The Medieval child, lauded over and acclaimed at the start of the year,
now will show its true colours to the world away
from its long since gone mother’s breast.
The old harridan who succumb to final old age
at the moment of delivery follows her charges fortunes now
as it gears up to become a teenager.
The January day is over and Janus rests content for another year
not to have to keep up the pretence of concern or anxiety
of what was before. His young responsibility, now old enough
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Tamla Kari, Maime McCoy, Hugo Speer, Marc Warren, Emma Lowndes, Ellie Haddington, Laura Hobson, Charles Venn, Oliver Rix, Will Keen, Charlotte Salt, Celeste Dodwell, John Harding, Ed Stoppard.
Religion and politics, never easy bed fellows at the best of times, when the delicate balance hangs on the word of a young woman, that strange set of bed fellows becomes a dicey, almost inflammatory affair, which if left unchecked; could spell disaster for French-Spanish relations and have long consequences for the whole of Europe.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10
Cast: Abby Melia, Craig Shanda.
Liverpool Theatre Company 20 Stories High has the knack of producing theatre that grabs you by the thought processes and shakes them out of their modern complacency. Arguably one of the most forthright companies, 20 Stories High make theatre not only relevant but they hold a mirror up to a society that at times allows itself to sink to a depth before seeing one person rise high above the trench line. This is arguably never more so in their production of Keith Saha’s wonderfully self-incendiary play Black.
They are retiring the reason for loss of faith.
As the bones will be taken down and will never
adorn the main hall in my lifetime, how Darwin must be laughing
at the peculiar notion that my evolution started not with
an ape or a monkey but with a dinosaur and now that beast
of my burden is leaving home, presumed missing.
Eight years old, dressed in green, no badges yet of note earned
and the first of many visits to the Capital undertaken
with a tour and my paid homage
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
In every season, in all great and interesting art, there must always come a small blip in the fabric of performance; so much so that the only real and humane thing to do is to treat it as perhaps filler between the good stuff. Not everything appeals all the time, not everything immediately grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts proudly down your ear-hole, “Adore me.”
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: 9 out of 10
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected is a third-person open world action game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. The game is an enhanced version of Saints Row IV which was released on PS3 in August 2013, although the Saints Row series began development in mid 2003 initially under the name Bling Bling as a PS2 game before finally releasing in August 2006 as an Xbox 360 exclusive followed by multi-platform sequels in the form of Saints Row 2 in October 2008 and Saints Row: The Third in November 2011. Volition is no stranger to making great games as they have developed multiple games in the FreeSpace, Summoner and Red Faction franchises since 1998.
Hayseed Dixie at the o2 Academy in Liverpool. January 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Coming to Liverpool on the back of the immensely popular new album, Hair Down To My Grass, there is only one way to describe the banjo loving, Tennessee loyal awe-inspiring sight of Hayseed Dixie and that’s committed, unpretentious brilliance.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Review 8.5/10
That rare showing of charisma, you either have it or you don’t. If you don’t you can get by being truthful, unabashed or even by smiling, all of these bring out the sunshine in a performer. To have charisma though and to have it so far ingrained into every single member of the band that the sweat pouring off them can be cloned and sold off as new aftershave or perfume, is to have magnetism and every single pair of eyes looking at you as if you were some sort of Demi-God taking a break, well that’s enough to know that the formula is exciting, raw and beautifully wild.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If passion is your thing, if it’s the be all and end all and makes the nights hanging by an amplifier, dry ice clinging to your lungs like a wet December fog and a guitar playing a sweet serenade of honest love and toiled emotion, then the Keith Thompson Band’s live album, Snapshot of Reality, is one in which to count the ways in which to adore your love of music.
The devoid of feeling, empty processed pea tin rattles down the street and
pushed along by the banshee like eruption of winds
that beat, beat…beat against the window
pleading to be let in, the tin can, the remnants
of its former glory long since spilled on the Bootle battlefield
shows off its ability to send
out a message in Morse Code to anybody willing to listen.
The signal is kept going, the odd momentary lapse
where the wind blasts it up against the side of half