Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Sean Bean, Adrian Dunbar, Muna Otaru, Mark Stanley, Aine Ni Mhuiri, Rochenda Sandall, Paula Malcolmson, Paul Copley, Vanessa Earl, Steve Garti, Jerome Holder, David McClelland, Aoife McMahon, Naomi Pickering, Lauren Lyle, Anna Friel, Faye McKeever, Debra Michaels, Matthew Wilson, Thomas Arnold, Daniel C. Bishop, Eithne Browne, Clare Calbraith, Ned Dennehy, Jack Harper, Phil Davies.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Alice Bunker-Whitney in Omnibus. Photograph by Brian Roberts.
Cast: Gemma Banks, Alice Bunker-Whitney, Eva McKenna, Joel Parry, Danny Burns, Eithne Browne.
It is always a cause for celebration when a production comes to the stage and truly brings an audience together in its humour and the way it showcases new writing, the positive ways it uses all the actors with equal clarity and the wonderful way in which it shows the genuine appreciation due its Director. When that celebration coincides with the soft re-opening of a much loved theatre after months of renovation and updating, then it is not just a case of bring out the decorations and congratulations, then it is the keen observance and salute that only an Omnibus can provide.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Roy Brandon, Eithne Browne, Danny Burns, Suzanne Collins, Carl Chase, Paul Duckworth, Emily Linden, Andrew Schofield, Francis Tucker.
Two’s company, two is the sound of laughter taken to great heights, two is a sequel to which a comedy penned by the superb duo of Dave Kirby and Nicky Alt is completely on top of its game and is one that surely will be seen as a true worthy successor to a production worth its weight in Liverpool gold.
Eithne Browne in The Star. Photograph by Robert Day.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Eithne Browne, Michelle Butterly, Helen Carter, Kevin Harvey, Danny O’Brien, Jack Rigby, Michael Starke.
Musicians: James Breckon, Elliot Chapman, Danny Miller.
Looking up into the Heavens, one can see the gallery of happy faces, the stars are there to perform, and they find no reason to ever stop beaming their light on the world below. For audiences making their way to the Playhouse this festive season, The Star is shining brightly and it is one that captures all that is good about modern theatre and the remarkable memory it invokes of hearing about the good old days of the music hall experience.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Maria Lovelady, Eithne Browne, Christopher Jordan, Emma Dears, Jake Abraham, Tom Cawte, Roy Carruthers, Phil Hearne.
The taste of 1930s Britain so elegantly captured in Helen Forrester’s Twopence To Cross The Mersey is arguably more palpable, more authentic than any text book that might go on at length to describe the after effects of the Great Depression on those caught in its wake and the sacrifice many individuals had to face just to survive; it is genuine, touching, brutal and one that still pervades the modern era and the way its shapes politics today.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jake Abraham, Eithne Browne, Suzanne Collins, Lindzi Germain, Angela Simms, Alan Stocks, Lenny Wood.
The world is a harsh place at times, not everybody plays by the same rules and those who are fair, honest and upright in their morals are the ones forever being treated like dirt, that they have the very will to continue offering the service they do is a measure of their honour, that they refuse to be stitched up by those kicking against them a sign of their trustworthy and good nature.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Ruth Alexander Rubin, Eithne Browne, Dennis Conlon, Annie Edwards, Greg Fossard, Hayley Hampson, Phil Hearne, Paul Kissaun, Olwen Rees.
It is a question of definition, of how your generation will be remembered, not by the politics it suffered or the times they live through, but by the music that they send up the charts and the beat they constructed in alleyways, clubs and bars. Music is the beat of the heart and if the heart keeps pumping then the music stays alive and in Dave Simpson’s gentle but absorbing musical comedy, The Golden Oldies, music is not just the food of love, it is the art that keeps all staying alive.
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 * * * * *
Cast: Eithne Browne, Helen Carter, Paul Duckworth, Michael Fletcher, Rachael Rae, Andrew Schofield, Alan Stocks, Keddy Sutton, Jamie Hampson, Hayley Hampson.
Musicians: Emily Linden, Simeon Scheuber, Alex Smith, Lauren Williams.
One of the great musical comedies to have come out of Liverpool in the last few years has to be the outstanding Mam! I’m ‘Ere! Making its debut in the grand space of The Dome, it took audiences to a place where imagination and riotous laughter met, shook hands, frolicked in the winter cold and sent them home happier than a free weeks pass at a holiday camp with drink supplied.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jake Abrahams, Eithne Browne, Suzanne Collins, Michael Ledwich, Alan Stocks, Lenny Wood.
Confession and revelation is not confined to the unburdening of souls in the wooden box that adorns many a church, the simple act of sticking a paw out for a taxi when time, tide and the day is against you is perhaps arguably a more sincere way of getting the troubles of the soul purged, for the taxi driver hears all, sees all and unless you happen to become the topic of conversation which revolves around the words, “You’ll never guess who I had in the back of my cab last week”, then your secret torment, bad relationship, money troubles, who you would like to see bumped off, what you think of the council, all are kept secret.