Duty Bound By Teapot Tantrum To Be Staged At Black-E In Liverpool For Remembrance Day Weekend.
A new play focusing on the lives of a Liverpool family during the dark days of the Blitz will be staged at The Black-E, Liverpool this November.
Duty Bound penned by local writer and actor Jennifer Bea will run from 9th to 11th November. The play is produced by Teapot Tantrum who have previously enjoyed success with their productions Beside the Seaside and Jim Cartwright’s Two.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Lisa Symonds, Natalie Timmins, Emma J. Hind, Claryn Scott, Jennifer Bea.
Music: Reid Anderson.
Liverpool is a truly remarkable place. You can spend ten years immersed in the arts scene here, you can think that you have seen everything, in all of the many performance spaces that the city has to offer, from the great parks and the Williamson Tunnels, to the bastions of entertainment of The Empire, Playhouse and Echo Arena, taking in the myriad of large and small venues in between and then you can find yourself in a large room, in a gallery, high above Matthew Street and even there, in this fair city, if you look hard enough, you will find theatre.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jennifer Bea, Greg Russell.
A sharp and touching slice of English life set in a Northern Pub owned by a savagely bickering husband and wife. Two is a series of short vignettes that skilfully combines pathos and humour, with all fourteen characters played by two actors. During the course of the evening assorted customers pass through including a little boy left behind by his father – an event which triggers a movement towards a fragile reconciliation between the pub couple, as their own dark tragedy is revealed.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Jennifer Bea, Tupele Dorgu, Jessica Dyas, Stephen Fletcher, Kim Hartman, Phil Hearne, Chris Jordan, Jonathan Markwood, Danny O Brien.
The show must go on…even if there are sardines cluttering up the stage, the leading ladies hate each other, one of the leading men wants to kill the other with a fire axe and the Director is left a gibbering wreck, even with his enormous ego, in the wake of being on stage amongst the carnage and destruction that an acting troupe can bring to a theatre. Think you know theatre, then the magical mayhem of arguably the finest British comedy of the 20th Century, Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, is one to behold.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 71/2 /10
Cast: Jennifer Bea, John Burns, Anna Hudson, Leon Tagoe.
There is almost nothing better in life than a day at the seaside. The chance to eat an ice cream as the sun causes it to dribble and linger upon your fingers, to take in the maritime air and generally have the type of day that at one time was the staple of British life up and down the country. The seaside was where it was at and families flocked there in their thousands. Places like Blackpool, Scarborough, Southend and Brighton were the destinations of choice in which to blow off steam and have some much needed downtime.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jennifer Bea, Lindzi Germain, Michael Swift, Warren Donnelly, Tony James, Richie Grice, Mickey Finn.
The thing with some productions is that they do exactly what they say on the tin, there is no small print suggesting that the production will be akin to some lost Shakespeare play, full of pathos and anger, cunning and revenge. Instead it just happens to be good, in some cases very good at being able to give people exactly what they need, especially in a world that seems to be very bleak and full of unpleasantness, that of laughter and an excuse to crack a smile and laugh till it hurts. For Bon Voyage, presented by Boom Boom Productions, this is that type of play and for that the smile just got a little broader.
In 2012 Grin Theatre Productions produced their ultimate piece of work so far, three short plays centred on women and the very different lives they can take. The three pieces starred Donna Lesley Price, Jennifer Bea and Kayla Keatley as the main focus of the stories and all three actors, writers and Grin Theatre themselves received, quite rightly, much acclaim for what they produced.
Originally published by L.S. Media. April 23rd 2012.
L.S. Media Rating ****
Cast: Donna Lesley Price, Kayla Keatley, Jennifer Bea.
Three women with very different lives, three extreme ways they have lived and the reactions to them were the subjects that were written about with much sensitivity, a large dollop of humour and with a fair amount of honesty, not just in the writing but in the way the select audience at the Studio 2 theatre on Parr Street reacted to the incredible portrayals of the women in question.