here are some shows that are such an “event” that it’s hard to separate the performance from everything else going on around it. The opening of Free Your Mind, a new creation from director Danny Boyle, dance company Boy Blue, designer Es Devlin and writer Sabrina Mahfouz is also the, the £242m home of Factory International, the producers behind Manchester International festival. It’s the coolest party of the year.
It’s more than a movie rehash; this event is also a calling card for Manchester itself. So here’s Alan Turing describing the city’s part in mechanisation, and warning of its consequences. And it’s a showcase for the venue, comprising two parts, a stylish auditorium and a 21-metre-highA calling card for Manchester … centre, Corey Owens and Nicey Belgrave with cast members in Free Your Mind.Is the Matrix’s hero, Neo , and his journey a bit lost among all this? Well, yes.
Sandy and composer Michael “Mikey J” Asante, whose score is perfectly attuned to the drama, worked with Boyle on the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, and at the start of the second half, once the audience has reassembled in the vast, white warehouse space, Boyle basically does forwhat he did for Britain then: a fast-cut montage of cultural history, archive footage of terraces and millworkers, Ian Curtis and Tony Wilson, Granada TV .