Originally published by L.S. Media. October 9th 2009.
Cast: Pauline Daniels, Mark Moraghan, Emma Vaudrey, Emma Grace Arends, Ciaran Kellgren, Colin Connor, Anthony Watson, Marie Ekins, Joyce Greenaway, Annie Walker, Gordon Hall, Ronnie Orr.
It is easy to see why the local papers announced before the play started its current run at the Empire that Twopence To Cross The Mersey had taken in over two million pounds at the box office over the last few years. With such talented performers on stage taking the various parts from the author’s life and an excellent musical score to match, there was nothing for the packed out audience to not like.
Set in Liverpool between the stock market crash of 1929 and the present day (with the divine Pauline Daniels narrating the remembered thoughts of the modern author) and following the almost unavoidable slump into which her parents had allowed themselves to fall into.
The cast turned in an exceptional performance and much praise must go to lead actor Mark Moraghan as Mr Forrester who showed how even the most capable of us can get drawn into despair. In a touching and poignant moment, repeated his wife’s own words about Oscar Wilde’s quote about children loving their parents and then when they grow up, come to judge them.
The part of the young Helen Forrester was played wonderfully by the enchanting Emma Grace Arends who bought to the role, all the anguish, pain and suffering endured by the majority of the people living in those dark times.
Although the play misses out some sections of Helen Forrester’s book it is none the worse for it. In fact the writer Rob Fennah does superbly in getting across Ms. Forrester’s time as a young girl in a strange, unforgiving city and its populace who sometimes helped her family, such as the kindly intervention of the policeman, who when catching her taking milk to feed her youngest brother Edward, instead of arresting her, let her go and then proceeded to pay for the milkman to deliver to the Forrester family. This was just one of the many parts of the story that bought a lump to the throat and a tear to the enraptured audience’s eye.
Ian D. Hall