The Best of Both Worlds

Creative Tourist

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The Best of Both Worlds

Waterside, Manchester
10 March 2017

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

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Stealthily scrounging your tax pennies, your guilty scratch card spendings, Matthews & Burtin are funded escapees. She from the cutthroat, self-made, individualist American dream. He from lukewarm, protectionist France. By air and by sea, and both to the best of both worlds: the UK. Meeting in the middle, this show is an opportunity to take stock of what we value and how we go about valuing it.

Expect 1930s French street song and sleazy salesman rhetoric. Part cabaret, part lecture and part participatory experiment, The Best of Both Worlds: A Busker’s Opera is a good old-fashioned music hall for the cash-strapped proles and the accidental gentrifiers.

What's on at Waterside

Arun Ghosh launches Refract 25. Image courtesy of Dawn Kilner.
MusicManchester
Live Music at Refract 2025

Refract returns to Waterside this July with a genre-spanning music programme that’s as playful and unpredictable as the festival itself – and much of it is completely free.

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Where to go near The Best of Both Worlds

Manchester
Café or Coffee Shop
Bean and Brush Art Café

Bean & Brush is a family art café in Sale which serves simple, tasty food with ingredients sourced from local suppliers. The bonus for parents is the arts and crafts studio which keeps the kids busy being creative while they can join in or relax with a coffee.

Manchester
Park
Grosvenor Square

Grosvenor Square is one of the few open spaces along Oxford Road Manchester; on sunny days, students from the nearby Manchester School of Art come out to bask.

Manchester
Park
Walkden Gardens

Walkden Gardens in the Manchester suburbs has all the makings of a fairy tale garden. As a venue, it’s hard to imagine a more magical gateway, a wonderful escape only a short(ish) stroll from the Brooklands Metrolink stop..

Sale
Restaurant
Meze & More

An intimate supper club in Sale, South Manchester, with a specialist focus on Middle Eastern and Greek cuisine.

shop
Stretford
Shopping Centre
Stretford Mall

Stretford Mall has undergone a major transformation, turning a 60s shopping centre into a vibrant, community-led town centre. Led by Trafford Council and Bruntwood Works.

longford park ben williams
Manchester
Park
Longford Park

Longford Park in Stretford was created in the grounds of Longford Hall, the grand entrance steps of which remain.

Manchester
Park
Wythenshawe Park

With a 17th Century hall set in 109 acres of open parkland, Wythenshawe Park makes a super day out for all ages. Explore the historic woodlands, lush grasslands and meadows; take a stroll around the many themed gardens and check out the sports and leisure facilities on offer.

Beech Road, Chorlton
Bar or Pub
97 Chorlton

97 is a smart new cocktail bar from the team behind Tariff & Dale and The Lead Station, based on Beech Road in Chorlton.

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