It is a sense of guilt,
a Methodist instruction
or perhaps
a reminder of my own pound of flesh
owed, measured
and found to be in
continuous debt
if I plan some time away,
even from just doing
the pressing down of keys,
there is the voice in my head that whispers,
no, no, no,
you must, you owe your time
to everything else but you, for you,
the voice whispers,
have nothing else to do.
Ian D. Hall 2018
Regular writers Sarah A Nixon and Mark Chatterton return with new script.
The legendary Everyman Rock ‘n’ Roll panto is back for another year with a frost bitingly funny adaptation of The Snow Queen from 24 November to 19 January.
The theatre welcomes hilarious dame Francis Tucker and the mischievous Adam Keast back following another year of panto anarchy, giving audiences ‘freezons’ to be cheerful…armed with their trusty water guns.
Regular writers Sarah A Nixon and Mark Chatterton – whose work for The Little Mermaid was nominated for Best Script at the 2018 Pantomime Awards – are aiming to ‘sleigh’ audience members young and old with hilarious jokes and puns.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
From the first spark of the Big Bang through to the inevitable decline of the Universe, some entities in this crazy world just have the aura of absolutely being Unstoppable, that their momentum carries them across the threshold of every door possible, each one may as well be kept ajar, open wide and off the lock, for the relentless and seemingly inexhaustible have a point to prove, that they understand to stem creativity is to kill the dream.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
If you desire something enough, you will go to the end of the Earth to find it, you will sacrifice almost everything in the pursuit of that dream, you will shatter preconceptions and build walls around you to protect that dream, that vision. Uncomfortably and sadly, often those dreams fade, the relentless chase too strong, too lofty, too high off the ground to reach with both hands and the opinions of others too forceful to stand up to close and perhaps insidiously jealous scrutiny.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Steve Hogarth of Marillion, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, April 2018. Photograph used with the kind permission of Gordon Fleming.
It has been a long time since Marillion stepped over the Merseyside border, that near international boundary that separates the city of Liverpool from the U.K., not built in myth but in the very nature of its home grown and adopted sons and daughters strength of purpose and identity. As Steve Hogarth was heard to say during one enjoyable exchange of banter and nicely placed heckle, “We really are in another country now”.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
One of Liverpool’s own, a performer who has been long associated with the city, a musician of high integrity and blushing music, one who for quite some time has deserved the accolades that come with a night at the Philharmonic Hall; in Roxanne de Bastion’s supporting of Marillion on this tour, to come back to Liverpool, to immerse herself within the friends she made and in the city where her latest album is held as an example of the heights that can be reached, that is now the position that all should be attaining.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
When we were younger…a mere step or the beat of a chord from where Magnum used to practise in the fabled Rum Runner Club and within the shadow of memories of being arguably the finest of bands to have the Birmingham stamp placed upon its history and resume, the Symphony Hall played host to the band, and in a reversal of fortunes of weather, no longer put off by the snow and devastation of postponed music, instead it was the heat and sheer intensity of the homecoming gig to which the end of the tour will always be remembered.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
With a little help from your friends, you cannot ask for more in life except having the drive to be the very best version of yourself possible, both of these states of mind are there to remind you that you have a responsibility to perform and take in the very immense situations that you may find yourself within, that the song, the smile and the swagger, are there because the world demands beauty in the face of possible oppression.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There are always holy grails in which the music lover finds themselves hoping to one day hear, elevated from the possible and tantalising, once exotic but dubiously sourced bootleg, and for the fans of The Who, the night at the Fillmore East in the aftermath of one of the most horrendous acts of murder in American History, is one that has long been wanted and relished of all of the great British band’s captured performances.
First, they came for the homeless
on Britain’s streets,
because that’s what they do, pick
at the fringes and the easy targets, the vulnerable
and the uncomfortable on the eye,
and you did nothing,
then they come, excited
by the work already done, the first small ticked box
for the disabled and reduce them down
to figures of ridicule and suspicion,
do they really need to be seen,
salivating now, the painted smiles
of ministers as you tore yourselves apart
to say nothing,