Author Archives: admin

Lizzie Nunnery And Vidar Norheim, Songs Of Drink And Revolution. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Songs of Drink and Revolution, something that has been lost, eroded in the lifestyle of the comfortable in the last 50 years, the chance to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with your brother and sister and bemoan the state the world.

The comfortable, perhaps through the lack of main stream national bands and musicians under a certain age refusing to go against a certain grain for fear of being labelled as something other than an artist with a social conscious, the comfortable being led down a path of least resistance with promises of everything today. Then there is Lizzie Nunnery and Vidar Norheim, who show that there is another path, a path laid down by the likes of Ian Prowse, The Levellers and Alun Parry before her, a path where Revolution is freely discussed and lauded.

Lizzie Nunnery And Vidar Norheim, Songs Of Drink And Revolution. Album Review. full post

(446 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

The Ghosts Of Kirkdale, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: * * * *

Cast: Ashleigh Jones, Nicola Ravenscroft, Rhiannon Davies McCabe, Amy McAlan, Kate Emmett, Emily Rigby, Courtney Carragher, Emily Washington, Olivia Coleman, Reece Armstrong, John Risley, Ceri Wyn, Ian Curran, Nigel Peever.

There have been many memorable Victorian characters created over the years. Perhaps Charles Dickens springs to mind as one who really captured what life was like with his descriptions of the workhouse and his over the top characters. For writer Lyn Wakefield Ghosts Of  Kirkdale is such a snapshot of grim Victorian life but told from the perspective of children.

The Ghosts Of Kirkdale, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(410 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

The Guardians Of The Galaxy, Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

One of the most perplexing and perhaps insistent of all the creations by Marvel comics is The Guardians of the Galaxy. Unlike other explorations into the team ethic made by Marvel, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, West Coast Avengers, X-Men for example, The Guardians of the Galaxy is one that doesn’t necessarily jump off the page and grab the sympathetic attention of the reader. It could be argued that it delves into a space that would have been more suited to the underworld/underground realm of comic books and yet given the amount of time it takes a class A comet to light up the sky and bring an end to all life on the planet, it grows upon you.

The Guardians Of The Galaxy, Graphic Novel Review. full post

(546 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Boyhood, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Steven Chester Prince, Bonnie Cross, Libby Villari, Marco Perella, Jamie Howard, Andrew Villarreal, Shane Graham, Tess Allen, Ryan Power, Sharee Fowler, Mark Finn, Charlie Sexton, Byron Jenkins, Holly Moore, David Blackwell, Barbara Chisholm, Matthew Martinez-Arndt, Cassidy Johnson, Cambell Westmoreland, Jennifer Griffin, Garry Peters,  Merrilee McCommas,  Tamara Jolaine,  Tyler Strother, Brad Hawkins, Savannah Welch, Richard Andrew Jones, Karen Jones, Sam Dillon, Jesse Mechler.

Boyhood, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool. full post

(517 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

Play With Myself: The Trials And Tribulations Of Drama Practitioner Gregory Bike. Theatre Review. 81 Renshaw Street, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Liam Hale, Dominic Davies, Rio Matchett, David Paes, Sean Stokes.

The world according to Gregory Bike, a mantra for all the giants of theatre, a man to whom you should listen to with open ears and open minds…a man to whom the word theatre is the be all and end all of life’s pursuit of truth and experience…a man who exists completely as fantastic extension of Liam Hale’s superb imagination and for whom Play With Myself: The Trials and Tribulations of Drama Practitioner Gregory Bike will surely be rated as a must see at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

Play With Myself: The Trials And Tribulations Of Drama Practitioner Gregory Bike. Theatre Review. 81 Renshaw Street, Liverpool. full post

(581 words, estimated 2:19 mins reading time)

F.I.F.A. World Cup 2014. Holland V Argentina. Match Report.

First published by Ace Magazine online July 2014.

“On the cusp of glory, frustration and exasperation will find a way to block success…”*

Emotions in Brazil must be heading all over the place as it stands, for the footballing public, the religion of the sport is enough to make anybody even remotely concerned about the final on Sunday wonder just who they are going to cheer on. The industrious Germans who tore their side apart with the consummate ease of a Lion being offered an all you can eat menu whilst picking their main course for dinner on the Serengeti or Argentina, their biggest rivals in World Football, a country that is less than a couple of hours away by airplane, a country that produced more attractive football than Brazil in the last decade…Nobody could surely blame a single person in Brazil if they thought on Sunday afternoon, “I cannot face this, I am going to bed till Monday, roll on 2018.”

F.I.F.A. World Cup 2014. Holland V Argentina. Match Report. full post

(1276 words, estimated 5:06 mins reading time)

Betty Blue Eyes, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Laura Baldwin, Tobias Beer, Kit Benjamin, Adam C. Booth, Amy Booth-Steel, Jeni Bowden, Ricky Butt, Matt Harrop, Oliver Izod, Rachel Knowles, Lauren Logan, Rebecca Louis, Sally Mates, Joe Maxwell, Hayden Oakley, Anthony Ray, Kate Robson-Stuart.

Winston Churchill, the war-time leader of Great Britain, once exclaimed that to look a dog in the eyes was to see it acknowledge it saw its master, a cat would see its slave but to look a pig in the eyes, well the pig sees its equal…for Betty Blue Eyes, it’s doubtful you will ever see anything to equal this well written and superbly performed play again.

Betty Blue Eyes, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(557 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Shane Beales, Time. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Time is perhaps the greatest commodity that Humanity possesses; no other creature on the Earth feels its passing in the same way, by the ticking of the arbitrary clock, the machine that allots how you live between the tick and the tock and how you use up your designated heartbeats. Every other creature goes by nature, Humanity goes by the well-oiled spring and the belief that Time is to be conquered, you either use it productively or find that at some point life has gotten so far away from you that it has swallowed whole by the numbers imprinted on the clock.

Shane Beales, Time. E.P. Review. full post

(385 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Candleford, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Kim Veldman, Lisa Hitchins, Albert Hastings, Stacey Liddell, Carla Cookylnn, Rachel McKeown, Charlotte Holguin, Gillian Lewis, Gemma Doyle, Peter Higham, Sheddie Broddie, John Goodwin, Bertie Jones, Agustin Arraez, Lisa Symonds, Keri Seymour, Amy Stout, Michael Treanor, Ady Potter, Katie Thomas, Janet Fennell, Derek Weigh.

To perform a theatre production based on a hit television programme, a period piece in which the attention to detail of the age is usually the first thing that subconsciously many people sitting down to watch will question, is a brave choice. For a company that is made up of those who love acting for its ventured expression, for the satisfaction of being on stage and becoming someone else it is courage befitting the bold and the fearless.

Candleford, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(585 words, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)

Footnote…

Tears were never wasted on you but the anger

diminished as it should when somebody dies in your mind.

I see the face in other books and feel the sick-

ness return at the thought of you.

 

A Sonnet for the love of you, the memory of the cult

captured and freed with remorse, the handshake

unfulfilled and unanswered, my fault.

It matters not as I still care and hope that you are happy now with nothing at stake.

 

On your own request you relegated yourself from a paragraph to a sentence,

Footnote… full post

(141 words, estimated 34 secs reading time)