Tag Archives: Phil Hearne

Council Depot Blues, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool. (2018).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Jake Abraham, Roy Brandon, Paul Broughton, Lindzi Germain, Howard Gray, Phil Hearne, James Nelson-Joyce, Andrew Schofield.

We all count down the hours as a big day arrives, the end of the week and the chance to sit down with the feet up in the comfy chair or enjoy a holiday in which there is nothing to do but soak up the sun and breathe in the different air. Until the day of final reckoning when the chance to say goodbye to all those we have ever worked alongside, come rain or shine, come snow, hail, biting winds and the odd moments when the heat has driven us to distraction, leaves us with Time on our hands to think, and it is that thinking that makes the clock tick louder as it reminds us, we have nothing to do today and that we miss being part of the routine.

Twopence To Cross The Mersey, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Maria Lovelady, Eithne Browne, Christopher Jordan, Emma Dears, Jake Abraham, Tom Cawte, Roy Carruthers, Phil Hearne.

The taste of 1930s Britain so elegantly captured in Helen Forrester’s Twopence To Cross The Mersey is arguably more palpable, more authentic than any text book that might go on at length to describe the after effects of the Great Depression on those caught in its wake and the sacrifice many individuals had to face just to survive; it is genuine, touching, brutal and one that still pervades the modern era and the way its shapes politics today.

The Golden Oldies, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Ruth Alexander Rubin, Eithne Browne, Dennis Conlon, Annie Edwards, Greg Fossard, Hayley Hampson, Phil Hearne, Paul Kissaun, Olwen Rees.

It is a question of definition, of how your generation will be remembered, not by the politics it suffered or the times they live through, but by the music that they send up the charts and the beat they constructed in alleyways, clubs and bars. Music is the beat of the heart and if the heart keeps pumping then the music stays alive and in Dave Simpson’s gentle but absorbing musical comedy, The Golden Oldies, music is not just the food of love, it is the art that keeps all staying alive.

Noises Off, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

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.

Dirty Dating.Com, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.

Originally published by L.S. Media. September 14th 2012.

Cast:  Nicki French, Grace Bishop, Phil Hearne, Jo Mousley, Jess Schofield, Craig Chalmers, Alan Stocks.

The world of dating has never had so many options, mates dates, internet dating, blind dates, work dates, and now thrown heartily into the mix comes Pauline Fleming’s well observed look at the rights of passage involved in the world of speed dating.