Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a small village in Sweden in which street lights never came too and for the vast majority who resided there it was a shame that they could not see where they were walking in the dark nights that grip the Swedish hills and give rise to folklore, but for Marianne Folkedotter, it was an understanding, even as a child, that it was a chance to see the universe unfold before her.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Alan Price, Oliver Gomm, Howard Chadwick, Guy Lewis, Jon Trenchard, Andrew Whitehead, Robert Took, Gilly Tompkins, Hannah Edwards, Lauryn Redding, Alan McMahon.
The 18th Century was one of richness in the field of theatre. By the time Oliver Goldsmith’s play, She Stoops To Conquer, had been performed for its debut performance the sight of women acting on the stage was so commonplace that it was an absurdity to have been forbidden from performing in the first place. There had been so many plays that had benefited from King Charles II proclamation a century before, so many talented writers getting more emotion from a finished piece and so many gifted women being rightly lauded that it the art of the Comedy of Manners took off in such a way and perhaps no more so than in the fantastic She Stoops To Conquer.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Peter Durr, Alan Gillespie, Alun Parry, Adam Byrne, Ifan James, Syephen J Higgins, Alan Bower, Eleanor Parry, Giulia Rampone, Gillian Paterson-Fox, Helen Shrimpton.
In the year that marks the 100th Anniversary of the most futile, military posturing and insane of all wars commencing, it is always worth remembering that the conflict was not fought on the grounds of justness like its successor but by people who led their countries down a path in which millions of men, women and children were killed and slaughtered. A path in which bore fruit shamed in blackness and would propagate seeds so vile that the working class of all countries who participated in, would suffer the most terrible hardships and loss.
Liverpool Sound and Vision 7/10
Comedy is truly subjective; it is perhaps the one art form that can divide a room quicker than a partitioned wall. In some cases what makes you laugh can have your friend seething or wriggling uncomfortably as if they are attempting to go through customs with every illegal purchase placed in the most delicate of places.
For David Mills, a first time performer at the superbly adept and run Homotopia, the jokes and observances are well placed, they even have the adherence of finely tuned comic execution running through them, it’s just that at times even the hard of hearing can hear the sweat crawl down the neck of the suitably embarrassed as if a snail had suddenly mastered the art of roller skating over razor blades.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are those who find spending a Saturday night indoors and talking about whose turn it is to clean the bin of its watery disgusting insipid farage* that has congealed at the bottom of the plastic container, somehow an enlightening part of their evening. It is inconceivable but apparently to talk of farage is enough to make them giddy with delight. There truly are much better things to do in life than let farage dominate the conversation.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The last time former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion stood on the Everyman Theatre stage and spoke with candour, passion and an abundance of knowledge of the world of poetry, the award-winning theatre was a very different beast. In the intervening years since his last visit, The Everyman has become a place in which the world has taken notice of and in which Andrew Motion takes even more interest in the world that many of us perhaps take for granted or shy away from lest it demolish our faint unheard dreams.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Evelyn Hoskins, Bill Champion, Clare Burt, Terence Keeley, Marjorie Yates, Rachel Lumberg.
Everybody has a family somewhere, even if it is one of their own making. They are loved, loathed, loved and despised in equal measure, they are the insanity that makes us smile, they are the thread that makes us weep; a family is there to keep us grounded, whilst allowing us the freedom to believe we can fly. Somehow Tim Firth, the man with the Laughing Cavalier pen attached to his enormous soul, has created a play of great artistry and comic value that reflects all of this in This Is My Family.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Tony Hancock, Sidney James, Bill Kerr, Moira Lister, Alan Simpson, Gerald Campion, Kenneth Williams.
The first night of any new venture can be a daunting one, for the arts it sows the seeds of excitement and despair, of hope in a long running show or the gloomy realisation that months of preparation had all come crashing down before the first sentence uttered. How do you get round this, how to win over those who would write about you and the programme and get them to give you at least a passing golden smile within the column inches afforded them? For Tony Hancock the answer is simple, throw a first night party, invite all the big names from the B.B.C. and newspapers and watch as the reviews come glowingly in.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Josie Sedgwick-Davies, Emily Woosey, Lucy Harris, Tom Harrington, Nick Crosbie, Jamie Brownson.
Change happens, it might be overnight, it could be over a decade; however, eventually all things must change. The trouble is at times adjustment happens because of outside influences, the world forces transformation at a quickening pace and people get left behind as they struggle to come to terms with the new situation that has come along. For those that are fortunate, transformation happens on their own terms and they are able to carry on kicking against the world with a smile on their face. For the staff of a small family run bakery in Warrington, change is inevitable in Alex Joynes’ new play Half Baked.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Jennifer Steyn, Kertrice Maitisa, Mbulelo Grootboom.
The flowering of democracy leaves many a root of the past upturned and exposed to the sunlight, it catches the rays like a magnifying glass and in its wake can have the same effect on the tips of the root and the soft underbelly of the flower harmed by the burnt offering that new social equality can bring.