Manchesters opera house is currently playing host to ‘The Battle’, a play based around the era defying rivalry of Blur v Oasis.
As soon as I read about this I knew I had to see it. As on of the many thousands punters who payed through the nose to see Oasis make the greatest comeback in music history last year, this was going to be right up my street.
The story follows the battle of 1995, from the moment Blur swept up at the Brit awards to the infamous race for number 1. For me, these types of shows can go 2 ways, you can either try too hard to be like the real people and create a difficult barrier for the audience, or you can tell the story in such a clever and unique way that nuance becomes memorable in a masterpiece. I’m happy to say it was the later.
As a born and bred Mancunian, the way the Oasis dialogue was written and the delivered made me laugh every single time. The language and the specific insults were just fantastic. It couple really well with the jokes about the ‘lads down south’ and the things the lads from Blur would deliver. It was extremely clever writing. Another thing worth noting was the fact that every cast member was responsible for every set change. All of it was done in Character which was absolutely fantastic and never slowed the show down once.
Now the actors. As I said before it is so hard to portray real people anyway, however that job is even harder when they are so unique and specific as the Gallagher brothers and the Blur boys. Paddy Stafford and George Usher, playing Noel and Liam, were brilliant. I don’t know if these two lads are from Manchester or not, but there is always that danger of overdoing the accent and swagger of the pair (Liam especially) but none of the jokes, attitude or charisma was missed and I’m sure the real Gallagher brothers would love how it comes across. It’s exactly the same for Oscar Lloyd and Will Taylor (Damon and Graham of Blur). The complete flip end of the northern jokes were just perfect and being that ‘band from down south’ was perfectly met with all the perfect inflictions.
The biggest name in this very talented cast was Mathew Horne. Most well known for his role of Gavin in BBC’s ‘Gavin and Stacy’. He had a a wonderful role of Blurs manager, Andy Ross. Now the one thing was say is you can always see experience on a stage, and Horne just oozed professionalism and quality. A performance so on the money you always watched him when he was there.
This comedy play is definitely worth a watch. It has a very interesting ending that I can’t mention without spoiling it, let’s just say there’s a hat tip to Hamlet! The Battle is live on stage only until Saturday 21st so make sure not to miss it!
https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-battle/opera-house-manchester/
