Lenny Wood sits down and smiles broadly with the assurance of a comic actor who knows just the right thing to put you at ease. This young man has done so much in his life already that it doesn’t seem a surprise when you go through the list of achievements and plays that he has acting credits in. The putting at ease is paramount when it comes to someone who can make you laugh with just flick of eyebrow, the right word, even off the cuff, in the right place and the ability to make to make any comic creation they play seem endearing and as someone you would want to be friends with.
Fables: Storybook Love, Graphic Novel Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Love, for some a fairy tale, for others it is the start of a nightmare, a time in which everything they do is wrong and in which can lead to anguish, despair and hopelessness and yet in between the immensity of the emotions, something grand stirs, something in which the future can be held tightly.
For immortals love can be complicated, for a creature of the fairy tale, complicated doesn’t even cover it, it is more akin to placing your trust to a pyromaniac and asking them to make sure it doesn’t catch fire.
Mr Big, …The Stories We Could Tell. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
You can ask many things in life but asking the impossible is exactly that, something in which just you may as well lay down all your arguments and say, “Yes, just carry on and be magnificent, nobody will stop you telling your empowering and delicious tales.”
Little Sparrow, Gig Review. Leaf, Liverpool.
Little Sparrow at Leaf in Liverpool. September 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Time has been described as many things, a snarling beast which needs to be tamed, perhaps even hunted down and taught a lesson or two, the great leveller in which all humanity is judged by its actions or even perhaps a companion, a trusted ally in which the truth of your life is carried. Time though can also be brutally obstinate, it can make visits to a venue in your city from a very talented singer/songwriter seem as though Ice Ages come and go with quicker frequency.
Laura James, Gig Review. Leaf, Liverpool.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The candles that stand on the tables inside Leaf flicker with eager anticipation. The small draught that comes and goes as the lift that sits at the back of the hall above the clanking tea pots, the smell of food being cooked and conversations that had at the heart of them been spirited questions of the Scottish Referendum winds itself open to let out yet another selection of fans in time to see Laura James deliver a set that sat happily and comfortably with an enraptured audience.
The Avengers: The Lost Episodes. The Radioactive Man. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Phil Mulryne, John Banks, Tim Bentinck, Beth Chalmers, Anjella Mackintosh, Richard Franklin, Kieran Bew, Colin Baker.
Some stories are just so timeless that they can be placed almost anywhere within a certain epoch and they would still resonate and be explosive as if set with a timer, a red and yellow wire attached and the words caution, contains volatile and unstable elements stamped in black broad letters on its outer box.
Gravity Crash Ultra (PS Vita), Game Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Gravity Crash Ultra is a twin-stick shooter game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. The game is an enhanced port of the PS3 game Gravity Crash, which was released in November 2009 and for the PSP in July 2010.
Anna Corcoran. Gig Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.
Anna Corcoran at the Unity Theatre, Liverpool. September 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
This is the show, arguably the only performance in town that would grab the attention of so many on a night when the news, both local and international, in which could prize the heart away from what used to be called despairingly interesting times. For Anna Corcoran, the sweet deftness of a long lingering caress on a keyboard that responds with a nod of approval and its own commendation, is an hour of time that goes by so fast and yet you feel its effect long after you have got home and played the gig over in your mind as dreams embrace your quivering soul.
Thom Morecroft, Gig Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.
Thom Morecroft at the Unity Theatre, September 2014. Photograph By Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Sometimes, occasionally, as rare as a night in which the stars seem to come out and take a bow for the beauty they provide and in which the moon trespasses on the Sun’s heavenly position in the sky, something just catches the attention of a collection of musicians and they give a performance so exciting, so unreal that even the moon knows it’s time to go hiding in the moment of eclipse.
Jonathan Markwood, Welcome To Planet Earth. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Sometimes you just have to sit back and listen to understand a person’s hopes, dreams, desires and fears. The casual conversation in a pub or coffee shop is fraught with dangers of misplaced cues, of half heard personal confessions and the fighting for the best story of the day, to get the true picture one needs look at the person in the face and listen. Whether it is in the form of spoken word or set to music, listening can get straight to the heart of the matter and perhaps makes for better reasoning.