13 - Tom's Midnight Garden - Library Theatre

Bringing to life the wondrous characters of this tale in an excellent production are an adroit and adept cast. Arthur Wilson excels as Tom, giving a gravitas to his performance that involves a whole range of emotions. He is more than matched by his sidekick, Claire Redcliffe, who brings the vulnerability of Hatty to the stage. We could continue, with fine performances from Christopher Chilton as the amiable Uncle Alan and the strange gardener, Carolyn Tomkinson as the slightly comical Aunt Gwen and Helen Ryan as a formidable Aunt Grace and the affectionate Mrs. Batholomew. Moreover, it is not just the performances on stage that contribute to the magical of the production. The set focuses on plot’s main theme of time with a giant clock face whose mechanical hands move at their own will. You’d think that this would limit the actors on stage, but the set more than plays its part with the aid of mysterious figures that cut as hidden faces in long cloaks also contributing to the set and story.

11 - Private Lives - Library Theatre

One of the things that separates the world of theatre from that of TV or film is that dialogue has to be more important than action, or sometimes even plot. Of course, a large part of that is necessity, because you just can't do on a stage what you can do in a studio with cameras and digital trickery, but the upside of this is that the emphasis has to be on making the dialogue much more than just a vehicle to take the audience along the plot-line. It becomes the purpose of the plot. Private Lives is a play very much of its time, but 87 years on, its dialogue has lost none of its ability to be both shocking and hilarious, often at the same time ("Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs."), while the convoluted relationships are actually fairly normal now, with the scenarios regularly enacted in soap operas and movies. Of course, those don't have Coward's writing to make them interesting, so it's important that excellent productions like this remind us just how good comedy-dramas really can be.

10 - A Midsummer Night's Dream - Heaton Park

Feelgood Theatre Productions was founded in 1994 by Artistic Director Caroline Clegg who produces and directs all their shows. The objective was to create theatre with a definite sense of risk and adventure. Their summer season takes place at Heaton Park where the use of different locations in the park gives Feelgood plenty of scope for risk and adventure. We’ve attended open air theatre before and seen some very good productions but they have been very static affairs. This was very much more enjoyable and really brought the play to life. This was a real summer treat. It reminded us of a Knickerbocker Glory an ice cream dessert composed of layers of different colour and flavour that we associate with early childhood holidays. Each layer was enjoyable on its own but as a whole it was very special. We're already looking forward to next season’s productions.

8 - Union Street - Oldham Coliseum

Union Street has been specially written for the Coliseum Theatre by talented local playwright Ian Kershaw winner of the North West prize at the Royal Exchange Bruntwood Playwriting Competition. It's a bitter-sweet comedy about young love, broken dreams and the changing face of Oldham over the past 20 years. It is the story of Jo and her first love Sam who she met in 1987 as told to the landlord of The Pennine in a series of ‘flashbacks’. It was as advertised a play about Oldham but outsiders soon picked up the key local references such as the fact that Sholver wasn’t a nice place to live in the 80s,that people from Delph were considered ‘posh’. The stage sets were fantastic .The “Pennine” set was depressingly authentic and the very small litter strewn park that was Jo & Sam’s special place was both sad and romantic depending upon the lighting effects. Fittingly the play ended in a crescendo of joyful singing whirling light sequences, bubbles and an unseasonal shower of snow...

7 - A Midsummer Night's Dream - The Lowry Theatre

Shakespeare's plays have been performed for centuries and in all kinds of different ways, but not many adaptations that have been brought to British stages have been quite so different as this version of A Midsummer Night's Dream - a world away from the version listed above - directed by Tim Supple. Commissioned by the British Council in India, it combines the skills of actors, dancers, martial arts experts, musicians and street acrobats from across India and Sri Lanka. This very multi-ethnic approach also applies to Shakespeare's dialogue, which is delivered in English as well as no less than SEVEN different Indian languages. The actors flit between these languages throughout the performance, which is bewildering at first as there are no surtitles to explain what is being said, so English audiences mostly won't have a clue. With great performances, lots of laughs, some very erotic friction (ahem) and elegant staging, this version of A Midsummer Night's Dream may be a world away from most you'll see, but it's a triumphant show that brings Shakespeare's story to life even when his dialogue is lost in translation.

6 - Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? - Royal Exchange

"Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference?" asks put-upon university professor George at one point in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. The lines between those two are certainly blurred in Edward Albee's classic play as George and his acerbic wife Martha host an apocalyptic post-dinner-party party with young professor Nick and his naive wife Honey. On the surface it's obvious what's going on as these four feud and bicker, but Albee goes much deeper than that, leaving you questioning what you have just seen and what the heck was going on. All four of the actors are excellent, with Froggett exuding naivety and sweetness and eventually vulnerability as the lush Honey and Marten almost a polar opposite as a fire-breathing dragon who dominates her downtrodden husband, while Hegley does well as his initial southern charm slips to reveal his true intentions and character. However, the star of the show is Brotherton, who captures the two sides of George's personality perfectly, biting and sharp when on the attack, and weak and pathetic when being attacked. He dominates proceedings, but is more than ably supported by a great cast performing a great play that is still one of the most intense things you'll see on stage.

5 - Someone Who'll Watch Over Me - Library Theatre

There's a bunch of strangers in a room, with no contact with the outside world and nothing to entertain themselves with apart from themselves. They know they are being watched at all times but cannot see their audience. Nothing really happens apart from them just sitting around and talking to each other. And yet millions tune in night after night to watch it. Yes, it's Big Brother, but it could also be Frank McGuinness' play Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, even though it was written long before any of us had even heard of Jade Goody. Their laughter and joking around is the only way they can hold any power over their captors, because the captives don't want to give them the sense of satisfaction of knowing that they have broken them. At times all three of them come close to caving in, and McGuinness and Honer handle these darker moments exceedingly well, as do the three actors who all give very emotive performances, showing the highs of lows of their characters' experiences. With a sparse set and almost no action at all, the performances have to be excellent to keep the audience's attention, and they are.

4 - The Tempest - Royal Exchange

The Royal Exchange has produced many Shakespeare plays during its 30 years, so it is appropriate that this latest production continues their anniversary season with the help of several stars who have performed The Bard's works here in the past. A cast of Tom Courtenay, Brenda Blethyn, Robert Lindsay, Ben Keaton, Michael Sheen, Andy Serkis, Robert Glenister, Janet McTeer, Tim McInnerney and Pete Postlethwaite might be a bit too star-studded to get together on stage at the same time, but all are involved in this swirling maelstrom of a tempest. Hersov balances the three plot strands of The Tempest well, using the Royal Exchange's theatre-in-the-round layout typically effectively, and he balances the light and dark moments of the story equally deftly. While it sometimes threatens to spill over into farce at times (most notably the drunken antics of Stephano and Trinculo) and not everything that Hersov tries quite comes off, it's a brave and colourful production, anchored but not overshadowed by a majestic performance by the always reliable Postlethwaite.

3 - And Did Those Feet - Bolton Octagon

Football is a very difficult to write fiction about in a convincing way. From those old comic books where the action on the field was always described by cliched chants from fans in the crowd to modern day attempts in film and TV, it always comes across as fake. Sadly, the sport itself has caught up with fiction in recent years, meaning that the most true-to-life depictions of it come in soap operas like Dream Team and Footballers' Wives, where the characters life in a world of privilege, sex, glamour and money, money, money. Music is used well in the play, particularly the two famous 'football hymns'. A quiet instrumental version of Abide With Me is played during a very sweet scene between Alf and his dead son Billy, while equally affecting is Jerusalem (from where the play's title comes) which is sung after the final as images from it are shown on the screen, including the faces of each of Bolton's heroes, all long gone now of course. Obviously, the play comes to a happy ending, that much you can guess from the fact that the Trotters did win the Cup that year, but there is a very Northern poignancy to the finale, and the mixture of that and the humour throughout (generally at the expense of Yorkshire and people from Yorkshire) make this a football story that is relevant, convincing and another triumph for Bolton.

2 - The Producers - Palace Theatre

Mel Brooks' musical has been a smash hit wherever it has gone, and the actual producers of this new touring version have hit the jackpot by getting Britain's most popular comedian Peter Kay to take part. However, while he's all over the promotional material for the show, he's not the star of it, with Cory English and John Gordon Sinclair reprising their roles as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom from the West End production, and at the end of the night it is they who get the standing ovation. The humour of The Producers certainly isn't your usual family entertainment, with lots of crude references to sex, erections and more gays than you could wave an effeminite hand at. It still has Brooks written all over it, which means that it won't be to everyone's tastes, but even if you don't get all the jokes, there's still the songs, the choreography, and the awesome performances of all involved. The decision to cast Kay could have backfired, but he is really very good as the camp director DeBris and doesn't steal the show from the excellent leads, so it was no wonder the Palace Theatre had a smash-hit on their hands.

1 - Monkey: Journey To The West - Palace Theatre

In late 2005, Damon Albarn stood on the stage at the Opera House taking in a standing ovation for his part in a stunning live show by his 'virtual band' Gorillaz to kick off the countdown to the inaugural Manchester International Festival. You have to wonder, even then, if he could ever have dreamed of getting another ovation less than two years down the line, just up the road at the Palace Theatre, this time for his part in a Chinese opera of all things. The idea of a former Brit Pop icon composing an opera sounds like a recipe for disaster, and we certainly wouldn't like to hear Liam Gallagher's efforts, but through Gorillaz and Mali Music, Albarn has showed just how far he has come since the days of Girls And Boys and Country House. But even so, this was a massive leap for him, because Monkey: Journey To The West is not a Tommy-style rock-opera, but is in many ways very classical Chinese opera, based on a centuries old legend and sounding absolutely nothing like anything he has ever composed before. But of course, Albarn wasn't alone going into this, with Gorillaz partner Jamie Hewlett providing animation, visual design and costumes, while Chen Shi-Zheng provided the genuine Chinese feel with his direction. Even then, this was a big risk for them and for the Manchester International Festival, who used it as the opening event and one of the main attractions of the whole fortnight. The good news from the world premiere is that this was a gamble that paid off richly.