Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Ray Calleja, Jes Camilleri, Pia Zammit, Bettina Paris, Joe Azzopardi.
The family unit, the last great bastion of civilisation or so they say but when a family is torn apart by uncovered secrets from the past, when the lies, which were told in order to protect at the time, become the pivotal point of damning collision it is no wonder that the family can be seen as dysfunctional.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The world never seems to have enough of Michael Palin. From the early sprouting of comedy genius that resided in the Yorkshire soul, to the creative overload that burgeoned in Monty Python to becoming one of television’s leading travel presenters, throughout it all he remained one of Britain’s favourite and captivating sons.
Rhodri Mellir as Spike in Bright Phoenix. Photograph by Jonathan Keenan.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Carl Au, Paul Duckworth, Rhian Green, Penny Layden, Rhodri Mellir, Mark Rice-Oxley, Cathy Tyson, Keiran Urquhart, Laura J. Martin, Vidar Norheim.
Somewhere over the rooftops of Liverpool, a haunting soliloquy is sang softly by one of the people the new renaissance taking place in the city couldn’t touch. In Lime Street an old ghost comes home to face the past and a group of children’s memories are re-awoken. The Futurist Cinema may be gone but its soul still resonates in those that made it their home and for the future, a Bright Phoenix stirs from the ashes of a crumbling society.
Liverpool Sound & Vision Rating: * * * * *
Cast: Liam Tobin, Judith McSpadden, Paida Mutonono, Richard James Clarke, Chris Jack, Simon Hedger, Samantha Meisner.
Said&done have come back to the Unity Theatre with Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park, a play set in America in the 1950s and then later on in 2009. The play was originally written by Norris as a response to Lorraine Hansberry’s, A Raisin in the Sun, and looks at race relations in America over the last fifty years. Set in a fictitious Chicago neighbourhood, Russ and Bev are all ready to pack up and move on having sold their house to a coloured family, but very quickly learn how things really are in a society still not ready to move on with the times.
Niamh Cusack in June and the Paycock at the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre. Photograph by Stephen Vaughan.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10Cast: Niamh Cusack, Des McAleer, Neil Caple, Jonathan Charles, Louis Dempsey, Donal Gallery, Maggie McCarthy, Aoife McMahon, Robin Morrissey, Maureen O’ Connell, Fionn Walton.
When you have nothing, you can only go one way, unless of course life conspires against you so much that all your efforts, all the trials you have endured come back to haunt you and you end up with less than you could have imagined.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Shobna Gulati, Joe McGann.
Paris is the city of many dreams, it whispers across the Channel and throughout Europe like a tempting lover, slowly cocking its finger, begging that you come armed with flowers and an open mind. Together with knowing full well that the first time you lay eyes on sights such as Sacre Coeur, the Moulin Rouge, the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower and the haunting gothic nature of Notre-Dame, Paris will capture the heart and have you professing love, even if the word is an alien as the thought of not having the stomach to try the gastronomic delights on offer in April in Paris.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Iain Hopkins, Gemma Banks, Christopher Rae.
Nobody has the monopoly on grief, nobody feels the dejection in the same way as anybody else and nobody should ever dictate to another human being just how long grief should ever take to get through the system. When a person loses someone either close to them or someone they may have only known through the public eye of the media, what they feel upon that person’s departure is real to them and in the end it takes a friend just sit and listen and occasionally talk in which the inconsolable and heartbroken can work through the five stages of grief.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Joanna Moran, Andrew Di Tian, Rebecca Riley, John Purcell, Rachel Mckeown, Luke Sanders, Sheddie Broddle, Laura Jump.
It doesn’t matter what form it takes, physical, mental, sexual, domestic or nationalistic and governmental, bullying has to be one of the most reprehensible acts that one human can do to another. To usurp your alleged control over another person because you don’t like the way they dress, the way they speak, their mannerisms, their beliefs or culture, to belittle someone because they are different to you, because they might not agree with the way the world is and or even your own faults in which they keep quiet about is something that at times boggles the mind. It breeds self-loathing, introversion and can come to the most drastic of conclusions.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Mickey Finn, Clare Bowles, Charlie Griffiths, Lynne Fitzgerald.
As with many old, but undeniably great, habits and ways, the great British local pub, the bastion of native ways and hopes and drama, has for many years been on the road to serious decline. Cheap alternatives driven by greed and solitude have become the normal pursuit in some respects that the social constraints in which bound a community, a section of the communal population together has been driven headlong into a nearby abyss of soulless apathy.
Liverpool Sound & Vision Rating: * * * *
Cast: Nick Birkinshaw.
Testing Testing productions returns to the Unity with their mind-bending show The Judgement of Hakim. From the pen of Andrew Sherlock, he explores the idea of all of us being guilty of something, and how far we are willing to go to find it. The audience are very much a part of this show, and questions and accusations are made as to why we are here, what we have done and that nobody will get away with it; whatever ‘it’ may be.