Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast Samantha Alton.
We raise the idea of heroism up to the point where we often forget the story that inspired such feelings of gratitude in the first place, we see the plinth with their name attached, the statue put up by a grateful populace, and in time the only ones who pay attention to the image, the figure on the pedestal, is the day tripper and the pigeons who survey humanity with the bird-like contempt we deserve.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Abigail McKenzie, Mike Sanders, Mark Holland, Charlotte Melville, Allan Nicol, Hayley Thompson, Caitlin Mary Carley Clough, Oliver John Lawrensen, Jessica Olwyn, Sam Walton.
With 2018 marking the centenary of voting rights for women and signalling the advent of the #metoo movement, the timing of Make It Write Productions’ Virago – four one-act plays focussing on formidable females – is savvy to say the least, as is executive producer Sharon Colpman’s diverse selection of scripts.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Jackie Jones, Mike Sanders, Katie King, James Ledsham, Sam Walton, Daniel Cassidy, Lisa McMahon.
Life and Time hang always in the balance, a single moment can hang forever in the air; it can be as inconsequential as a gnat’s heartbeat to an Elephant’s ear, it can be as earth-shattering and historic as a single gunshot in Dallas. Each moment we live through has the potential to be remembered for ever. It is though the build up to that instant where time and life clash for a brief while, where they converge and separate leaving the devastation in its wake; it is in the ability to look at what happened before that makes us attempt to make sense of the moment later on, when the next dawn has risen.
It’s the 1st of April 1989. By midnight on the 14th, the Miller family’s lives will have changed.
Those Two Weeks isn’t a play about Hillsborough. It’s a play about before. It’s a play about what life was like when it was normal and it’s a play about how difficult normal can be.
Joe’s looking at University and moving in with the girlfriend he thinks his family don’t know about, Peter has an ambition that seems at odds with his current lifestyle and Jacqui’s pregnant to the boyfriend she’s just dumped. Dave and Terri have no idea what’s happening in their family and finding out will see old issues resurface in their marriage.
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.