Tag Archives: Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre

A Raisin In The Sun, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating: * * *

Cast: Alisha Bailey, Mike Burnside, Solomon Gordon, Angela Wynter, Aron Julius, Everal A Walsh, Susan Wokoma, Ashley Zhangazha.

Lorraine Hansberry, American playwright and activist wrote A Raisin in the Sun in 1959 and was the first black woman to write a play that was performed on Broadway. The play highlights the struggles of black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago and follows the story of the Youngers; a lower middle class family who struggle to gain middle class acceptance.

A Raisin In The Sun, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(332 words, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

I Am Thomas, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: John Cobb, Charlie Folorunsho, Amanda Hadingue, Iain Johnstone, Myra McFadyen, Hannah McPake, Dominic Marsh, John Pfumojena.

The state sanctioned death of a person who argues or probes the idea that there is no God seems an abhorrence to modern day British society, after all the freedom to question is one that we rightly hang onto with dogged grip, that must never be allowed to slip through our fingers lest dark days revisit the land; the freedom to assert a position against a God, monarchy and ruling classes is something that a more enlightened age must strive to keep.

I Am Thomas, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(453 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Lord Of The Flies, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Luke Ward Wilkinson, Anthony Roberts, Freddie Watkins, Keenan Munn-Francis, Thiago Pigatto, Fellipe Pigatto, Dylan Llewellyn, Michael Ajao, Yossi Goodlink, Matthew Castle, Guy Abrahams, Benedict Barker.

Lord Of The Flies, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(466 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

The Haunting Of Hill House, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Emily Bevan, Chipo Chung, Angela Clerkin, Jane Guernier, Joseph May, Martin Turner.

Houses have a symbolism all of their own and they also carry the weight of expectation with them. A home should be the place where a person feels safest of all, where once the door is locked and the lights go out, nothing real or imagined should be able to disturb the peace.

The Haunting Of Hill House, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(389 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

The Winter’s Tale, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Conrad Nelson, Russell Richardson, Andy Cryer, Jack Lord, Hannah Barrie, Vanessa Schofield, Lauryn Redding, Andrew Whitehead, Jordan Kemp, Adam Barlow, Ruth Alexander Rubin, Mike Hugo, Jessica Dyas.

You can always trust Time to deliver a verdict that reconciles the world when it is damaged just as you can trust Time to play with the misfortunes of men when it suits to teach them a lesson for the insanity and jealous ravings.

The Winter’s Tale, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

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

The Flare Path, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Leon Ockenden, Olivia Hallinan, Philip Franks, Adam Best, James Cooney, Simon Darwen, Stephanie Jacob, Shvorne Marks, Siobhan O’ Kelly, William Reay, Holly Smith, Alastair Whatley.

The Second World War asked a lot of the men and women of Britain, of Germany and the greater population of the world, it asked of them for sacrifice, of more resilience than at any time and in many ways to be more selfish in the face of adversity; it is a selfishness of spirit, to not give in despite overwhelming odds and face the world with a smile. It is this selfishness, or at least a singular part of it, that sits at the heart of Terrance Rattigan’s World War Two drama The Flare Path.

The Flare Path, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(470 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

The Glass Menagerie, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Eric Kofi Abrefa, Erin Doherty, Tom Mothersdale, Greta Scacchi.

If you can place human experience into the realms of the zoo, the caged animal yearning for freedom, an escape from the rigid and the pawed upon control that comes with the overpowering smell that lingers with the cruelly defeated and gazed upon, then that tightness, that crushed inevitability of life’s cruel illusion is only tempered by the huge cosmic joke played upon us all and perhaps arguably no play best typifies this than Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie.

The Glass Menagerie, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(448 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Nina Conti, In Your Face. Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

A night at the theatre can mean many different things to different people. To educate, to entertain, to allow a sarcastic monkey the reason to be adored are perhaps just three out of a multitude of reasons that the crowd who piled in with beaming faces and who left the Playhouse Theatre in a state of comedy fulfilment would have come to see and take part in.

Nina Conti, In Your Face. Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(440 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

The Hudsucker Proxy, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Rob Castell, Nick Cavaliere, Tamzin Griffin, Sinead Matthews, Joseph Timms, David Webber, Tim Lewis, Simon Dormandy.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts…well not quite absolutely, especially when Time and the clockman are on your side.

However fleeting Time is, when naked ambition and naivety meet corporate greed and rank stupidity, Time is not adverse to having a laugh at the expense of the system so proudly held up as the shining beacon in which to chase a profit is seen as good. To knock someone the moment they have delivered that fortune seen as even better and in which some boardrooms up and down the country of late have saw fit to rival. It only takes one man though to make a mockery of it and The Hudsucker Proxy is born.

The Hudsucker Proxy, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

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

Birdsong, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Edmund Wiseman, Emily Bowker, Selma Brook, Max Bowden, Cloudia Swann, Peter Duncan, Emily Altneu, James Staddon, Liam McCormick, Roger Martin, Alastair Whatley, James Findlay.

Even in the foul grip of war, there must be a love that carries the soldier across the boundary between the stench of perpetual death and the sanity that is provided by having something to live for. Love in the midst of war is what keeps the thoughts of ordinary men from turning into barbarians and for those who do the fighting, whether above ground, on the fields of No Man’s Land or in the tunnels, love can be the saving point. Love is a peculiar Birdsong.

Birdsong, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(564 words, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)