Category Archives: Theatre

Bonnie & Clyde, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Izzy Feld, Jak Malone, Charlotte Dowson, Adam Bennett, Julie Evans, Tom Lox, Kate Rugen, Philip Birss, Lorna Foley, Andrew Abrahamson, Steven Andrew, Andy Godden, Zoe Thirsk, Jo Vickers, Catherine O’Brien, Carrie Cushman, Andrew Jones, Jamie Barfield, Megan Key, Andy Walker, Sonia Chapman, Stephen Longmuir, Ruth Dalton.

Musicians: Maddie Stones, Jonas Tattersall, Alan Moore, Emily Grint, James Breckon, Lara Simpson, Matthew Cheung, Jack Taylor, Mike Ward, Paul Wilson, Gareth Dawson.

 

Bonnie & Clyde, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(532 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

Red Skies, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Saul Murphy, Maggie Lynch, Charlie Griffiths, Sara Woodley, Eleanor Nelly, Jay Podmore, Jonathan McIntyre, Lynne Fitzgerald, Lesley Butler, Alan Walsh, Berbie Foley, Michael Swift, Marc J Morison, Rebecca Ray Johnson, Danny Marray, Holly Clarke, Rachel Waldock, Libby Drinkwater-Burke, Logan Drinkwater-Burke.

The scars of war never truly fade and that is arguably the truest sentiment when it comes to the devastation visited upon Liverpool and Bootle during the dark days of The Blitz. Any visitor to the city, any person who has lived in the two neighbouring towns, will still be overawed by the monuments to the dead and the long nights endured by the people during the campaign to bring the people to their knees.

Red Skies, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(528 words, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

Ancient Routes, Theatre Review. Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Louai Alhenawi, Alia Alzougbi, Roskar Nasan, Sanaa Wehbe.

Storytelling is such an important facet of human nature that it strides, like music, across the many diverse and wonderfully different regions and countries of the world. Our own culture, derived as it is originally from many distinct and rampaging races and creeds, is full of folk tales and parables from many customs and backgrounds that it surely is a thrill when the sounds and stories of another area of the world comes and adds more influence to life.

Ancient Routes, Theatre Review. Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(406 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Judy, The Judy Garland Songbook, Theatre Review. Empire Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Even now there are few female stars that could hold a candle to the extraordinary all-round performer Judy Garland. A woman who was possibly the epitome of the saying of being born into show business as a famous old trunk in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, could attest if it could talk. She would become the ultimate star of screen as she made hearts melt in film roles such Love Finds Andy Hardy, Strike Up The Band, For Me and My Gal, Meet Me in St. Louis and of course as the young Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz.

Judy, The Judy Garland Songbook, Theatre Review. Empire Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(562 words, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

The Hudsucker Proxy, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Rob Castell, Nick Cavaliere, Tamzin Griffin, Sinead Matthews, Joseph Timms, David Webber, Tim Lewis, Simon Dormandy.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts…well not quite absolutely, especially when Time and the clockman are on your side.

However fleeting Time is, when naked ambition and naivety meet corporate greed and rank stupidity, Time is not adverse to having a laugh at the expense of the system so proudly held up as the shining beacon in which to chase a profit is seen as good. To knock someone the moment they have delivered that fortune seen as even better and in which some boardrooms up and down the country of late have saw fit to rival. It only takes one man though to make a mockery of it and The Hudsucker Proxy is born.

The Hudsucker Proxy, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(476 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

On Charity, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Alice Colquhoun, Dora Colquhoun, Izzie Major.

Guilt is something we should all feel when it comes to realising the further we go in life, the more we perhaps get on in the world, there will always be that despairing inevitability that others, through no fault of their own, will get left behind. Yet that guilt, that sense of responsibility we should feel towards each other as members of the same species is somehow jaded, lost and confused with the idea that giving your time to help another person is somehow to be rewarded and compensated with the freedom to brag and make light of it.

On Charity, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(458 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

The Producers, Theatre Review. Empire Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Corey English, Jason Manford, Ross Noble, David Bedalla, Tiffany Graves, Stephane Anelli, Abigail Brodie, Jaye Elster, Rebecca Fennelly, Olivia Fines, Andrew Gordon-Watkins, Aimee Hoonett, Paul Hutton, Nia Jermin, Marjorie McAvoy, Joel Montague, Genevieve Nicole, Tosh Wanogho-Maud, Jay Webb, Russell Wilcox, Aron Wild.

Satire isn’t dead, despite the stamp of modern life and politics trying its upmost to make it the saintly reserve of those who don’t get the joke, it lives hard and fast, it just takes the right mix of intelligent crowd and knowing performer in which to bring it out fully so that it can breathe and stir more than laughter out of the brain.

The Producers, Theatre Review. Empire Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(511 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

Indomador: Animal Religion, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Physical Fest, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Quim Giron

Humanity’s relationship with the animal kingdom has often been questioned many times since we, as species, first took to the practice of farming. By rearing these animals as a food source then breeding, studying and at times corrupting the very nature of that relationship by using science in the laboratory, that association has become one of dominance and at times sheer brutality. It is that hybrid dance between human and animal which makes for great physical theatre and at times the sense of the uncomfortable at this year’s Physical Fest at the Unity Theatre in Indomador: Animal Religion.

Indomador: Animal Religion, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Physical Fest, Liverpool. full post

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

Night Collar, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Jake Abrahams, Eithne Browne, Suzanne Collins, Michael Ledwich, Alan Stocks, Lenny Wood.

Confession and revelation is not confined to the unburdening of souls in the wooden box that adorns many a church, the simple act of sticking a paw out for a taxi when time, tide and the day is against you is perhaps arguably a more sincere way of getting the troubles of the soul purged, for the taxi driver hears all, sees all and unless you happen to become the topic of conversation which revolves around the words, “You’ll never guess who I had in the back of my cab last week”, then your secret torment, bad relationship, money troubles, who you would like to see bumped off, what you think of the council, all are kept secret.

Night Collar, Theatre Review. Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(567 words, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)

Next Door But One, Theatre Review. Cornerstone Theatre, Liverpool.

Rob Kavanagh, part of Next Door But One. Photograph by Roisin Fletcher.

Rob Kavanagh, part of Tell Tale Theatre’s Next Door But One. Photograph by Roisin Fletcher.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Rob Kavanagh, Paula Stewart, Shaun Roberts, Dan Edwards, Stui Dagnall, Tom Nevitt, Alex Clark, Kevin Foot-Stephens, Christine Heaney, Leanne Jones, Laura Hall, Sara O’ Connor, Bradley Thompson, Donna Ray-Coleman.

It has become a sign of the times that as a society we are more likely to know what is happening on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean in some stranger’s lives as we use social media to keep up with a celebratory who is in fashion then truly to get to grips with those to whom in the case of accident would be naturally first on the scene, the next door neighbour or the person across the road.

Next Door But One, Theatre Review. Cornerstone Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(544 words, 1 image, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)