The Oldham Coliseum Theatre returns with community play celebrating Oldham

The Coliseum is back.

While the famous venue on Fairbottom Street is still under renovation, the theatre’s production house has returned with their biggest show yet – The Engagement Party, an immersive and uplifting community play hosted at Oldham’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Written by Afshan D’souza-Lodhi, the play transforms the Queen Elizabeth Hall into an open-invite party with all the drama provided. 

And as guests are ushered to their seats at festively decked banquet tables in QEH, it quickly becomes apparent that this is not your usual theatre experience.

Within minutes of arriving, Aunties approach with salacious gossip, Uncles try to entice you onto the dancefloor and Cousins photobomb your selfies.

We are not just watching the Engagement Party – we ARE the engagement party. 

What unfolds over the next two hours is a love story in crisis.

Zach (Connor Darren James) and Sofia (Marucia Ferreira) arrive late to their own engagement party.

While tensions erupt between and within their respective families, who nervously await their arrival, we gradually learn that things are not looking rosy within the young couple’s relationship either. 

With a live band, talented cast and a surprise guest appearance by the Coliseum’s bubbliest advocate and Mr Bates vs the Post Office star Julie Hesmondhalgh (via video), there’s plenty to love about the Coliseum’s ambitious production.

Though occasionally a little slow-paced, the performance is an eclectic mix of soap drama and romance, with winks to the Coliseum’s notorious Panto. 

The show interweaves many different stories of people’s connection to Oldham as a place – with all its limits and possibilities.

Speaking to us before the show, director Amanda Huxtable said: “Oldham is a town you just can’t let go of.

"It’s a story-telling town.

"You can’t go into a shop without someone telling you something.

"For a nosy person, it’s a great place to be. 

“We make sure to honour Oldham, make sure Oldham’s heard.

"But it’s also about universal stories.

"We know there’s a conversation between big cities and small towns happening all over the world.

"It’s about how you honour where you’re from and come from a bigger place at the same time.”

Inspired by the town and partly produced and acted out by people from Oldham, the show is also a celebration of the Coliseum and Oldham’s legacy of giving a leg-up to working class creatives. 

It features a local band, who provide an absolutely cracking soundtrack with a four-piece band featuring a violin.

Even Theatre-sceptics, the show is worth seeing for the live music alone (though, with the band situated at the back of the hall and much of the drama taking place at the front, there is a serious risk of whiplash as audience members try to catch all the action).

By the end of the night, most of the audience were up on the stage slash dance floor twirling away.

Huxtable promises the piece is ‘more party than play’.

The show certainly feels like a celebration – of love, of the Coliseum and of the town. 

And it is definitely, in the words of one of the main characters, ‘Oldham through and through, baby’.

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