BWW Reviews: THE SKRIKER, The Royal Exchange, July 9 2015

It's twenty one years since Caryl Churchill's surrealist The Skriker first premiered at the National Theatre. Its revival, one of the headline performances at the Manchester International Festival, really highlights how this cautionary tale of environmental disaster has become more and more prescient as the global climate changes.

Designer Lizzie Clahan has transformed The Royal Exchange into a dilapidated warehouse, paint peeling off the rusted walls. The usual ground floor seating has been ripped out and replaced with tables and chairs - with the audience thrust into centre stage. Maxine Peake storms into the middle as the eponymous ancient fairy, delivering an opening monologue of stunning word play and poetry, with the cast writhing and gyrating in response.

This sets the tone for the whole production, as Peake's Skriker haunts pregnant happy Lily and her friend, Josie, institutionalised after killing her baby in a fit of post-natal depression. There is no simple plot to follow - instead the poetry and the imagery wash over you in Sarah Franckom's very physical and choreographed interpretation.

This is Frankcom and Peake's third collaboration after The Masque of Anarchy at 2013's festival and last year's triumphant Hamlet. The two clearly enjoy working together, and Franckom has the ability to tease emotional and electrifying performances from Peake. In this Peake must play everything from an American business man, to an old woman, to young child and plays each incarnation with authenticity and skill.

Laura Elmsworthy and Juma Sharkah offer superb support as the friends Josie and Lily. Elmsworthy's standout moment comes in one of the most awe-inspiring set pieces of the production, a banquet in the underworld. The audience are danced to the side to make way for a choir of fairies to serenade the tormented young girl as she takes part in a macabre feast. The aural and visual feast creates a scene that will last long in the memory.

Although pitched in the programmes notes as a tale of environmental doom - The Skriker being a fairy that retailiates against our broken world - it also looks at psychosis, depression and addiction. Whether to drugs or merely our addiction to consumption that's destroying personal worlds and the whole planet - a raver constantly dances throughout the production, running out of energy as the show goes on, he represents this addiction on all the levels.

The Skriker deserves its place as a headline production in this year's MIF, and serves as reminder of the huge creative talent available in the UK and not just in London.

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