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The Telegraph review : 4 stars

The Mill: City of Dreams, Drummonds Mill, Bradford, review

This beautifully presented promenade piece in a vast Victorian mill building asks, pertinently, where this country is going next. Rating: * * * *

By Dominic Cavendish 6:28PM BST 06 Apr 2011

We are inside Drummonds, a vast derelict Victorian mill building in the Manningham district of Bradford, all cracked paintwork, concrete floors, overhead piping, rough-repaired roof-windows and fading signs. A smarmy businessman with slicked-back hair is outlining fancy regeneration plans for the place when suddenly all the lights fail. Into view, shining a torch into our faces, shuffles the building’s ageing caretaker (played by Geoff Leesley). He invites us to head off with him into the closed-off areas beyond.

What follows, co-written and directed by Madani Younis and Omar Elerian and mixing professional actors with a community cast, seizes on the eerie atmosphere of this former yarn-processing powerhouse to deliver a succession of ghostly encounters. The huge downstairs weaving-room where workers once toiled at deafening looms – a bone-shaking blast of which we get as we move into the darkened space – has become a landscape of shadows and apparitions. A series of whirling vignettes conjure the migration paths of some of Drummonds’ post-war employees: one minute, we are in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, then destitute Fifties Italy, and then Pakistan of the Sixties.

As we move on, these sample immigrant communities yield three individual stories, and between them Gergo Danka’s Petro, Raffaella Gardon’s Maria and Gabeen Khan’s Yakub convey the vulnerability, aspiration and disappointment of new arrivals who must make do and mend in a town that can’t quite match their dreams.

Whether they’re answering the imperious questions of a frosty female boss in a room lined with packing cases or, in Maria’s case, participating in a haunting, almost balletic simulation of the “burning and mending process”, you get a keen sense of what it must be like to pitch up in northern England with few language skills to trade on and every need to fit in.

Although draped in an elegiac appreciation of days gone by, which sharpens as the story-threads wind towards the firm’s closure in 2002, and is beautifully presented throughout, this promenade show is far more than a nostalgic exercise. It asks, pertinently, where this country is going next. At salient points, the evening shuttles to the present, and we see the workers’ descendants, aimless and adrift in Asian snooker halls. For all its hardship, work at Drummonds offered a cross-cultural kinship.

The Guardian, 4 stars !!!

The Mill: City of Dreams – review

Drummonds Mill, Bradford

• • Alfred Hickling Monday 4 April 2011 22.30 BST

  Presented by Freedom Studios, The Mill is an example of the increasingly prevalent format of what might be termed woodwork theatre: whereby the audience is invited to explore an unconventional space until gradually the reasons for being there creep out of the woodwork. This proves to be remarkably successful, partly because the space is so evocative, but also as the stories it reveals have the ring of documentary truth.

  Drummonds Mill opened in the 1880s, at a time when Bradford was responsible for a third of the world's wool production, and closed just under 10 years ago. We are led through its abandoned departments by caretaker Frank – played with self-deprecating melancholy by Geoff Leesley – and as the tour progresses it becomes increasingly apparent that we are journeying through Frank's own recollections, animated by apparitions of former mill-workers and the crushing roar of phantom looms. The production team, led by director Madani Younis, have created a symphony of voices in which the experiences of local wool-workers intertwine with the army of migrant workers who came to satisfy the mill's immense appetite for labour.

  Yet it is the building itself which proves the real star: the vast floorplan of the weaving shed seems to redraw itself continually through the shifting perspective of pillars; narrow corridors extend like simulations in a computer game; while an arched, wooden void beneath eaves feels almost ecclesiastical. The project poses pertinent questions about what we want these redundant spaces to become. Gated developments of luxury apartments? Even if Drummonds can no longer sustain industry, at least it has temporarily been filled with imagination.

Frank, Maria and Henrietta, Bradford 1956

Maria (Raffaella Gardon) and Henrietta (Kim Heron)
in Burling and Mending, Bradford 1956

quelques photos de scène par Tim Smith

Maria, Southern Italy, 1956
















photo by Tim Smith

review : remotegoat.co.uk

"Beautifully Woven Mill Dream story" by Jo Watson for remotegoat on 01/04/11

I have been looking forward to this play for weeks now. I get excited about all performances I have the pleasure of reviewing, but this one has an edge over the others for the simple reason that it is about a City close to home. Bradford.

We start the show in the company of Anton D, the head of 'Create International'. He shows us what he and his company plan on doing to the now closed down Drummonds Mill. They propose to turn it into modern flats, and surround it with restaurants, tennis courts and even a craft centre. His presentation however, is cut short when the lights go out mid speech. As he disappears to fix it, the caretaker enters the room. His name is Frank and he started work at the Mill when he was just 14. Now 65, he takes us on a journey through time to show us the highs and lows of this once great textile mill.
For the next hour and a half we literally walk around the mill with Frank as he introduces us to just some of the people whose life was changed when working there.

I cannot begin to describe how well this is written, acted out and generally put together.
The sights, smells and sounds of each room, together with the intimacy of the cast, in this huge and eerie abandoned Mill is a perfect combination.
Roma Patel had the set design down to a tee. It was brought together more so thanks to the help of some excellent and original use of sounds (brought to us by Janek Schaefer) and lighting that fit the mood and era superbly (of which Leeds based Lumen provided) Every time I entered a room I felt I had a strong connection with Frank, Asif, Petro, Henrietta and of course the wonderful Maria.

This main cast portrayed their character exquisitely. Each line hit with precision. Their fears and anxieties came across so well that I had constant Goosebumps. The acting was so good in fact, that towards the end of the performance I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. Even Jennifer Lee's voice over the tannoy gripped me and had me hanging on to every single deep and soulful word she spoke.

It wasn't all sadness though. The writer and director, Omar Elerian, also managed to mix in a good dose of humour too. Emil Lager deserves some recognition as the slightly eccentric and over the top Anton. His comedic timing and interaction with the audience was spot on.

I really don't have one negative word to say about this play. Every single person involved, be it a member of the community cast or Luke Davison (Design Assistant) put their heart and soul into making this site specific production a one of a kind piece. And one that I would never tire of watching.

Presented by Freedom Studios, from March 26th - 16th April.
An absolute must go see.

Event Venues & Times
finished	Drummond Mill | Lumb Lane, Manningham, Bradford, BD8 7RP