Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Annabelle Dowler, Shaun Mason, Laura Dos Santos, Ian Conningham, Monty d’Iverno, Jane Slavin, Lile Marie Gibney.

There are many ways in which to celebrate or commemorate Christmas, chiefly amongst them is the act of memory, of remembering all those who have come into your life over the years but who, for whatever reason, have slowly disappeared from it, an act of forgiveness perhaps required on your part for the wrong they may have caused you, a meaningful gesture from the depths of your soul as you seek to be pardoned from the inappropriate action you may have caused distress with. It is though the act of forgiving yourself in which the time of year holds its greatest fear, a dread in which few are willing to face, and in which the Christmas ghost story deals with in spine-tingling relish.

There are few things finer than hearing this sort of story from the mouth of an experienced orator, one who has honed their talent for music, for the stage and who now with expert observation opens the crypt of phantasmagoria, of the shadows in between the spaces we occupy, and offers the intrigued listener a vision of what can ultimately be a tale of destruction of hubris, or the reconciliation of peace within our minds.

Lizzie Nunnery has many times over shown her connection with Liverpool, of her acute sense of belief in her own town, through song or visual representation, that resonating voice has been clear, undaunted and fluent, it then comes as no surprise that this talented observer of ordinary life should seek to bring the tale of memory, loss, grief and a vision of the dark places to the attention of the public.

In Take Me To Hope Street it is not only the loss of a child that preoccupies Nina, played with genuine care by Annabelle Dowler, it is the city which gets under her skin and begins to haunt her. It is in this place that loss manifests itself, the very nature of the voices that have cradled the city for generations, the unheard and forgotten rallying in every corner and rubbing shoulders with the celebrity, the fashionable and the historic. Loss of anything important brings sadness, grief, despair, but it is how you may forgive yourself for the actions in part taken that brings new life to the soul, something Nina has to wrestle with as the images of those who died unloved and overlooked come to haunt her.

A ghost story doesn’t have to come with chains rattling and spectral warnings of a life misled, but it should unnerve you, should make you believe that there is something more than the physical world in which we treat as a playground which awaits us, it might just be the realisation that the greatest act of forgiveness we can bestow, is upon ourselves.

Ian D. Hall