will be urged to join in with songs by bands including Joy Division, New Order and Oasis.

All the tracks in the production will be music from Manchester bands from past 30 years.

Primal Scream vocalist Denise Johnson will play the Virgin Mary and Tim Booth, lead singer of James, plays Judas.

Darren Morfitt, star of Dog Soldiers, plays Jesus, and Nicholas Bailey, who was Dr Antony Trueman in EastEnders, is Peter.

Confirmed songs include Jesus singing Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart at the Last Supper, Jesus and Judas duetting on New Order’s Blue Monday and the Virgin Mary singing M People’s Search For The Hero.

The event will be presented by actor Keith Allen, who has starred in Bodies and 24 Hour Party People.

The actors will perform live, accompanied by a 16-piece string orchestra and busking disciples who play guitar, cello and accordion.

The evening production has been developed by the TV classical music department behind BBC Three’s Flashmob: The Opera.

A BBC spokeswoman said the programme-makers hoped “people that never go to church may go along”.

Keith Allen

Keith’s been a regular in hit BBC Three drama Bodies, playing Tony Whitman. He’s appeared in many TV shows over the years, including Murder In Mind, Inspector Morse and Martin Chuzzlewit.

He’s also a familiar face to film fans from roles in some classic British films, including Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and 24 Hour Party People.

Away from acting, he was part of Fat Les, alongside Damien Hirst and Alex James. Their song, Vindaloo, became the unofficial anthem to the England football team’s campaign in the 1998 World Cup finals.

Nicholas Bailey

Nick is perhaps best known for his role as the mixed-up doc Anthony Trueman in EastEnders. Before his days in Albert Square he appeared in Casualty, Coronation Street, Sex’n'Death and King Lear. In Corrie he was Lee Middleton, the yuppie brother of hairdresser Fiona (played by Angela Griffin).

Nick enjoys painting. He’s also very sporty, taking part in athletics, boxing, football, rugby, and flamenco. In 2002 he ran the London Marathon.

Tim Booth

A major star as frontman in seminal Manchester band James, Tim Booth has seen plenty of action – chart success, massive live arena shows, genre-bending collaborations and huge album sales.

James signed with Manchester’s Factory Records in 1983. Although their recording career stretched back much further than their contemporaries, James were swept along by the ‘Madchester’ scene during the late 80s and early 90s. Massive hits like Come Home and Sit Down thrust them firmly into the mainstream.

James finally bowed out in 2002. Since then, Tim has been busy acting on both stage and screen (including a role in Batman Begins alongside Gary Oldman), recording music and touring, making babies, and teaching dance and drama in his adopted home town of Brighton.

Darren Morfitt

Darren has appeared in several high profile programmes, including 55 Degrees North, Red Cap, Warriors and the cult werewolf movie Dog Soldiers.

He remains happy even if no-one seems to remember his name.

“I’m one of those people who works all the time but keeps his head down and doesn’t get much recognition,” he says. “I’m interested in good scripts and working with good people.”

Denise Johnson

Denise featured in the line-up of dance-rock-psychadelic act Primal Scream for about six years, from their classic Screamadelica days to the more soulful Give Out But Don’t Give Up album. One of her career highlights was performing with the band at Reading Festival in 1994. She “never got the call” to work on later albums, when the band took on a rougher, dirtier sound.

She was a backing singer with Bobby Gillespie, but sometimes took the lead on songs like Don’t Fight It, Feel It, when Bobby felt a more soulful feel was needed and his voice wasn’t quite up to it.

Born and raised in the city, as Mary she’ll be belting out some classic Manchester songs, including M People’s Search For A Hero. Denise thinks the tracks have been really well chosen, but says: “What a shame Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley weren’t from Manchester because we could have used a few of their songs!”

There’s some more information about the Manchester Passion event available on the Media Guardian site.

In this case, Jerusalem will be represented by Manchester’s gay and red light area near Canal Street and the Passion scene will pass via Chinatown and St Peter’s Square to culminate in Albert Square.

The march will be followed by members of the public who will be encouraged to join in the singing of relevant anthems, which include the M People hit Search for a Hero Inside Yourself.

The crowd will carry a large white cross and the public will also be asked to bring a symbol of their own burden – “something they are personally concerned about” – according to senior church sources involved in the programme.

The crowd will be joined by Bez – the entertainer famous for shaking his maracas on stage with the Happy Mondays. He will be accompanied by former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown and Black Grape saxophonist Martin Slattery.

The event will end with the resurrected Jesus singing an as yet undisclosed song from the top of Manchester’s town hall.

The show is being made by the corporation’s classical music television department, which has won plaudits for its experimental music and drama work overseen by its head, Pater Maniura.

These include Flashmob: the Opera – a live opera event staged among commuters at Paddington station in London in which members of the public performed a song inspired by the Orpheus legend – and the forthcoming Riot at the Rite, a dramatisation of the notorious first performance of Stravinsky’s ballet the Rites of Spring, to be aired in March.