Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement. An Interview With Cathy Roberts.

An idea will come sometimes out of nothing, the spark of imagination somehow bursting into life with the will of a star experiencing the desire to go supernova; it only takes the right spark to set in motion a chain of events that eventually and gloriously end up from page to stage with wondrous inevitability.

Moggies The Musical is the rightful next stage in the life of the Mersey Moggies, the brain child of Cathy Roberts, storyteller, book lover, a beating heart within the Liverpool arts scene and above all someone who truly understands compassion, it is the searing quality that makes her creation of the Mersey Moggies so entrancing and a gentle reminder of what it means to be human; to care for something other than one’s self, and in Moggies The Musical there truly is so much to care about.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement. An Interview With Cathy Roberts. full post

(2200 words, estimated 8:48 mins reading time)

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. (2016).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: James Hill, Georgia Austin, Debi Jones, Ricky Tomlinson, Tom Burroughs, Michael Chapman, Olivia Horton, Lewis Pryor.

The world is a pantomime at times, someone will always play the villain, someone the dame and there will always be some commotion going on requiring the services of a Prince Charming or at the very least a jester; the world is a pantomime and each person plays the roles laid down to get the maximum laughs possible.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. (2016). full post

(481 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Gal Gadot, Scoot McNairy, Callan Mulvey, Tao Okamoto, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa.

There are moments of cinema so longed for that when they finally arrive it is always with a touch of hesitation of whether the viewer will actually believe in the finished article. The ultimate match-ups, the suspense, the nature of heroism, the costumes, the fights, the unexpected and the one cruel eye of misfortune waiting in the wings like an errant spider, swollen, ready to pounce on anything that makes the film stand out in a way that just doesn’t fit in with the idealistically placed images running around the fan’s mind.

Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(518 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

10 Cloverfield Lane, Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr., Bradley Cooper, Suzanne Cryer.

It was only ever going to be inevitable that the strikingly excellent film Cloverfield would eventually bring some sort of sequel, after all J.J. Abrams is not known for leaving a story alone when there is a glimmer of hope that it can be taken just that next stage further. The presentation of the sequel though would always be seen as a testing ground for just how far a story regarding an alien invasion and the destruction of the world could be taken; monsters in the end are everywhere in such a premise.

10 Cloverfield Lane, Film Review. full post

(477 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

Although Others Like You (I Would Happily See You Become Extinct).

Why are you not banished from society,

you take up room and smell of disgust

and yet there you are still being rammed

down our throats as if your very being

is somehow natural, ordinary, as accepted

as broccoli, as native as rain, as seasonal

as a hot day in August

or six months of winter,

I detest you, you make me ill to even

think of being near you, I would happily

find room on a cargo ship,

put you in the middle of the ocean

Although Others Like You (I Would Happily See You Become Extinct). full post

(179 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

Toyah, Gig Review. St. George’s Hall Concert Room. Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Kings Heath may not be a name that immediately conjures up the image of villages in the Birmingham area to have been the start of a flourishing and beautiful career, indeed perhaps outside of the second city itself, the name may only barely touch the conscious of those who remember Gardener’s World which was filmed on one of its adjacent greens and to those whose musical appreciation is filled with the idea that the local bars and clubs have been a stepping stone to great things for some.

Toyah, Gig Review. St. George’s Hall Concert Room. Liverpool. full post

(481 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

I Am The Shadow Of Ophelia.

I claw at the fringes of life

as the shadow of Ophelia.

The spoilt daughter of Polonius

may have gone insane

but she will never reach the depth

of what my charming existence

has become, the strangled hole

of fantasy, the bitterly guarded memories

she shed as she slips into the water,

Hamlet bound to the end,

in the murky river, knotweed, unheard,

fast flowing thoughts of increasing vanity…

 

She left me by the shoreline in despair

as she lay still and her heavy

I Am The Shadow Of Ophelia. full post

(207 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)

Rusty Shackle, Dusk. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Falling in love is easy, so much so that almost anybody can do it if they have half a heart, enough hot blood in them and the chance to kiss the muse at least once; the one time kissed Muse though is nothing, she sits quietly at the back of the dance hall with her handbag sat rigid beside her, everybody kisses her, not everybody gets to ravish the Muse and make her fall hopelessly in love with you.

Rusty Shackle, Dusk. Album Review. full post

(391 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

4Square, Fuel. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

The feeling of separation is one that all of us encounter at some point in our lives, the distance between us is such that a void, a slither of darkness in an otherwise bright space, becomes apparent and can make mockery of what we set out to attain; separation is a fuel that keeps being added to when not all the parts flow at the same rate.

4Square, Fuel. Album Review. full post

(391 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Tales From The Adanac House.

What was he doing in the Adanac House,

the conjured ideas and the stories

he would recount and regale me

with as I sat on my young backside,

at his feet, staring up at this giant of a man, always

knowing in the back of my mind

that I could never match him

in spirit, endeavour or deed,

indeed as he swam Lake Ontario

as a young man, before the Birmingham Blitz

came calling and the chance to drive

a tram through dust laden

post war streets and roads, psychologically

Tales From The Adanac House. full post

(344 words, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)