Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Geraldine Moloney Judge, Neil MacDonald, Chrissi-Jo Hyde, Lee Burnitt, David Clayton, Albert Hastings, Caitlin Mary Carley Clough.
If money is the root of all flowering evil, then the pursuit of it must be the untilled field. Since its inception the national lottery has produced more millionaires in the country than at any time in its history and yet how many of them have been truly happy or felt blessed beyond their wildest dreams, happy not because of the money and the chance to spend it upon anything they wish, but for it to do real good, to effect real change?
For one such group of individuals, the money was too much, it led to excess and greed; drugs, sex, booze and wild nights out, with the rest of it being just wasted, the chance to reclaim their lives as Millionaires Anonymous and live a life away from the cash that has gone a prospect not many are granted, still after all, life is a gamble.
In Stewart McDonald’s wonderfully funny and yet highly pathos driven play, Millionaires Anonymous, the lifestyles of the rich and shameless are but a dream that was once had and in which the lure is too much to be ignored again. A play that can have you laughing so hard one minute, and disguising the tears of the upset idea and misfortune of living the next deserves no less a recognition that if in the presence of a master class of epic proportions.
As the balls are drawn so the truth of their thoughts, of how low they could possibly sink into the financial abyss dawns upon the audience and in a Lord of the Flies/Alive fiscal homage, the syndicate reach rock bottom in search of salvation.
A play that has the audience laughing so much yet can deliver truth and tears before bedtime is to be congratulated and for writer Stewart McDonald and the performances of the very tremendous cast, including the anarchy that David Clayton bring to the performance, the sensitivity and ruthlessness of spirit provided by Caitlin Mary Carley Clough and the overwhelming anger of Lee Burnitt’s Neil, made Millionaires Anonymous a play in which to go to the chemist and ask them for their biggest tub of glee in which you can rub your hands in, for in such humour, comes great pathos, it is the twin theatrical prospect that is often sought but so rarely delivers in such abundance. Outstanding!
Millionaires Anonymous is a play which if you have a ticket for, then your luck is in, the Unity Theatre crowd always gives true admiration where it is fully deserved and in this play, no greater sentiment is forth coming.
Ian D. Hall