Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Conrad Nelson, Russell Richardson, Andy Cryer, Jack Lord, Hannah Barrie, Vanessa Schofield, Lauryn Redding, Andrew Whitehead, Jordan Kemp, Adam Barlow, Ruth Alexander Rubin, Mike Hugo, Jessica Dyas.
You can always trust Time to deliver a verdict that reconciles the world when it is damaged just as you can trust Time to play with the misfortunes of men when it suits to teach them a lesson for the insanity and jealous ravings.
Liverpool Sound & Vision Rating: * * * *
Cast: Testament, DJ Woody
Blake Remixed is beatboxer and rapper Testament’s first theatre show and looks at how relevant the poetry and art of William Blake still is today. An early influence in Testaments life, this show explores the relevance that Blake’s work and themes can still have on our culture. He compares today’s society to the time of Blake’s and asks if social justice, religious and racial tolerance is any different. Testament takes on Blake’s poetry and puts his own unique stamp on 18th century themes.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Leon Ockenden, Olivia Hallinan, Philip Franks, Adam Best, James Cooney, Simon Darwen, Stephanie Jacob, Shvorne Marks, Siobhan O’ Kelly, William Reay, Holly Smith, Alastair Whatley.
The Second World War asked a lot of the men and women of Britain, of Germany and the greater population of the world, it asked of them for sacrifice, of more resilience than at any time and in many ways to be more selfish in the face of adversity; it is a selfishness of spirit, to not give in despite overwhelming odds and face the world with a smile. It is this selfishness, or at least a singular part of it, that sits at the heart of Terrance Rattigan’s World War Two drama The Flare Path.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Coventry is a foreign country, they did things differently there; especially in the 1970s and to a young boy who knew he was a fabulous woman in waiting.
As part of this year’s Homotopia at the Unity Theatre, Kate O’ Donnell took the full house through what it was like to grow up as transgender in the Midlands city in the 1970s and 80s, the derision supplied the all-male establishments and the intolerance shown by her father and the ever increasing phrase ushered from his lips of Big Girl’s Blouse.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Niamh McCarthy, Jamie Pye, Alice Corrigan, Elliott Davis, Harry Sargeant, Nathan Russel, Stuie Dagnell, James Bibby, Charlotte Larkin, Georgie Lomax-Ford, Poppy Hughes, Jonathon McGuirk, Isobel Davis, Isobel Balchin.
To want to escape the pressures of modern life is completely understandable, the way the world is at the best of times it’s hard to fit in, it’s demanding on the soul to try and keep up with the ever changing and fast, frenetic pace of it all and it’s no wonder that we are urged to find, to discover that happy place in which all our troubles can be forgotten for a while, in which making sense of our own identity is the main priority.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The English language is as rich as anything on Earth and yet it is made so purely because it is allowed to breathe, to expand, to contract and usurp words from other cultures and to bring the art of communication into a realm that no other language can truly compete with. The ability to take one word and give it a completely different sense of occasion, to allow the sense of freedom to define the lingo, the dialect and the pattern of speech is to be celebrated and not given a stern look, not to be rallied against and see the language die in a stunted cul-de-sac.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Michael Cavanagh, Will Burn, Maria Hutchison, Faye Caddick, Stephen Kinsella, Ian Gray, Elaine Stewart, Yahya Baggash, Peter Durr, Alan Bower.
The price of having it all, of truly understanding everything, is far too high, especially if you have to make a pact with the Devil to achieve it.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Ben Vaughn, Karen Brooks, John Nichols, Niki Baldwin.
The glorious shadow of the R.S.C. looms large over Stratford-Upon-Avon, like Duncan at the feast, the spectral glow is always uppermost in people’s minds when they think of the much loved Warwickshire town.
For some the strength, valour and beauty of the R.S.C. might be considered a hindrance in being able to show with any type of realistic pleasure performances by other companies, that other theatres wishing to open up and bring in works away from the greatest ever playwright would find it difficult to live under the looming illumination that spreads from down by the river and into everybody’s lives, Relatively Speaking of course.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Cathy Tyson, Chereen Buckley.
Homelessness is such a serious issue in 21st Century Britain that it should be considered a national crime, an offence by successive governments upon the people of the land to who have been let down, systematically and without hope. We are sold a pup, an image of fecklessness of people making this particular choice for themselves and that the statistics are wrong, that people are not homeless, they are just beggars, idle cheats and scroungers; this image is so far removed from the truth that it is impossible not to see the pain and division it causes, not just between the haves and have not’s bit in what was even the tightest of bonds, between mother and daughter, father and son.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It had been arguably many years since the last time many in Liverpool had seen Bill Bailey live so for that huge swathe of audience it would have been a huge moment of excitement to see his new show after the much adored Tinselworm tour. The Tinselworm tour was a packed out special at many arenas and which had seen Bill play in big cavernous rooms, so it was a real treat for all concerned to see one of their favourite comedians in a smaller more intimate setting.