Tag Archives: PurpleCoat Productions

Noises Off, Theatre Review. The Arts Centre, Liverpool

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Caitlin Clough, Jack Murray, Karl Falconer, Rhea Little, Sam Walton, Stewart McDonald, Abi Taylor Jones, Siobhan Crinson, Albert Hastings.

Quite simply you can never have too much of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off placed before you. It is a sumptuous comedy banquet that keeps giving and each serving is captured differently as the last. It is rightly regarded as one of the finest stage comedies of its time but it has to be captured right, one person miscast, one mistimed moment and the momentum goes completely. It is a play that is so giving and yet one wrong step, it can be a cruel mistress and leave the feeling of undiluted suffering in the audience and it takes real guts to even attempt to put it on. Thankfully PurpleCoat productions weren’t put off by the thought and gave a performance of high ability and virtue at the Arts Centre on Myrtle Street.

PurpleCoat Productions Bring The Classic Noises Off Back To Liverpool.

If you haven’t already sorted out your festive entertainment this year, there is a hidden gem lurking in the wings courtesy of Liverpool’s PurpleCoat Productions. They’re staging the hilarious farce Noises Off in January, and it’s all double-takes and slamming doors and promises to be packed full with belly laughs.

It’s absolutely ridiculous!” laughs the show’s director, Karl Falconer. ‘It’s about a group of awful actors trying to stage an old-school sex farce, except that they all hate one another, and the set keeps falling to bits, so it’s really a farce about a bunch of people failing miserably to put on a farce!’

PurpleCoat Productions To Bring Breezeblock Park To The Lantern Theatre.

It was the play that inspired The Royle Family, and next month, Liverpool’s PurpleCoat Productions bring Willy Russell’s Breezeblock Park to The Lantern Theatre between the 8th and 10th August.

Set amongst the bickering families of a 1970’s Liverpool council estate, the play is said to have inspired the popular classic sitcom, The Royle Family, when it premiered at the Liverpool Everyman in 1975. Back then, it starred a young Pete Poslthwaite and Julie Walters, and went on to be Willy Russell’s first big hit. It propelled him to go on to write such landmarks as Blood Brothers, Shirley Valentine, Stags and Hens and Educating Rita.

Purplecoat Productions Will Bring Titus Andronicus To The Unity Theatre Stage.

 A Shakespearean tragedy of hatred, murder and cruelty. An embittered Roman General returns from war, having captured the Queen of the Goths and her three sons. Sacrificing the eldest, in memory of his own sons killed in battle, he provokes the Queen’s hatred but when she marries the new Emperor of Rome, she begins to plot her murderous revenge.

Purplecoat Productions bring one of Shakespeare’s and history’s most underrated tragedies, the excellent Titus Andronicus, to the Unity Theatre on February 5th and 6th.  The company have recently thrilled audiences at the Lantern Theatre on Blundell Street with their superb version of Little Voice and aim to hit the heights once more with this production.