Tag Archives: Liverpool

That’s Amore, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Adam Davies, Eleni Edipidi, Jennifer Essex, Ross McCall, Caroline Ryder (voice)

Love is a many splendid thing – it can make the soul rise higher than thought imaginable, it can bring a person down to their knees as the situation of their plight becomes untenable. It can fill the heart with infatuation to the point where boundaries are cross, it can shelter and care for another with absolute clarity. Love takes all that you have and leaves you cold and distant, it makes the world seem a brighter and more approachable place, whatever the outcome, no matter who cupid’s arrow’s decided to strike within, whoever you fall in love with, nobody understands the turmoil and feeling of power you feel at that moment, That’s Amore after all.

That’s Amore, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(436 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement. An Interview With Paul Dunbar Of The Midnight Ramble.

The Unity Theatre in Liverpool has long been a home for the adventurous and the glorious. It has been and will hopefully always be the place in which the avant-garde shakes hands with the rebellious and in which the seditious, defiant revolutions can start.

These revolutions may be small, they may be missed by the greater good and the world in general but they take place none the less and alongside the plays and productions that take place within its two theatre spaces and even a nod to Kerouac having been filmed within its walls, it is music that carries the revolution nod gently along.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Saturday Supplement. An Interview With Paul Dunbar Of The Midnight Ramble. full post

(1622 words, estimated 6:29 mins reading time)

Inherent Vice, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Joanna Newsom, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Reece Witherspoon, Jordan Christian Hearn, Taylor Bonin, Jeannie Berlin, Eric Roberts, Serena Scott Thomas, Maya Rudolph, Martin Dew, Michael Kenneth Williams, Hong Chau, Shannon Collis, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, Martin Short, Sasha Pieterse.

Inherent Vice, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool. full post

(547 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Black, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre Studio, Liverpool.

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.

Black, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre Studio, Liverpool. full post

(529 words, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

Hayseed Dixie, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool.

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.

Hayseed Dixie, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool. full post

(561 words, 1 image, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

The Jokers, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool.

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.

The Jokers, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool. full post

(555 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Blame The Wolves, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool.

Blame The Wolves, Zanzibar, Liverpool. January 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It must be the cry of half the population of the Black Country, one that they rejoice in and the other side decries with shouts of foul play before coming back with their own retort as their football scarves flutter wildly with expectation and grim determination. Yet somewhere in the unfairly called outback of Cheshire, Blame The Wolves has a different, more life affirming and tuneful approach mantra and as they appeared on stage at Zanzibar, the Saturday damp air mingling with revellers and drinkers realising just how long and arguably how bitter a personality January has, Blame The Wolves smashed down the door, made a movement towards the fireplace and made an appreciative audience howl with glee.

Blame The Wolves, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. full post

(434 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Mike Flaherty, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool.

Mike Flaherty at Zanzibar, Liverpool. January 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

The word interesting is one of the befuddled words that has changed its meaning over the years as each generation turns the English language inside out and makes it its own. Interesting and sick are two that seem to have almost swapped places as if in a Mark Twain historical novel and yet to those who see the words as they originally intended, interesting is a thing of beauty that is motivating and worthy of note and that certainly applies to the presence and appealing magnitude that resides in the soul of Mike Flaherty.

Mike Flaherty, Gig Review. Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. full post

(365 words, 1 image, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Testament Of Youth, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Alice Vikander, Kit Harington, Dominic West, Emily Watson, Colin Morgan, Hayley Atwell, Taron Egerton, Miranda Richardson, Joanna Scanlan, Niamh Cusack, Anna Chancellor, Jonathan Thurlow, Charlotte Hope, Henry Garrett, Daisy Waterstone, Harry Atwell, Nicholas Le Prevost, Nicholas Farrell.

The Testament of Youth is such that it carries more weight at times than the blinkered, narrow-minded view point of a generation that doesn’t see the damage it has wrought.

Testament Of Youth, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool. full post

(594 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

This Last Tempest, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Jessica Hoffman, Richard Dufty, Neil Johnson.

There will always hopefully be adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays in one form or another, the 1960s television series The Forbidden Planet is one such form in which the son of Stratford play The Tempest has been looted and perhaps in some ways abused; it is the nature of things that great works, in some cases legendary, can either be taken down with a sense of cruel irony or, as in the case of This Last Tempest, just enhance what has gone before.

This Last Tempest, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(510 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)