Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *
It is the simplicity of the message that often carries across a joy in performance caught for posterity, a simple measure of a well delivered story finding an ear of appreciation into which a meaning, a semblance of truth can be measured and gauged; it is in these stories of love, life and head on Folk music of an Antipodean nature that The James Brothers pursue as if running towards some great sunrise, some new dawn, in the distance.
Grace Kelly always looked so demure
when photographed in black and white,
in sepia too she looked so cool,
the perfect face to fall desperately in love with,
the woman into which dreams fall and fail.
Yet in colour, you are reminded of the fragility
of beauty worn, of timeless vulnerability
and the crumble down effect
of pancake dish upholstery
served up in glorious Technicolour
and stereo fitted sound.
The woman of the century, the great
unknown of the silver screen,
radiantly stares from lofty heights
The annual music festival takes place on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th March 2016 at Unity Theatre and Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room and a ‘free fringe festival’ programme sprawls out to venues all along Hope Street for what will be a captivating and inspiring event to kick off the festival calendar.
Now in its third year, the festival has grown out of Unity and onto the historic and unique street in Liverpool’s cultural quarter, and boasts intimate live performances from some of the most highly regarded U.K. acoustic acts, including the award-winning and acclaimed Scott Matthews, British blues/rock heavyweight Marcus Bonfanti, Liverpool legends Ian Prowse, Ian McNabb, Tommy Scott and Paul Hemmings along with rising stars Robert Vincent, Gary Edward Jones, Stephen Langstaff, LIMF Academy award winner Eleanor Nelly in addition to over 50 up-and-coming Liverpool artists.
Terence Reis of The Dire Straits Experience at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, February 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It is the shiver of expectation, the memory of mountains conquered and the marriage of saxophone and guitar, dipped in amber and the sound held out as if some lofty idyllic treasure was being presented from down upon high that makes the music of Dire Straits such a pleasurable way to spend an evening. Not that Dire Straits tour anymore, the chief of it all Mark Knopfler no longer caressing that particular avenue anymore and yet the sound of rolling thunder and expressive ambience lives on in the form of The Dire Straits Experience.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Tom Stuart.
Everybody wears a mask, the camouflage of fitting in when really all that is ever desired comes in the form of standing out and having fun, even if it comes with a cost. In Tom Stuart’s dynamic play, based upon Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s book, I Am Not Myself These Days the mask of illusion is only worn to be loved and it is love of all excessive things that carries the play at the Playhouse Studio into a realm of perfectly captured hedonism and glittering prowess.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Rhys Rusbatch, Mariah Gale, James Corrigan, Darrell D’Silva, Paul Kemp, Charlotte Mills, Douggie McKeekin, Simon Carroll-Jones, Cavan Clarke, Sam Clemmett, Adam Gillen, Susan Hingley, Jack Horner, Rebecca Johnson, Arthur Kyeyune, David Langham, Jordan Metcalfe, Mimi Ndiweni, Dodger Philips, Laura Prior, Patrick Toomey, Lawrence Walker, Harry Waller, Jay Webb, Dan Wheeler.
This the second time out for Jonathan Munby’s Wendy and Peter Pan which has just finished its season and remains indicative of the R.S.C.’s continued policy of broadening its appeal without compromising quality. The play is neither musical nor pantomime and yet it incorporates the best of both formats and discards arguably the more irritating features that come with the story.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Gwilym Lee, Fiona Dolman, Manjinder Virk, David Bamber, Jolyon Coy, David Gant, John Hollingworth, Cara Horgan, Dennis Lill, Cherie Lunghi, Saskia Reeves, Adrian Scarborough, Cat Simmons, Ramon Tikaram, Michael Wildman.
There is always a deep meaning to art that might not be first gleaned upon by the layman or the average discerning follower of artistic fashion, just as there is always a hidden motive and significance to murder. Both schools of interpretation look deeply and find sense where they must, both offer value and worth to human understanding and yet murder never imitates art but art is playful in its appreciation of the blackest of all deeds.
A dead wasp’s carcass,
half chewed by wind,
half spat out with ferocious intent
by the earthbound ants
that plough tunnels underneath the street
which one day will cause the turn of the century
houses to cave in and be swallowed whole
by the teeming mass,
lays rotting in a puddle,
its wings now no more than show pieces
to a time when it lorded over all.
Do not mourn the wasp,
it is nothing more than the Luftwaffe
in insect form and the ants
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Roy Brandon, Eithne Browne, Carl Chase, Suzanne Collins, Paul Duckworth, Adam Keast, Andrew Schofield, Francis Tucker.
It is undoubtedly one of the finest productions to come out of Merseyside in the last ten years, a difficult birth it may have been, a show that found itself with an audience but being put on due to commitments and other factors somehow making the play seem an impossibility and yet a decade on, over 200,000 members of the public later, Brick Up The Mersey Tunnels is a show of insurmountable honest and terrifically funny appeal; so much so that it is only right and proper for it to come back to the Royal Court Theatre and give the jolt of marvellous humour needed after a January of gloom and false starts.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Long may Folk music remain in the hearts of all those who are touched by it, for it seems at times it is the one genre that relishes in its ability to knock at the door of corporate insanity, of Government lunacy and the madness of the well proportioned and bring them to a semblance of account or at least raise the awareness of what is happening in the world within the listener.