This month sees The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool host Amanda Whittington’s play Ladies Day. First produced and staged by Hull Truck Theatre in 2005, the play stars three of Liverpool’s impressive and likeable female actors in Eithne Browne, Lynn Francis, Angela Simms and the trio are joined by Emmerdale’s Roxanne Pallet as a group of factory workers who all want different things out of life and decide to visit the world famous Aintree Racecourse. They are joined by the only male in the show Jack Lord who is sure to get the run around from this foursome of impressive women.
Jago And Litefoot, The Spirit Trap. Series One, Big Finish. Audio Play.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Trevor Baxter, Lisa Bowerman, Janet Henfrey, Lex Shrapnel, John Ainsworth.
The third instalment of Jago and Litefoot’s adventures in the dark world that shrouds the Victorian era takes a spiritual turn in the Jonathan Morris’ The Spirit Trap.
This penultimate story of Series One sees a slightly reduced cast from the previous two episodes tackle the Victorian world of spiritualism that has been captured in everything from romance, crime, even Victorian Lesbian drama and whilst not hitting the heights of the opening couple of tales in which Gordon Henry Jago and Professor George Litefoot have become institutions to the world of Doctor Who, is an interesting take on the field and one that is enjoyable and worth being involved in the initial series.
Rick Senley: Music For Voyeurs, The Long Sleep. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Away from the release of I Am A Man With A St. Tropez Tan’s Just A Ghost, Rick Senley’s avant-garde recording dealing with fractured nature and disturbed nightmare thoughts, stands another album that raises the shackles on the back of the neck whilst gently lulling the listener with thoughts of the time to come to us all, Music For Voyeurs…The Long Sleep.
Gary Maginnis & The Like, Ghost Town Blues. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
In the end it doesn’t matter where you are from, that really is not the point as you can be born in one city and then move the next day. What it comes down to is where you have felt comfortable in your life and what you achieve whilst you live there and what you leave behind. The three men that make up the folk band Gary Maginnis & The Like certainly have that left the very best part of them in the North-West of England whilst retaining that singular splendour of Belfast very much in their hearts and in their ability to tell a story, nowhere is this more exemplified by their new release of Ghost Town Blues.
The Last Five Years, Theatre Review. The Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Helen Carter, Stephen Fletcher.
There are times when a production can simply not be bettered, it has the most fantastic response to it and lingers on well in the memory as one of the absolute highlights of the theatre year. That production is The Last Five Years, it was considered by all who saw it at the Actor’s Studio, a rip roaring accomplished piece of art from start to finish. That is where the two productions stop being comparable, as Stephen Fletcher, one of the finest young actors in Liverpool and the exceptional Helen Carter bought Jason Robert Brown’s play back to the stage for the second time and in one fell swoop made it a gleaming example of artistic beauty, of tremendous fortitude and belief and overall simple elegance.
Rose Greenwood (Featuring Mick Wright), Yorkshire Street. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Somewhere in the deepest darkest parts of the North, away from the bright lights of Manchester, the larger, older and sometimes forgotten mill towns that cut into the countryside that borders Yorkshire and its bitter but sometimes friendly rival Lancashire, a sound is stirring. Some great acoustic music is finding its way out of the moorlands and into the thoughts of the wider world.
Lionboy, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Adetomiwa Edun, Femi Elufowoju Jr., Robert Gilbert, Victoria Gould, Lisa Kerr, Clive Mendus, Dan Milne, Stephen Hiscock.
There are many plays and productions that can make an audience sit up just that little bit higher in their seats and marvel at the spectacle, wonder with joy at the sheer leap in the imagination and be amazed at what the theatre company has managed to achieve in the time on stage. Complicite are no exceptions to this rule as they bring their superb adapted version of Zizou Corder’s acclaimed Lionboy to the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre.
The Midnight Ramble, High Time/Live. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The one thing you can be sure of listening to The Midnight Ramble’s new album is that throughout the three new songs on offer and the elegantly captured live set is they don’t consider this in any way to be a ramble, a quiet stroll or saunter on a summer’s day taking in the sights after what has been a long cold winter in search of that elusive sunshine. High Time/Live is a statement, a jive on the promenade, an exertion of sound that mocks a sub four minute mile as being too slow and dull.
I, Claudius. Television Review. B.B.C.4.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Derek Jacobi, George Baker, John Hurt, Brian Blessed, Patrick Stewart, Siân Phillips, Patricia Quinn, Christopher Biggins, Ian Ogilvy, James Faulkner, Simon MacCorkindale, Sheila Ruskin, Angela Morant, Graham Seed, Jo Rowbottom, Bernard Hill, Norman Rossington, John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hepton, Barbara Young, John Cater, Kevin McNally.
Queens Of The Stone Age, Like Clockwork. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Like a well-kept 20 year old bottle of finest malt being poured out without impunity, you know as soon as you take off the protective casing and put on the new C.D. by Queens Of The Stone Age, Like Clockwork, sitting comfortably on your bed or in your favourite armchair that what you will soon be enveloped by the heady aroma, the intoxicating aroma and reckless indomitable spirit filling every sense possible and a few more besides.