Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: David Judge, John McGrellis, Ged McKenna, Molly Taylor.
The world is forever changing, no sooner have you got to grips with one situation than another comes along to take yet another swipe at you and push you to the brink. Such is the world of Scrappers and those living in a world in which is always under threat by new methods.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There is something of the endearing quality to Nina Conti and her ventriloquist act that just makes the audience fall in love with her. The rather special talent that drives a person to perform with a sarcastic monkey or an eight year old inner child on their arms and get away with the most irreverent sayings all in the case of entertainment is one to admired and nurtured.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Not even a fire alarm going off with the manner of absurd authority can challenge the influence that Mark Thomas has on his fans and followers, for a brief time the Bandstand in Williamson Square became his stage as he gave an impromptu talk on some of the laws areas would pass up and down the country if the people truly had their own manifesto. In other hands the slight turn of events could have been a painful but Mark Thomas is nothing but a man with a plan, a man who doesn’t let convention get in the way of a great radical thought and in his own way he turned a moment of audience despair into perhaps a brilliant act of dissent.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Adam Best, Mabel Clements, George Costigan, Amiera Darwish, Chris Donald, Cate Hamer, Jessica Hardwick, John Paul Hurley, Jack Lord, Obioma Ugoala.
There are moments in theatre where the ugly head of jealousy might just rear up within an audience member and show the person what they could have achieved if they were so minded. The chance to write, direct or even perform in a production of Crime And Punishment that is so magnificent, so constant in its relentless look at the way poverty, crime and descending psychosis, that even to have pulled the curtain up at the start of the play would have been an enormous thrill.
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel, will be staged this autumn at the Liverpool Playhouse with George Costigan as detective Porfiry whose suspicions about a double murder lead him to play’s main protagonist, student Raskolnikov, played by Adam Best. This new adaptation by Chris Hannan is directed by Glasgow Citizens Theatre Artistic Director Dominic Hill and will be at the Playhouse from Tuesday 1st to Saturday 19th October.
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.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Barrie Rutter, Nicholas Shaw, Andrew Grose, Sara Poyzer, Kate Anthony, Catherine Kinsella, Richard Standing, Gilly Tompkins.
Not for nothing was Githa Sowerby compared to Henrik Ibsen, the father of theatre realism. Her play Rutherford & Son was a powerful statement in a world where the writing of a female playwright was not expected to be as bold, so groundbreaking in its fury at a world that put male pride and arrogance before the thought of the family. The absolute realism she bought to her characters, especially that of the bombastic and near tyrannical father John Rutherford, the anguish and near heart breaking life of his daughter Janet and that of the stranger to the house, the woman who makes the Faustian-like pact with her father-in-law when all else around her goes awry, the woman whose head for business sees her keep a roof over her head, the young Mary.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: James Bolt, Phil Cheadle, Tilly Gaunt, Adrian Grove, Joanna Holden, David Nellist, Christopher Price.
It may not be considered as the pinnacle of Dennis Potter’s career as a playwright, that surely goes to the plays Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective but Blue Remembered Hills is certainly a Potter classic and one that shows that cruelty is not just confined to the adult world in which the backdrop of the Second World War rages but resides within us all from birth.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Paul Duckworth, Graham Geoffrey Hicks, Shaun Mason.
Sink or Swim, a play conceived from falling in love with a postcard and with the care and attention that productions deserve, has grown up to be one of the funniest, enjoyable and thought provoking plays likely to be seen this year.
The Studio upstairs at The Playhouse Theatre added the claustrophobic weight needed to give the three actors, the sublime Paul Duckworth, the charming Graham Geoffrey Hicks and the impressive Shaun Mason, the lack of room on stage to make Sink Or Swim a production that sees into men’s souls and how they deal with the most extreme part of survival.
Pauline Daniels, Ged McKenna in Held. Photograph by Christian Smith.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Pauline Daniels, Ged McKenna, Alan Stocks.
The idea of losing someone piece by piece, memory by bittersweet memory is one that no human being ever wants to contemplate, its implications and devastating results can break apart families whilst the person who slowly moves further and further away cannot help in anyway. Such was the authoritative writing of Joe Ward Munrow and the directing of the creatively astute Lorne Campbell in Held, that the heart was pulled in many different directions as the audience empathised and felt sympathy for each character.