Liverpool Sound and Vision rating: * * *
Cast: Simon Jones, Chris Boyd, Madeline Hall, Kepla, Nathan Jones.
The Unity has been well established as a community theatre for many years. All varieties of people who want to act, write, direct and produce shows have most likely done so here. So it is with great interest that the Unity are doing something a little different in terms of theatre diversity and what we call theatre.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: * * * * *
Cast: Clare Beresford, Dominic Conway, Miriam Gould, Charlie Penn, Tom Penn, Eugenie Pastor, Alexander Scott, Shamira Turner.
Little Bulb Theatre has certainly come a long way since forming in 2008 as students at the University of Kent. Now an award winning company they continue to produce exciting and innovative theatre.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: * * *
Cast: Mary Pearson
It is difficult to sum up what The Sand Dog Cometh is about, as American writer, actor and director of the show Mary Pearson has created something that is no doubt unique in its entirety. Running for just over an hour, Pearson crams it full with films of derelict Liverpool, sculptures of sand dogs and mad dance sequences. The madness creeps into the audience too, as at one point, popcorn is handed out and the crowd is encouraged to share and to get to know the neighbours, the people that sit with anonymity during the darkness of any theatre production, those we might not normally think of during any trip to the theatre. Pearson too, takes her seat amongst the audience and proceeds to shave her legs whilst serenading audience members.
Liverpool Sound & Vision Rating: * * * * *
Cast: Jess Green
Performance poet Jess Green focuses her poetry on her own experiences of when she worked in schools as a reading champion. She has created a very fast paced performance, lasting just over an hour and delivers no less than ten unique poems accompanied by acoustic guitar and a Cajon drum. Green introduces us to Janine, a tired sixty-something who is fighting for her pension on the picket line, and Sandra the librarian who secretly removes ‘unsuitable’ books and takes them to the tip. There are many more characters in Green’s repertoire and all just as quirky and funny as the last.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Eric Kofi Abrefa, Erin Doherty, Tom Mothersdale, Greta Scacchi.
If you can place human experience into the realms of the zoo, the caged animal yearning for freedom, an escape from the rigid and the pawed upon control that comes with the overpowering smell that lingers with the cruelly defeated and gazed upon, then that tightness, that crushed inevitability of life’s cruel illusion is only tempered by the huge cosmic joke played upon us all and perhaps arguably no play best typifies this than Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Alex Hassell, Oliver Ford Davies, Antony Byrne, Sean Chapman, Simon Thorp, Joshua Richards, Jennifer Kirby, Jane Lapotaire, Keith Osborn, Andrew Westfield, Daniel Abbott, Martin Bassindale, Nicholas Gerard-Martin, Robert Gilbert, Jim Hooper, Sam Marks, Dale Mathurin, Christopher Middleton, Evelyn Miller, Sarah Parks, Leigh Quinn, Obioma Ugoala, Simon Yadoo.
Following on from David Tennant’s portrayal of Richard II, and Jasper Britton’s turn as Bolingbroke, Henry IV, the R.S.C. concludes it’s King and Country series with the reign of Henry V, in the 600th anniversary year of the battle of Agincourt, portrayed here by Alex Hassell, reprising the role following a successful run as Prince Hal in both parts of Henry IV.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Lee Armstrong, Simon Dutton, Roger Evans, Polly Frame, David Hartley, Ranjit Krishnamma, Chris Reilly, Sule Rimi, Danusia Samal, Colin Tierney, Susie Trayling.
A man is sent on a mission by a powerful leader, a man to whom his days of adventure are said to be behind him and to whom nothing would displease him more than being sent away far from home, sent to a land where the customs and practices are now as alien to him as those who share his national flag abroad. It is a story as old as recorded time itself and yet one that plays itself out over and over again as each generation repeats The Odyssey, duplicates the trials of Odysseus, just in nicer suits and with a flair for diplomatic disaster enshrined into the mission.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
A night at the theatre can mean many different things to different people. To educate, to entertain, to allow a sarcastic monkey the reason to be adored are perhaps just three out of a multitude of reasons that the crowd who piled in with beaming faces and who left the Playhouse Theatre in a state of comedy fulfilment would have come to see and take part in.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Louise Mai Newberry, Steven Elder.
Man’s humanity to man has been seen for all it is worth over the last few months after image after image has reached all corners of the globe as the biggest mass exodus and movement of people since the Second World War has been beamed without hype into the homes of billions. Images of death, of desperation, of recriminations, of pain, of fear, of selfishness and of hope have all played their part of the story of 2015.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Bradley Thompson, Dorcas Sebuyange.
Everybody has a tale, a story in which to impart, it might be the only one they ever tell in frustration or anger, it might be the only one related with open eyes and truth within their soul. However, everybody’s stories deserve to be told; even one that might prove to be counter-productive to the general feeling, for without that story, a meeting of minds cannot be held in balance.