Spend Spend Spend | Short Review

Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre presents an entertaining, inventively staged revival of Steve Brown and Justin Greene’s sparky 1998 musical exploration of the life of football pools winner Viv Nicholson. 

The central message of this cautionary tale, as we witness how the vivacious, working class, Yorkshire-born Nicholson wins – and then loses – a life-changing amount of money, may be obvious. But how we get there is vividly realised in Josh Seymour’s visually rich, propulsively pitched in-the-round production, which has knockout lead performances from Rose Galbraith and Rachel Leskovac as the younger and older Viv.