Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Lee Latchford-Evans, Crissy Rock, Micky Finn, Ann Marie Davies, Emily Fleeshman, Olivia Sloyan, Derren Ankers.
Rita, Sue and Bob Too! is a play which asks so much of an audience that it might miss the very mark it is actually aiming for if not delivered with great care and attention and moulded gently by a Director who sees past the big picture and who can really push the unseen and near obscure to the very front.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Some poets you don’t see on stage in Liverpool from one year to the next. You know they exist by the volume of work they put out, but they somehow get tangled in the poetic mist that separates the city by the Mersey from the rest of the country as they criss-cross placing the truth of a rhythmical full stop in full reach of their fans, but not quite making all the way down to the birthplace of the Mersey Beat Poets.
Educatibg Rita at the Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. Photograph by Stephen Vaughan.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Leanne Best, Con O’Neill.
The further we move away from a time in history, the more it seems to resonate with us in the present. In 1979 the social climate of the country changed, events and news from around the world started to mould Britain in a way not seen since the start of the Second World War and the pace of life altered, stagnation, alienation and guilt in some quarters, not enough in others, became a new breeding ground to hit people with a terrifying new stick with. Yet somehow, as if in rebellion to this flowering want, great music started to reflect the times once more and the mood of education was to be heard in many a great rock and pop song and into this world Willy Russell’s Educating Rita was born.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Lewis Bray.
Imagination is arguably the greatest gift bestowed upon humanity. It can lead us down many paths that were once closed off for whatever reason and it can be a shelter in any storm, a place in which to escape to when the world is against you, a place in which to explore and create.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Paul Nicholas, Colin Buchanan, Susan Penhaligon, Mark Curry, Verity Rushworth, Frazer Hines, Ben Nealon, Eric Carte, Judith Rae, Paul Hassall, Jan Knightley.
Justice, it should be seen as being above all. The knowledge that justice must not only be done but seen to be done is the overriding factor in any democratic society. What happens when justice is served by an unhinged mind? The reasons of impartiality become skewed and twisted and whilst it gets the job of retribution done, the voyeuristic viewer becomes entangled in the right of death debate too closely.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Pauline Fleming, Stephen Fletcher, Harry Katsari, Michael Ledwich, John McArdle, Angela Simms, Jack Taylor-Wood.
Everybody has surely dreamed of running away from it all, to hide away from all known responsibilities and start afresh somewhere new, somewhere where they can never be found and where the grass can grow under their feet in perfect isolation. It either takes a lot of money, a lot of guts or the sheer force of will to make it happen…or you can buy a canoe, fake your own death and end up in a force ten hurricane with a picture of former Cuban President Fidel Castro looking at you with accusing stares and your children disowning you. Such is life on the open waves when you start Canoeing for Beginners.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Cast: Hayley Riley, Louise Evans.
Life is so much more than what the gossips, those that peddle the rumour mill around you and the idle talk of the garden fence brigade; however when your life starts to go down a certain path, when the fullness of your own memories start to dissipate into thin air, when the edges of the snapshot start to fade and lose definition, are you no more than the sum of the declining anecdote relied with glee by your neighbours?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Adam Davies, Eleni Edipidi, Jennifer Essex, Ross McCall, Caroline Ryder (voice)
Love is a many splendid thing – it can make the soul rise higher than thought imaginable, it can bring a person down to their knees as the situation of their plight becomes untenable. It can fill the heart with infatuation to the point where boundaries are cross, it can shelter and care for another with absolute clarity. Love takes all that you have and leaves you cold and distant, it makes the world seem a brighter and more approachable place, whatever the outcome, no matter who cupid’s arrow’s decided to strike within, whoever you fall in love with, nobody understands the turmoil and feeling of power you feel at that moment, That’s Amore after all.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10
Cast: Abby Melia, Craig Shanda.
Liverpool Theatre Company 20 Stories High has the knack of producing theatre that grabs you by the thought processes and shakes them out of their modern complacency. Arguably one of the most forthright companies, 20 Stories High make theatre not only relevant but they hold a mirror up to a society that at times allows itself to sink to a depth before seeing one person rise high above the trench line. This is arguably never more so in their production of Keith Saha’s wonderfully self-incendiary play Black.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jessica Hoffman, Richard Dufty, Neil Johnson.
There will always hopefully be adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays in one form or another, the 1960s television series The Forbidden Planet is one such form in which the son of Stratford play The Tempest has been looted and perhaps in some ways abused; it is the nature of things that great works, in some cases legendary, can either be taken down with a sense of cruel irony or, as in the case of This Last Tempest, just enhance what has gone before.