Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Kirsty Findlay, Karen Fishwick, Joanne McGuinness, Kirsty MacLaren, Francis Mayli McCann, Dawn Sievewright.

The potent mix of having too much time on your hands and not enough to do in the area is more than the headlong crash into certain temptation. For those whose young hormones rule absolutely it can cause the body and mind to depart and separate in ways that might seem unfathomable to many who have never experienced the deprivation of what a city life can offer.

Lee Hall’s adaptation of Alan Warner’s The Sopranos, Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, gives the audience an insight in what it means to be part of town where the lack of modern life, of the very basics in which young people cling on to just to keep their sanity and their wits sharp. They are muddled in the rigours of religious upbringing and the slow decay of having nothing to do but drink copious amounts of alcohol, cop off with anyone that shows them drugs and drink and when finally they do get the chance to visit a big city; the temptations and the chance to run riot, are a road to supposed ruin and true enlightenment.

It is in the enlightenment of the six young girls verging on womanhood that the play takes the turn towards truth, that to deprive children and teenagers of every possible resource is to put them on a course of binging and unchecked rage; as is noticed in the words from not so innocent lips, they taught us about sex but not of love.

Sex is the mechanism that drives the group, alcohol the passenger and informer and in each case and with some excellent music provided by the cast and band, including several numbers by the superb E.L.O., Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour find themselves in Scotland’s capital and with confessions, strangers, the odd moment of clarity and realisation pouring out of school uniforms and out of the public houses, the young ladies celebrate life.

With excellent performances by the entire cast and in particular by Karen Fishwick as Kay and Francis Mayli McCann as the musically developed Kylah, Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour is one that can be seen as ever-lasting, for in the small towns and villages where teenagers are bored, there will always be the inspiration to go wild when let of the leash.

A superb play which captures the heart of making sure that there is something for people to do in any community.

Ian D. Hall