Mark McCullough of The Next Life at St. Lukes, Liverpool. Liverpool Calling. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
If there is one thing amongst many that Liverpool and its people can do, it is an unerring ability to make the most of any space going and turn it into a theatre, an arena in which something artistic can happen. You only have to take a discreet wander round town and with eyes obviously wide open to see this happening everywhere.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a new rage in town, one that sits beneath South Africa’s iconic Table Mountain and lets its musical thumping, beast like savagery and calm collected intelligence seep out across the sea. For Octainium there is better rage than what a set of guitars, the unmasking of a set of drum skins and the growling harmonic bass and vocals provides on their album Suffer The Clock.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Not even music can be serious all the time, why would it want to be? Everything needs a lighter side and music is ripe to have the light shone that little deeper than most. Cinema and theatre may rule the roost when it comes to placing a smile on people’s faces but music also has the unerring ability in which to have great music with a quirky edge and absurdly good narrative attached to it; it might not be what you are expecting but it works.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, David Selby, Michael Felton Stevens, Hywel Morgan, Clive Mantle, Christine Roberts, Ian Hallard.
There is a new villain in town, Earth and its associated planets are under threat from a despicable evil and only one man can save them, one man, a savage of impeccable understanding and loyalty and a strange Blue Box who never takes the Doctor where he wants to go but always where he is needed.
There are some things that you just cannot attach a rating onto because what you see before you is worth more than a few stars or an out of 10 score in the collective conscious of all that took part.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Robert Hadden, Joshua Quigley, Craig McDonald.
When praise is duly served, when the press rave about you and proclaim you to be the next best thing, the only way to deal with life from there is realise that the dream is over; you have failed in the objective which was to change the world.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Grant Robert Keelan, Stuart Crowther, Morten Aamodt.
In an opening that could have had Monty Python’s Eric Idle applaud for the utter creativity employed in the many different words used to describe sex between two men, L.I.P.A.’s Stuart Crowther’s play Spunk was something of a revelation.
Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz will direct Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock in a major co-production with Bristol Old Vic. The cast will be led by Niamh Cusack as the eponymous Juno and Des McAleer as her husband Jack Boyle. The production is at Bristol Old Vic from the 5th to 27th September before moving to the Liverpool Playhouse from 1st to 18th October.
Hilarity and tragedy rub shoulders in Sean O’Casey’s classic Irish drama set in Dublin 1922. Juno and the Paycock features his trademark mix of comic double acts, political upheavals, domestic longings, and characters who are never far away from an opulent word or song.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Carl James Fowler, Carmel Skelly, Chris Douglas, Craig Sharkey, Dave Unsworth, Francesco La Rocca, Jim Welsh, Kirsty Taylor, Mike Mackenzie, Nicky Loftus, Pat Hart, Nathan Bates, Peter Bromilow, Rachael Reason, Rita Sharp, Robyn La Rocca, Steve Dagleish, Vera Farrell.
Musicians from the Halewood Choir: Maurice Wileman, Howie Blakeborough, Phil Dean, Pam Bovis, Jill Marquis, Joan Rutledge, Patsy McDonough, Hazel Brennan, Anne Dean, Liz Haygarth.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Geraldine James, Neil Maskell, Fiona O’Shaughnessy, Adeel Akhtar, Paul Higgins, Alistair Petrie, Alexandra Roach, Nathen Stewart- Jarratt, Oliver Woollford, Kevin Eldon, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Michael Maloney, Ian McDiarmid, Paul Ready, Will Attenborough, Allan Corduner, Juliet Cowan, Keith Farnham, Candida Gubbins, Alex Lowe, Bruce Mackinnon, Gerard Monaco, Damien Thomas.
Utopia is never meant to be reached, if it was then Sir Thomas More completely missed the point as he wrote in praise to England before finding himself on the wrong side of a King’s wrath. Dystopia on the other hand is the easiest level of human attainment and for those on the run in Channel 4’s riveting series, Utopia, dystopia might actually be more preferable.