Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Alex Walsh, Ellice Stevens, Oscar Owen, Kitty Murdoch, Tommy Loftus, Ella Tebay.
Children can be cruel, it is in their cruelty that they either learn how to be adults that care and show empathy or they descend like monkeys into the art of throwing faeces around to show bitterness and superiority over others. It is the state of such things that can also see a child rise to the point where they fit in more closely with the adult world and its often doomed relationships.
The same can be said at times for journalists, if the elevated piece which captures Humanity at its best, then the muck raking and the name hurling begins in earnest and in Souvenirs, the combination of both child and journalist is captured in dramatic earnest.
The Child is new in town, the offer of joining a gang is offered but at a price, a price which requires stealing something from a lonely man’s house, a memento to prove she is brave enough to be considered a valued number four.
What she finds is a life that has begun to stagnate in the arms of the person they call the Birdman, a life filled with treasured memories and magnificent memoirs but also ghosts of the family which have held back his life in amongst the quiet discontent of unfulfilled promises.
The piece developed in association with Codpiece Theatre and Fleshblood New writing for the Warwick Arts Centre is a superbly presented play and one with excellent scope to be taken on further into the realms of a bigger production space that the Government should be looking at maintaining and not dismantling through their lack of foresight and traditional values of keeping down bright young energy and sneeringly mocking their creativity.
In Ellice Stevens and Alex Walsh, the Child and The Birdman respectively, the play unfolded with dramatic charm and boundless energy. In Ms. Stevens especially the sense of anticipation and wonder was both palpable and a source of great enjoyment as she harnessed the Child’s thoughts and words down to the core of performance.
A wonderful addition to the Fringe Festival programme taking place at Zoo, Souvenirs is a play worthy of your time.
Ian D. Hall