Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Suzanne Collins, Lenny Wood, Roy Brandon, Lynne Fitzgerald, Lesley Butler, Sam Hellier, Edwina Lea.
Life is in many respects all about the small victories, if you can wake each day and not fear the dawn, if you have a roof over your head, find that you are loved in even the smallest way and have food to eat. It represents the battle being won and perhaps the next day might constitute a smile worthy of being human; life is what happens every day, to all of us, each one capable of spreading a singular point of joy in the world, life is, as the song goes, what you make it.
Life is there to be seen and celebrated as much as possible, it is the ethos that Brian McCann, one of the attentive and observant of writers around, brings to the stage whenever the demand of the pen and the thought of capturing humanity prevail. With so much to be said, Mr. McCann always frames the point succinctly and with a cast portraying the words with valour and style, Life is momentous and stirring.
The life of one young girl through to womanhood is the basis for Brian McCann’s new musical, one filled with the dramas and humour we are all capable of experiencing in our lives, has had Gladstone Theatre audiences wrapped and it is easy to understand why as the gentle songs, a truth of life and the perfectly drawn scenes are exceptionally presented and contoured at every juncture.
Life is never straightforward, it is never plain sailing and often what shapes our lives is the experiences of when we are young, the hopefully beautiful days in which every child deserves to feel love and the post ten years in which our ideals and hopes are formed by the appearance of senior school and the first forays into adult responsibilities. It is in this that both Suzanne Collins and Lenny Wood come to the fore and excel in ways that might have audiences remembering that actors are so much more than the funny line or the dead pan face. The scenes in which these two share, firstly in hope, laughter and ambition and then in despair, anger and frustration, are amongst the finest any audience in Liverpool will have seen all year.
Lenny Wood especially, already one of the much loved comedic actors around, he brings a sense of darkness to his performance which captivates and cruelly installs a sense of fear in the mind of the crowd; a dynamic change of appearance which is impossible to ignore and fully warrants his place in the heart.
Life, another notch of the burgeoning belt that Brian McCann wears with humility, a play of warmth and generosity, is a play worth living, full of emotion and joy but one that isn’t scared to delve into the darkness that resides in all our lives.
Ian D. Hall