Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Siw Hughes, Angharad Phillips, Lisa Zahra, Richard Elfyn, Sion Pritchard, Luke Bailey, Kellie-Gwen Morgan, Maria Claudia Perrone. 

It’s the little things that mean the most, and when those moments are taken from us, we can understandably be upset at the loss, it strikes at the very fabric of our being, our sense of self becomes doubted, and eats away at what can remember of those whose memory we came to immortalise.

So few of us will leave a lasting memorial, our voices will be lost to time, leaving only echoes that will fade as those who love us slowly give way to tears and regret; and yet as Neil Williams shows in his deservingly enjoyable play, All Change At Llanfair PG, the memories that linger are those framed for posterity, and are accepted as eventually being altered for another human voice that is relevant for the age.

The town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is already famous for its record-breaking longest name in Europe, the sign on its railway station a tourist attraction of its own, and as the announcements from the recently deceased Oscar fills the air in the automated recordings for the passengers as they wait patiently for the delayed trains and the sound of coffee being made, so Enid, Oscar’s widow is left mourning the voice that still informs and talks to her as she sits on the bench at the platform’s edge.

In the great tradition of observant dramatists, All Change At Llanfair PG captures the heart of the expressive voice that belies the tension of grief, of protest, and as the railway change the voice of Oscar for that delivered by machine, so dissent grips the people of the town, and when Enid is aided by the young trainee café assistant in anger of the insult of the machine like replacement, sparks and revolution are projected and felt.

If the dumfound town of Llareggub had been fortunate enough to have a train station, if Dylan Thomas had added to the poetry and prose of the majestic sense of isolation and gossip then it could have been framed with just as much passion as what Neil Williams has produced, but perhaps not with as much pleasure that this exciting writer has found in his northern Welsh characters.

A thought-provoking play that deals with loss and renewed faith in the living, of how grief can linger when we are attached to that which provides the memory of love. All Change At Llanfair PG is a play of grace and feeling.

Ian D. Hall