Theatre of Dreams

Hofesh Schechter

Hofesh Schechter Company

Lowry, Salford

24-25 October, 2025: 1 hour 35 minutes

Hofesh Schechter Company in Theatre of Dreams. All pics: Todd MacDonald

I hope there weren’t too many fans who expected this to be about football (in the light of the fact that THE Theatre of Dreams lies just across the water from the Lowry).

It’s about dreams. Dreams in the sense of what we see – and maybe hear: do yours have soundtracks? – when we’re asleep. Dreams in the sense of fleeting, evanescent experiences. Dreams in the sense of what we aspire to, have longings for, wish could happen …

It takes about 10 minutes, as audience members chat among themselves, late-comers are allowed in, and we wonder what’s going on, for the throbbing background soundtrack to make itself almost imperceptibly heard, before the show actually begins. Then a lone figure emerges from the auditorium and the lights dim as he finds a way to the stage, through the front curtain.

There are many more curtains for him to penetrate, or for us to see behind: in fact the entire staging is based on the enormously clever manipulation of curtains and lighting, synchronised so tightly, the dancers can seem to move from one formation to another in the blink of an eye. The movement is slow, and fluid, with the beat of the soundtrack – but soon becomes faster and very noisy. Are these our dreams? They seem more like nightmares. There are some images that will stick: a brief respite as a boy meets a girl; a man who finds himself out somewhere, and naked (a common night terror for us chaps, perhaps for everyone); an outsider who can only observe the energy of a separated group.

And then we hear the haunting sound of Molly Drake’s beautiful, nostalgic song I Remember, written years ago and recorded by her in a plaintive, simple style, in 2013. It’s about two people whose memories of things they shared are starkly different, although they feel they have them in common.

But that is all introductory. We’re welcomed, as if it’s only starting now. The live musicians begin to play and sing (with recorded backing) some wonderfully evocative music, in a kind of imitation-improvisatory style, never precisely together, as if they’re making it up as they go along, and the dance develops in the same way. It is all highly precisely choreographed, and the signature elements of Hofesh Schechter’s style – the churning, ever-mobile phalanxes of dancers, the ever-moving, easy flexing of their bodies with the music, the folksy, all-hold-hands group dancing – are all there. There’s a brilliant, slow, Latin-style episode, and, about an hour in, they all descend into the stalls and invite people to dance with them.

Of course he’s done that before – it was hugging the audience back in 2022, when Hofesh’s Double Murder came to Manchester's HOME theatre. In fact he’s done quite a lot of these things before, and as he repeats some of the dance imagery from the earlier part of the show I’m just beginning to wonder whether he’s running out of ideas, or at least enough of them to sustain an hour and a half without interval.

But the tempo picks up, and by the pounding, thunderous end it’s heading unstoppably for its rapturous reception and standing ovation. If you want a feelgood dance show, this is it.

More info and tickets here