CityLife

She's Just Nipped Out For Fags @ Library Theatre

FOLLOWING last year's sell-out hit ASBO, the community drama group MaD Theatre Company return with another gritty, likeable and hilarious slice of contemporary Mancunian life.

Again directed by Rob Lees, She's Just Nipped Out For Fags may be a bit rough and ready but it's bursting with the sort of energy that too much mainstream theatre seems to have long since forgotten.

When Pat Pickles (Jill Hughes) nips out to buy some cigarettes, her husband Bobby (Paul Redston), her four kids Robbie (Jack Williamson), Sinita (Amelia Cuffy-Nash), Erica (Danielle Wrigley) and Maurice (Luke Vinter) as well as Bobby's feckless dad Nobby don't think she'll be long.

But that was months ago, and gradually Bobby is putting together another family including neighbouring drag queen Bernie ("Miss Jay" Scott), Demi Johnson (Abi Gunning), who's pregnant with Robbie's baby, and Sinita's posh friend Bronte Barrington-Bond (Rosie Philips).

Then Pat reappears after starring in a bizarre TV documentary "I'm Marrying a Maniac - and now he's going to fry", Robby ends up in a coma, and it looks as if everything's going to go wrong.

With some very funny set-pieces - including the best Dennis Potter-does-Moston sequence you're probably ever going to see - and a cast who more than make up for what they lack in experience with their infectious enthusiasm, this is a real rough diamond.

She's Just Nipped Out For Fags is at the Library Theatre until Saturday, August 25. Call 0161 236 7110 to book or for more details. Paul Cliff will be exhibiting photographs entitled Queens Of The New Union 29.04.07, shot during the rehearsal and development process for She's Just Nipped Out for Fags, at the New Union, Princess Street, as part of the annual Manchester Pride event over the August Bank Holiday weekend.