Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Daisy Leigh, Shaun Stanley, Claire Kelly, Andrew Walsh.
Writer: Karla Sweet.
Grin Theatre delights in the story in which causes a ripple a shock throughout the audience, whether the well-intended, the deeply fascinating or the type that leaves a seismic tremor waiting to erupt in your stomach, Grin Theatre have it delightfully covered.
Karla Sweet’s contribution to Grin Theatre’s Young Playwrights Showcase certainly fell in to the final category to the point that anybody within a mile radius of the Gregson institute might have felt the lurking beginnings of a judder as the audience realised just exactly what was happening to the family in the play but also the trembling violence and retribution in which to come.
Directed with great sensitivity by Grin Theatre’s Helen Kerr, Karla Sweet’s The Blue Touch was the play in which shiver for the human spirit could well have been intended, the recollection that out there lurks evil, that not ever wolf wears their fur on the outside and some for whom the punishment is entirely justified as they play with fire.
No matter how many times you get to see this type of story, it’s power is so overwhelming that you can reach back into your memory and believe that somewhere you have met a person like this in which the match is perhaps the least of their worries. To play that type of role though takes great faith that the Director will not let you down and in Andrew Walsh as the disturbing Alan, Helen Kerr made him play the part with complete believability. A testament to both the actor and the Director!
With additional great support from Claire Kelly, Shaun Stanley and Daisy Leigh, The Blue Touch was a play which bought Grin Theatre’s love of the unstable and distraught very much to the forefront. For Karla Sweet, this should be a big stepping stone, for the years to come, should the writer wish to continue in this field; in which you can only pray she does. A master stroke of writing worthy of even Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected!
Ian D. Hall