Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Excitements, the feeling of raw power, of having a band play in your ears that know exactly when to lick the guitar string on the ear drum and perform with entanglement and a fist firmly clenched right up infront of your face; no malice, no sense of terror or unabridged alarm, this is just a group of musicians to whom the passion has become one of revolution and the smack of the great Punk ethic.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Flirting with the American way can leave one tantalisingly close to feeling somewhat euphoric, it can leave the listener craving for more of the individual in a country that sometimes doesn’t recognise the need for the personal thought; a country of vast beauty and outstanding people, often ground down by the weight of expectation that hits home with every artist that sees others falling through the cracks and disappearing from view, from life.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Of late it has seemed that if you are an artist of any creed, background or learning, it is possible that you will have had the seemingly inevitable rounds of criticism suggesting you should stay out of politics; that your sole function is to entertain and not have an opinion. It seems incongruous that an artist who perhaps might be able to be able to demonstrate a reasoned debate should be told to keep out of something, to be quiet and demure like some post Georgian debutant at her first outing.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Brian Cox, Miranda Richardson, John Slattery, Ella Purnell, Julian Wadham, Richard Durden, James Purefoy, Danny Webb, Jonathan Aris, George Anton, Steven Cree, Angela Costello, Peter Ormond, Kevin Findlay.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
In days such as these when British politics is doing its level best to provide its own particular brand of satire and absurd-ism, laughter, a look into the eyes of the strangely bizarre and reasonably silly is all the more important; for all what life throws at us, we have to have the ability to look the script provided by the cosmic joker and laugh.
The sharp pain, numb
after a fashion,
hit me like a snake bite,
a bullet from a concealed gun,
digging away into my head,
yet somehow keeping me alive,
forcing me to recognise this new
possible threat,
a moment to join the rest
of the doses
of passionate warfare
raging, skirmishing,
full blown nuclear assault,
in this tired, deserted body…
I could tear an advert free
stained white T-shirt in half
and wave it above my head, frantically
calling out, “Don’t shoot, I am
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Lewis Bray.
To compare the same play by the same performer two years apart is to open yourself up to folly and yet as audience member rose in appreciation at the end of Lewis Bray’s magical return of his play Cartoonopolis, as they revelled as one in the life of boy to whom cartoons are a special friend, there can be no doubt that this is one of the most exceptional plays crowds are likely to see this year.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Stephen O’Toole, David Crosby.
It may because of its bright lights, the allusion to a sense of greatness that comes with size and popularity with visitors but to feel totally at ease with yourself in New York City can feel emotionally blissful; to sit and listen to the tales of group of a million random voices, all unique, all frightening, dazzlingly inspired voices complaining, laughing, being scared of the dark in a city to whom illumination is a watch word of enlightenment, it can only be satisfying if you are on the edge taking in the wonder of the finest circus, the greatest zoo ever conceived.
A message from Pittsburgh
opened tentatively, a friend’s
smiling name searching across Time
and the glittering remains
of the Atlantic Ocean,
one crossed between us
and the bridge of comradeship
forged in a pub by the Avon
so long ago.
A picture of my boys, cheerful
and fledgling optimism bursting
from beyond their early bird uniforms
the headline of his electronic note
and yet underneath it all
I realised that Time has been a beast,
for my eldest boy is now a year older
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Mikyla Jane Durkan.
Imprisonment it seems is not only for the guilty, for those whose crimes against society are numerous and devastating, but in the eyes of some men there are those who should be imprisoned against their will for their own safety.
Society demands imprisonment for those who steal, murder, maim, spread hate and yet society never seems to lift a finger of warning to those who seek to deny women the opportunity to leave the house, to expect them to stay in, who lock the doors and keep them kept but also keep them from those they love and the pastimes they enjoy; it is not so much imprisonment as it is the start of the unravelling of the mind and the cruelty that comes with it.