Tag Archives: Liverpool

Voices 2, Theatre Review. 81 Renshaw Street, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Performers: Paul Taylor, Elaine Stewart, Edwina Lee, Esther Dix, James Bray, Helen Kerr.

Writers: Mark Anthony Rossi, Anthony Ellison, Mary Vigar, Sally Fildes-Moss, Mark Konik, Richard Lyon Conlon.

In September of 2013 Grin Theatre paved the way for a new way of looking at writing and performing in Liverpool with six monologues crafted by writers who weren’t known to the public. These six monologues formed the basis of the first Voices performed at 81 Renshaw Street. If something works as they say, keep going, and Kiefer Williams and Helen Kerr of Grin Theatre have done just that by hosting a very cool night of six different monologues for Voices 2, each individual, each creatively interesting and all carried out by the various performers’ voices with great care and reverence.

Voices 2, Theatre Review. 81 Renshaw Street, Liverpool. full post

(391 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Only Lovers Left Alive, Film Review. Fact Cinema, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin, Jeffry Wright, Slimane Dazi, Carter Logan, Aureile Thpaut, Cody Stauber, Kamal Moumad, Yasmine Hamden, Ali Arnine.

Where else would you find vampires consorting with the great Kit Marlow, where a man who has lived for centuries has inspired and guided some of the great musicians in human history, where melancholy reigns with perverse glee and in which the layered messages of moral vampires go hand in hand with a judgement of humanity’s ever increasing faults but in the cinema.

Only Lovers Left Alive, Film Review. Fact Cinema, Liverpool. full post

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

The Book Thief, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Roger Allam, Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, Heike Makatch, Julian Lehmann, Gotthard Lange, Rainer Reiners, Kirsten Block, Nico Liersch, Ludger Bökelmann, Paul Schaefer, Nozomi Linus Kaisar, Oliver Stokowski, Robert Beyer, Hildegard Schroedter, Levin Liam, Ben Schnetzer, Sandra Nedeleff, Rafael Gareisen, Carl Heinz Choynski, Carina N. Wiese, Stephanie Stremler, Rainer Bock, Sebastian Hülk, Barbara Auer, Matthias Matschke, Jan Andres.

When Death speaks, it is wise to listen…

The Book Thief, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool. full post

(661 words, estimated 2:39 mins reading time)

Punt And Dennis: Ploughing On Regardless. Comedy Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Clever comedy used to be sneered at, it would be seen by some as the preserve of a university system that was, possibly rightly, too elite for many to understand. Perhaps with the great timing that the Cosmos affords us, the only creatures on the planet that deal in time as a concept rather than just the way of marking the difference between night and day or when to mate and eat and die, the 20^th Anniversary of the legendary American Bill Hicks’ passing has been more kind to this type of humour.

Punt And Dennis: Ploughing On Regardless. Comedy Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(474 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

Penguin Cafe, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.

Penguin cafe at The Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There may well have been more instruments on stage than you would find in the front window of a well-stocked music shop and more performers on stage than you would notes on a piano but each one was more than needed to give the rich, almost delicate sound demanded by the ensemble of musicians that make up the very talented and very cool Penguin Café.

Penguin Cafe, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(430 words, 1 image, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

The Twang, Gig Review. o2 Academy, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Any band that can survive the pre-Christmas atmosphere of The Rainbow in the area of Birmingham called Digbeth, a place in which poets have trembled and the packets of pork scratchings come with their own serving suggestion, will always surely go down well in Liverpool. The Twang exemplify the bridge, the mutual love in that does exist between the cities of Liverpool and Birmingham, especially when it comes to decent, well performed music.

The Twang, Gig Review. o2 Academy, Liverpool. full post

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

Mike Peters, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool. (2014)

Mike Peters in Liverpool 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Almost 30 years to the day since the album Declaration was released, Mike Peters found himself once more inside the 02 Academy and was greeted by all who wouldn’t let a rainstorm get in the way of listening to one of the greats of British Rock. Not greeted, lauded perhaps would be a better word, even praised and rightly so.

Mike Peters, Gig Review. 02 Academy, Liverpool. (2014) full post

(856 words, 1 image, estimated 3:25 mins reading time)

The Chairs, Theatre Review. St. George’s Hall Concert Room, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Leanne Jones, Paula Stewart, Donna Ray Coleman, Christine Heaney, Laura Hall, Lucy Graham, Dan Pendleton, Jack Spencer, Lee Burnitt, Shaun Roberts, Bradley Thompson, Alex Clark, Tom Nevitt.

Tell Tale Theatre have already carved out a growing reputation as a production company that doesn’t adhere to the norm, the cosy or thankfully the easy to do. Their production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a glowing testament to that fact, and where angels fear to tread, where other’s might find the ever growing trickle of sweat just too much to bear, Tell Tale Theatre wrack up the pressure on themselves another notch and produce an amazing piece of choreographed art, full of absurdity, lots of insanity and above all tale of what can happen to us all if left alone in the dark too long.

The Chairs, Theatre Review. St. George’s Hall Concert Room, Liverpool. full post

(458 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Sunday Postscript, An Interview With Pauline Black Of The Selecter.

Every generation gets the music they deserve. As with politicians, it can be a blessing or a curse visited upon those growing up between the time of leaving junior school and the post teenage years and finding music either a godsend or hindrance to their lives. For those who just avoided the golden period of Progressive Rock and were not bothered with the happy go lucky feel of a three minute song that really didn’t have a message there was always Punk and Ska and one of the leading lights of the latter has to be the gracious lead vocalist of Ska favourites The Selecter, Pauline Black.

Liverpool Sound And Vision: The Sunday Postscript, An Interview With Pauline Black Of The Selecter. full post

(1309 words, estimated 5:14 mins reading time)

The Dallas Buyers Club, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Steve Zahn, Dallas Roberts, Michael O’Neil, Denis O’Hare, Griffin Dune, John Tabler, Jane McNeill, James DuMont, Bradford Cox, Kevin Rankin, Lawrence Turner, Matthew Thompson, Adam Dunn, Ian Cassleberry.

A lot has been made of the fact that actor Matthew McConaughey lost an incredible amount of weight to portray foul mouthed, bull riding cowboy, AIDS sufferer Ron Woodruff in the film The Dallas Buyers Club that it almost seems to have detracted from the real point of an exceptionally made film. The redemption of a man from completely unlikeable, homophobic and intolerant person at the start to somebody you would be able to sit down and have a conversation with without wanting to take to task.

The Dallas Buyers Club, Film Review. FACT Cinema, Liverpool. full post

(584 words, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)