ER indoors, with Mrs T

Susie Blake comes fresh from a return to the cobbles of Coronation Street to play The Queen in a play that imagines encounters between HRH and Thatcher.

What did two of the world’s most powerful women really talk about behind closed palace doors? Susie Blake leads a cast of six in Tricycle Theatre’s West End hit.

Handbagged premiered at the Tricycle in 2013 where it enjoyed a sell-out seven-week run, winning an Olivier and nominations for Best New Comedy and Best Ensemble Performance at the WhatsOnStage Awards.

The play runs from Tuesday to Saturday at the Lowry.

Box Office: 0843 208 6000 or www.thelowry.com

The 2015 tour of international company Kneehigh’s hit production of Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) comes to Manchester’s HOME venue from tomorrow to September 26.

The critically-acclaimed reworking of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera becomes a twisted morality tale for our times, delivered in the way only Kneehigh know how.

The original Beggar’s Opera was written in 1728 by John Gay and adapted by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill as The Threepenny Opera in 1928.

Like its predecessors, Kneehigh’s version is a musical satire that holds a mirror to contemporary society.

Confronting big business, corrupt institutions, and urban myths, a gritty world explodes into theatrical life.

The live score plunders the sounds of our times with trip-hop combined with folk, Renaissance polyphony with psychedelia, ska with grime and dubstep. Box office: 0161 200 1500 or www.homemcr.org/production

Annie the musical comes to Manchester Opera House for two weeks from next Tuesday, starring Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood AND Lesley Joseph as Miss Hannigan. She will play the role at performances on September 25/26 because of his TV commitments that weekend.

Revel Horwood’s West End credits include Cats, Miss Saigon and Crazy for You. Set in 1930s New York during The Great Depression, Annie is the orphan forced to live a life of misery and torment before her luck changes when she is chosen to spend Christmas at the residence of famous billionaire, Oliver Warbucks.

With its award-winning book and score, this new production includes the songs It’s the Hard Knock Life, Easy Street, I Don’t Need Anything But You and Tomorrow.

Box office: 0844 8713018 or www.atgtickets.com/manchester

Manchester’s award-winning Monkeywood Theatre, in association with The Lowry, stage the world premiere next week of By Far The Greatest Team, four new Manchester stories by four writers exploring and celebrating what it means to be a football fan in the city.

By Far The Greatest Team will kick off at the venue from September 17 to 20.

Told in a game of two halves, it’s about Manchester City, Manchester United, identity, community, and belonging and why the beautiful game has such an impact.

The imaginative production will see the Quays Theatre, where Monkeywood are associate artists, transform into a football stadium.

The four plays are by City fans Ian Kershaw (Murder in the Mist, Oldham Coliseum and Channel 4’s Shameless) and Sarah McDonald Hughes (Flesh, Royal Exchange and Once in a House on Fire, The Lowry, Maine Road, Radio 4) and United fans Andrew Sheridan (Winterlong, Royal Exchange and Soho Theatre) and Lindsay Williams (Dreamer, Eastenders and Emmerdale).

Alongside will be an art installation based on the themes of the play, at the National Football Museum.

Box Office: 0843 2086010 or www.thelowry.com/