Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Subusiso Mamba, Tonderai Munyevu.
How far would you go to survive in a regime that treats you worse than a cockroach; that demands total obedience of your every waking hour and who can control every moment you make, only reluctantly allowing you to live your life as a free member of society once they have humiliated you enough. The mark of oppression stamped across a nation and deeply into the faces of those who are its citizens.
The voice in my head
From waking to sleeping
Flowing around me
Keeping me safely floating
Holds me above the dark below
The voice of you
Flowing through me
When I am calm
Holds me up
As I float in living water
That dissolved a mountain
I’ll hear your voice
In my head and in my heart
When all my sadness
Is washed away
In sweet sunlit water
Rippling in the wishing well.
Dr. Erica Wright 2014.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Chicago just happens to be one of the great American cities, full of wonder, a sense of heritage and iconoclasm having been showered upon it as one of the Great Lakes feeds its natural hunger and gives the city its cold stirring breath in winter and baked beautiful days in summer. It has been the resting place of American Mob culture, of iconic films and even more iconic bands, for example the truly distinguished band that bares the cities name. To the North Canada, to the East New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Boston and nothing rivals it as hub of industry and humanity till you reach the southern shores of the country. It is truly a remarkable city. From out of that place in which Lake Michigan freezes and drives an icy blast comes a smashing new band, Vintage Blue, and their album No Going Back.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Martin Freeman, Bob Odenlirk, Keith Carradine, Joey King, Kate Walsh, Russell Harvard, Tom Musgrave, Stephen Root, Helena Mattsson, Julie Ann Emery, Rachel Blanchard, Susan Park, Gary Valentine, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Marty Antonini, Liam Green, Atticus Dean Mitchell, Leslie Maynes, James D. Hopkin, Christopher Rosamond, Dan Redican, Richard Sherry, Jade Davis, Carrie Coak, Jennifer Copping, Dayle Krall, Barkhad Abdirahman.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
It can’t be a coincidence, no matter how good The White Stripes were, and they were rather first-rate for the vast majority of songs that they produced, that Jack White has just got better and better as a musician and lyric writer since those long gone halcyon days. His latest solo album, Lazaretto, is one of such quality that it is hard to ignore. The American Rock/Country/Celtic vibe hybrid is a fascinating delve into the mind of one of America’s real musical icons of the last 15 years that at times you have to wonder if the man will ever bother writing an autobiography, for everything you think you want to know is played out in the lyrics of his enormous body of work.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Luke Barton, Charlotte Wilson, George Doran, Liam Hale.
Two of life’s undoubted pleasures are seeing a piece of work for the first ever time on stage, played and directed with so much passion you could almost believe someone could be having an affair with the themes and words of Albert Camus and sending them flowers every weekend, and watching someone you first saw on stage many years ago, trusting your gut that their performance was magnificent, then catching them again and knowing that what you thought of their early promise was correct and they are now just sublime and outstanding. Two great pleasures in one play, L’Étranger, at the Everyman Theatre; life really is surrounded by strangers, clowns and shining brilliance.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
To be in Liverpool as a music fan you really do have to pinch yourself sometimes just to make sure that what you are feeling is true and not just a karmic evil spirit giving you a good time only to say at the end, “None of it was true, it was all a dream, how’s that for Karma; love the rest of the U.K.”
Nigel Stonier at The Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When you are an accomplished and forthright musician and producer, it must be high level of instinct that drives the musical notes down the veins and out into the public arena; especially when you are opening the evening for a very talented lady who can charm the socks off an audience just by opening her mouth and letting the lush tones fall where they may.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Daisy Leigh, Shaun Stanley, Claire Kelly, Andrew Walsh.
Writer: Karla Sweet.
Grin Theatre delights in the story in which causes a ripple a shock throughout the audience, whether the well-intended, the deeply fascinating or the type that leaves a seismic tremor waiting to erupt in your stomach, Grin Theatre have it delightfully covered.
Karla Sweet’s contribution to Grin Theatre’s Young Playwrights Showcase certainly fell in to the final category to the point that anybody within a mile radius of the Gregson institute might have felt the lurking beginnings of a judder as the audience realised just exactly what was happening to the family in the play but also the trembling violence and retribution in which to come.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Elaine Stewart, Ben Sherlock, Ann Edwards.
Writer: Jack Stanley.
Grin Theatre and new writing, it goes hand in hand with a newly temperate person finding they adore the taste of Ginger Beer, an England football team being lauded and dismissed in equal measure and the hope that at some point an unpopular Government will fall upon their collective swords.