CityLife

Winnie weaves her magic

THE family show Winnie The Witch, adapted from all three books in the award-winning Winnie The Witch series of children's books, flies into The Lowry next week, adapted and directed by Anthony Clark, who was artistic director at Contact for six years in the late eighties. During that time two of his productions, Blood Wedding and To Kill A Mockingbird, picked up prestigious Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards for Best Production, while his children's shows The Snowman and The Red Balloon are very fondly remembered. "I'm no great authority on children's shows, except that I have children myself," he laughs. "Every few years somebody seems to bring a book into the house that I suddenly get very excited about doing. In this case, what initially attracted me were the illustrations done for the books by Korky Paul. The adaptations I have done have very minimal text and have been very, very simple in that respect to elaborate on. It is interesting, I suppose, that the children's shows I've done have not really been at all suitable for adolescents but have appealed to under-11s and grown-ups. One of the attractions of doing children's shows has also been that it allowed Mark (Vibrans, the gifted composer, who tragically died earlier this year) and I an opportunity to work on our lyric and composing skills and it's very rare that you get that chance in adult theatre."At the time Winnie The Witch is at The Lowry, I'll also have a version of Edward III on elsewhere so I guess you can see that I try to keep projects on as broad a base as possible."

Winnie The Witch is at The Lowry from Wednesday until Saturday, October 19, with performances at 10.30am from Wednesday to Friday; 1.30pm on Wednesday; and 11am, 2.30pm and 5.30pm on Saturday.