The comedy store!

Mark will perform new comedy “I Love Oldham” in an empty shop in Oldham town centre

Mark turns empty shop into handy venue for comic tale
OLDHAM’s Hard Graft Theatre company has come up with a novel way to give one of Oldham’s empty shops a new use.

Company founder Mark Whiteley has hired a town centre unit for three weeks and plans to stage his latest production in it!

Audiences will be able to watch “I Love OLdham” in a shop unit on Albion Street — the one used as the Coliseum’s box office last year when the theatre was closed.

“I Love Oldham” is set, appropriately, in an Oldham charity shop.

Mark wrote it after gathering anecdotes from over 50 charity shops about the sort of goods donated for sale.

“There were some really funny stories - but the story that stuck was that of a hand gun, a ski mask and a stack of cash - which is where our story comes from.”

The tiny “theatre” will only be able to hold 35 people a time.

AS well as putting on the play, Mark is hoping to put stock in the shop he will sell after each show to raise money for Dr Kershaw’s Hospice.

An earlier version of the show was a big hit at the Edinburgh fringe festival, and is by no means unusual for Hard Graft, which has appeared in people’s sitting rooms before now.

The show runs from May 21-June 9.

Get tickets online at www.hardgraft.co.uk or call 07956-913 666.