New edition of The Gangs of Manchester
A new edition of Andrew Davies’s history of the gangs of Victorian Manchester and Salford has been published by Milo Books.
Use the links to the left discover more about the book, its author, the history of the gangs, and upcoming events.
Emma Fox will be leading monthly Gangs of Manchester walks from May 2010. Emma is an experienced Manchester tour guide and local history enthusiast. Her first two “scuttlers’ walks” in January and March have both sold out. To book a place on one of the walks from May onwards, please contact Emma direct at: emma@showmemanchester.com
Click on the link below to see the flyer for the first walk:
Gangs of Manchester Flyer-1
Emma’s tour finishes at the Marble Arch on Rochdale Road: one of the locations for the film sequences for Angels with Manky Faces and a stone’s throw from the opening scene of The Gangs of Manchester.
Manchester poet and novelist Mike Duff has just brought his third book out. Yer wot? is set in the heartlands of North Manchester and it’s as close as you could get to a twenty-first century story of scuttling. It costs £10, and you can order a copy by emailing yer_wot@yahoo.co.uk.
Tickets for the final two performances of Angels with Manky Faces at the Dancehouse theatre in Manchester on Sunday, 8 November are available from ticketline. Performance times are 3.00 pm and 7.00 pm.
Mike Garry recently read this new poem on BBC Radio Manchester. If you’re coming to see Angels with Manky Faces at the Dancehouse in November, this will get you right in the mood. In the mean time, check out Mike’s work here.
Angels with Manky Faces
Close your eyes
Go back in time
Picture this in your mind
A summer sky without sunshine
Pigs dogs and rats are running wild
The smell of shite the buzz of flies
Pub and mill on every corner
Street alive with disorder
Open sewer smell of sulphur
Poverty of the lowest order
Echoed clog
Echoed hoofs
Dripping rain from dripping roofs
The iron grind steel rimmed cartwheels
Music laughter a choir of screams
Ancoats
Circa 1880
Decadence awash
Vice aplenty
Brothels in hovels dogfights down stairs
Bare-knuckle boxers
Shebeens everywhere
Five families share one house with two rooms
Raucous cries from the singing saloons
Tots pedal sin running door to door
Jugs of ale and gin fly back and forth
Spreading tales of Scuttling Gangs
Who lay down their lives for a small plot of land
Wearing clogs with shined and sharpened brass tips
Belt and Buckle wrapped tight round their fists
A short back and sides and tattooed fore arms
With the name of their true love within a red heart
The Bengal tigers the buffalo bill the meadow lads maim and kill
They’re chalking their codes on the sides of pub walls
All for one
One for all…………………………………………..
Open your eyes
Return to modern times
Walk the streets and you will find
A summer sky without sunshine
Dogs as weapons running wild
The smell of weed the buzz of flies
The pubs and mills on every corner
Have been converted to apartments
Cars, buses, trucks speeding by
The smell of carbon monoxide
Bouncing rain on tarmac streets
Different songs different beats
Ancoats on the cusp of 2010
History repeats itself again
Tots on bikes pedalling sin
In the form of crack cocaine and heroine
And telling tales of the Manchester gangs
Cheetah, Gooch, Doddington
Chalking codes on mobile phones
In pristine trainers and logo’d clothes
Mothers cry into Rosary Beads
A son is gone and he’s only sixteen
On Facebook on t shirts and tattooed shoulder
The letters R.I.P. and a list of fallen street soldiers
A copter hovers, a distant siren sings
There’s blood on the pavement the smell of death in the wind
Boy battles boy with knife and gun
A mother worries – it could be your son
Gone are the scuttlers the battles the chases
But there’ll always be angels with manky faces
(c) Mike Garry, October 2009
You can view a new trailer for Angels with Manky Faces on youtube here. The trailer features members of MaD Theatre Company along with Graeme Hawley (Coronation Street), John Henshaw and Smug Roberts (Looking for Eric), Twisted Wheel, Mike Joyce (The Smiths), Martin Coogan (Mock Turtles), the Naughtys, Clint Boon (Inspiral Carpets), and Terry Christian. It’s set to Bye Bye Johnny’s song, King of the Scuttlers, and there’s even some artificial rain – in Manchester of all places! – courtesy of Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service.
To see some audience feedback on Angels with Manky Faces, visit Aidan O’Rourke’s website here.
As one of the posters points out, the show is ideal introduction to live theatre for younger people who might not have been to the theatre before.
There will be three performances of Angels with Manky Faces at Manchester’s Dancehouse theatre (opposite the BBC on Oxford Road) in November. Performance times are as follows:
Friday 6 November, 8 p.m.
Sunday 8 November, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Tickets are priced £10 (£9 concessions). You can buy them in person from the box office at the Dancehouse at the following times: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: 4 p.m. – 7 p.m. You can ring the box office on 0161 237 9753 to reserve tickets; they’ll hold them for you for four days.
Alternatively, from 1 Sept. you can book online via ticketline.
Early booking is advised: the performances at the Library Theatre in August sold-out with a fortnight to go.
For reviews of Angels at the Library, check out the separate page on the play.
Following a hugely successful week of sell-out performances at Manchester’s Library Theatre, MaD theatre company is arranging two additional performances of Angels with Manky Faces. Details will be posted here as soon as the dates are confirmed.
Thanks to everyone who came to the shows at the Library; double thanks to the people that started the sing-along to Dirty Old Town!
MaD Theatre Company’s production, Angels with Manky Faces, now opens at the Library Theatre in Manchester on 17 August. Five performances were originally scheduled (19-22 August). These have all sold-out; extra nights have been added on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th. There are a few tickets left at the time of writing, so if you’d like to come along give the box office a call: 0161 236 7110.
The first two performances – at Liverpool’s Unity theatre on 22-23 July – went down a storm. The cast performed to packed houses both nights, and everyone was delighted with the warmth of the response. A few people suggested it was a risky move to open a production by a community theatre company from Manchester in Liverpool. Not at all: the issues raised in Angels resonate in both cities and MaD’s mix of tragedy and comedy clearly struck a chord with Liverpool audiences. We hope that future productions will likewise be previewed at the Unity, whose staff were a pleasure to work with.
Angels is generating a fair bit of media interest. Karl Marginson, manager of FC United of Manchester, discussed the club’s contribution to the production on Talksport on 24 July. Margy appears in one of the scenes filmed for Angels by Paul Cliff, along with FCUM captain Dave Chadwick, goalkeeper Sam Ashton, and a host of the club’s junior players and supporters. FCUM followers should keep an eye out for a hilarious cameo by Vinny Thompson. Vinny’s making a habit of this kind of thing, having recently done a cameo in Looking for Eric.
Actor Christian Bradley previewed Angels on Dotun Adebayo’s late-night show on Radio 5 Live on 1 August, but managed to get the title wrong: Angels with Monkey Faces indeed! Cheers for the heads-up, Christian, but you’ll need to learn your lines properly if you want to work with MaD …
John Henshaw, who plays Meatballs in Ken Loach’s new film Looking for Eric, is the latest actor to do a cameo for Angels with Manky Faces. John appears with Twisted Wheel in a film set to “You stole the sun.” The film captures the exploits of a couple of hapless husbands played by Ted Taylor and Malcolm Ryder of MaD. Ted and Malcolm play “night soil men” in Angels – there’s a Victorian euphemism and a half – and not surprisingly, they’re fond of a drink or two at the end of their shifts. You would be, wouldn’t you? But the demon drink doesn’t go unchallenged … watch out for another familiar face from Looking for Eric, Smug Roberts. Smug’s got a few things to say to Ted and Malcolm.
Available from the 'Buy Gangs of Manchester' webpage (see links on left), Amazon, Milo Books and all good bookshops
