CityLife

Exchange Studio has the 'X' factor

The production runs until March 28

COAL Theatre Theate Company’s Not With That Hand was a standout at the 2007 24:7 Theatre Festival and was recently revived at the Royal Exchange Studio.

This weekend, the company’s new play, The Fragility Of X, plays at the Studio, once again starring Annie Fitzmaurice.

An early version of the idea was shown at BLUE5 at the Royal Exchange studio in July 2007 and has been developed in association with the director John Wright from an idea by Annie.

A woman (played by Annie) lives with her autistic teenage son, juggling a career in fine wine and an Open University course in the history of art.

Careful juggling act

Her life is a careful juggling act, full of bizarre practical compromises, occasionally transcended by her passionate interest in the study of early Renaissance Christian painting and modern large scale sculpture.

This play, say Annie and John, is ‘about what happens if you live close to the edge of what you can cope with and one day you stop juggling and coping and let go of control and containment and go with the flow’.

They add: “It’s about how life can be brilliant one minute and indiscriminately cruel and terrible the next.”

"It’s about freedom, boundaries, relationships and art.”

The Fragility Of X is on at the Royal Exchange Studio until Saturday, March 28. Call 0161 833 9833.