Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Cast: Pauline Daniels, Suzanne Collins, Andy Ford, Lynn Francis, Emma Lisi.
Comfort food, it’s there to get us through hardship and pain, the long cold lonely nights when perhaps our will is at its lowest, when the thought of a small sausage roll or chocolate cream cake in front of the fire is preferable to a bit of hot crumpet, or bag of sweets; for some though the taste of Gateaux is worth waiting for.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: EJ Raymond, Ricci McLeod, Irene Macdougall, Alison Halstead, Millie Turner, Miles Mitchell, Gerard McDermott, Ann Louis Ross. Amy Conachan.
There’s nothing like a wedding to enhance a good blood feud, to really get to the bottom of the relationship between one family and another, united in only one thing, absolute hatred of each other.
Lorca’s Blood Wedding explores the relationship of such feud but with that subtle twist that makes it stand out, makes it drive home the serrated cake knife home even further, as the least likely person on the day is the one calling the shots.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Stuart Crowther, Franki Burke, Adam Handford.
New York in the early 1990s felt at times as if the whole cultural edifice was on its way to being torn down, that imagination, artistic individualism and intellectual prosperity was being neglected, shamed, destroyed by the ever rampant chase of undying consumerism. That the beautiful, even if crime infested streets surrounding certain areas that were awash with artists of every creed were being driven out and in their place those that chased every dollar, every dime and cent with religious capitalist zeal were taking over. Reaganomics had won and the starving artist had better join the party.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Mairi-Claire Kennedy, Nathon Bibby, Faye Caddick, Rebecca Howard, Maria Hutchinson, Vicky Lodge, Natalie J. Romero, Mikyla Jane Durkan, Samantha Walton, Gillian Paterson-Fox, Alan Bowyer, Callum Wright, Gary Watson, Iffan Wyn James, Yahya Baggash.
It is a story that still resonates, still has the power to send tremor like Earthquakes through any who see it and simply turns established thought upside down and inverts the power of femininity and the female form. Euripides’ Medea is a tale so huge that in modern day thought, it still provokes the question that surely a woman cannot take the life of a child, especially her own child and yet as the news shows, Medea is not alone in the most brutal of acts.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Laura Campbell, Paul Duckworth, Andy Roberts.
Recorded Cast: Aiden Lee Brooks, Rosalind Henderson, Tom Galashan, David Llewelyn, Mike McCormack, Jade Thompson, Chris Hennessey, Adam Gilbert, Paula Simms, Patrick Dunn.
Freedom at any cost and the right to use your life how you see fit, two intrinsic, rightful, and powerful overtures to life that have been eradicated time and time again since the French Revolution. Before that it seems as if History allowed the common man the space to live and breathe his own, only asking occasionally to take part in war or be at the beck and call of the state. From The French Revolution onwards, the state has interfered more and more, to the point where even questions are asked about the most intimate details, perhaps even what would different about My Clockwork Heart.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Paul Broughton, Michael Starke.
The humble British Shed, so loved by many, so bemusing too many more. A place where sanctuary is sought, where peace can reign and Time can be seen not to ravage but to almost stall, decay at a slower rate, to inspire growth and let thoughts take hold in a way that the outside world, almost insistent on the answers being forthcoming at the speed of knots, cannot comprehend. The shed is last refuge, be it six foot wide in all directions or built in the fashion that some might as well retire and spend their remaining days locked within and practise for the ultimate last days of potting and cutting dead leaves of a much valued plant.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Edmund Wiseman, Emily Bowker, Selma Brook, Max Bowden, Cloudia Swann, Peter Duncan, Emily Altneu, James Staddon, Liam McCormick, Roger Martin, Alastair Whatley, James Findlay.
Even in the foul grip of war, there must be a love that carries the soldier across the boundary between the stench of perpetual death and the sanity that is provided by having something to live for. Love in the midst of war is what keeps the thoughts of ordinary men from turning into barbarians and for those who do the fighting, whether above ground, on the fields of No Man’s Land or in the tunnels, love can be the saving point. Love is a peculiar Birdsong.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Remmie Milner, Jamie Samuel.
It is a credit to the theatre attendees of Liverpool that there are writers of such great quality with a unique modern perspective out there who are willing to see their plays performed on the city’s various stages, that no matter how difficult the subject matter may be to perhaps take in, they know with hand on heart that the audiences will give every ounce of their concentration to and be thoughtful in their considered response. This is especially true when someone of the calibre of Ella Carmen Greenhill brings her play Plastic Figurines to the Playhouse Theatre Studio stage.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Tayo Aluko. Music performed by Martin Robinson.
The 20th Century is littered with the notion of celebrity, arguably even more so in the image conscious/obsessed world of the 21st Century. As time moves on though, that celebrity becomes more about wanting to be known rather than what for and more importantly what you are willing to take a stand for and willing to sacrifice over. How many people, how many modern day celebrities would stand firm in the eye of the American public and be resolute against the evil that the McCarthy Hearings, America’s political low point at the time, were setting out to destroy for example? For a handful of men and women, notably Arthur Miller and his dramatic response in the exceptional The Crucible and Paul Robeson, a man ahead of his time but a true trailblazer in the fight for equality in the lives of Black Americans, stand out.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Helen Anderson, Lisa Bird, Eva Bell, Andrew Bone, Ed Brody, Phil Cheadle, Kit Lessner, Marianne Oldham, Robert Styles, Eleanor Thorn, Rosie Wyatt, Javez Cheeseman, Colby Mulgrew.
Some pieces of literature are perhaps arguably not intended to be envisigned in anything other than cinema’s light, some perhaps are so sensitive that to try and show that singular emotion on the stage is to invite crass remarks and tactlessness in return.