The Rivals - Liverpool Playhouse - 06/10/2016

Director Dominic Hill gave us a good view of the backstage workings of the Playhouse in his 2013 Crime and Punishment, and he begins this new staging of Sheridan’s 18th century comedy with a similarly bare stage, soon to be filled with the various elements of Tom Rogers' evocative set.

Everything about this production, including the chairs, is like a series of picture frames; an art gallery being constantly hung and re-hung with vividly lit tableaux. The performers in lavish costumes are directed in a way that turns every scene into a stunning visual image. Amidst the period garb and enormous wigs, Hill throws in some witty anachronisms with the props to remind us that the misogyny of the story is not as dated as it might at first appear.

But the show is not solely a treat for the eyes. As Mrs Malaprop might say, the text and its delivery are the very pineapple of perfection. The entire cast have enormous fun with their lines, tripping out the sharp wit of this comedy of manners at a rattling pace.

Desmond Barritt as Sir Anthony Absolute tries to persuade his son Jack (Rhys Rusbatch) that he must marry a wealthy young lady chosen for him in order to lay hands on her fortune, whether he cares for her or not. “If you have an estate you must take it with the livestock as it stands” he is told. What neither know is that the chosen woman is the girl Jack is secretly wooing, Lydia Languish, disguising himself as a poor serviceman, Ensign Beverley. When this becomes clear he goes on to regain his father’s favour by pretending that he will consent to marry purely to appease him.

The plot is filled with all the deceptions and intrigues of the genre, and the writing is generous with opportunities for all Sheridan’s characters to revel in its telling.

The entire ensemble produce splendid performances, but highlights must be Julie Legrand’s wilting Mrs Malaprop, with all her vocal confusions, and Desmond Barritt’s pompous Sir Anthony. The real show-stealer is Lucy Briggs-Owen, whose Lydia Languish lilts and swoons about the stage, arms flapping and hands fluttering, like something out of Ab-Fab or Made in Chelsea, with the vocal characterisation to match.

Atmosphere is completed with splendidly done lighting from Howard Hudson and subtle music played on a harpsichord placed to the rear of the stage.

Despite its vintage text and period setting, The Rivals feels bang up to date in Hill’s light handed, fleet of foot presentation, which is full of laughter but still packs a punchy message.

The Rivals runs at the Playhouse until Saturday 29th October.

Lucy Briggs-Owen in The Rivals - Photo (C) Mark Douet

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Toward the Somme - Liverpool Playhouse - 13/06/2016

Frank McGuinness’s play was first performed at Dublin’s Peacock Theatre in 1985 and won him the Most Promising Playwright award from the London Evening Standard – an accolade he has since richly lived up to.

This touring revival is co-produced by the Peacock’s sister the Abbey, with Headlong, Citizen’s Glasgow and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, and coincides with the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.
This is indeed a piece very much about a group of soldiers heading toward the battlefield; about the men themselves and not the conflict that has driven them together. Eight members of the 36th Ulster Division slowly congregate in the barracks for the first time and begin to unfold their individual back-stories. The narrative is seen through the memory of Kenneth Pyper, whose older self opens with an extended monologue in which we find him haunted forever by the ghosts of his past in lifelong survivor-guilt. Slipping back to their first meeting, the work follows them as they discover each other’s fears and passions, learn to accept their differences and train to face the horror that awaits them.

This play makes an interesting bookend to The Night Watch, currently playing at Manchester’s Royal Exchange. In that 2nd World War drama, a predominantly female cast of characters discover that the pressures of conflict bring a new urgency to expressing their individuality. In Observe The Sons, an all male cast similarly discover an exaggerated need to forget the things that make them different and find some sort of camaraderie. Both plays explore aspects of characters that at once draw them together and force them apart.

Donal Gallery gives a fearless performance as young Pyper, an angry young man who’s hard to warm to with his defensive manner, but who can’t escape the affection of Enniskillen blacksmith David Craig, played by Ryan Donaldson.

McGuinness writes dialogue with tremendous power, and this is a work in which anger and reconciliation vie with each other in a simmering cocktail of emotions. The piece is slow to develop, and it’s only in the second act that one really begins to see the full extent of its genius. Jeremy Herrin directs with perhaps a little too much delicacy, but does achieve a great sense of the impending threat that looms ahead as we march toward the inevitable.

The fine cast are contained in a spare but atmospheric set from Ciaran Bagnall, on which Paul Keogan’s lighting paints some spectacular pictures.


Observe The Sons of Ulster Marching Toward the Somme runs at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 25th June, after which it continues touring throughout the UK and Ireland.

Production photograph (C) Johan Persson

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool

The Merry Wives - Northern Broadsides at Liverpool Playhouse - 24/05/2016

It's wall-to-wall Shakespeare this year as we mark 400 years since his death, and companies are doing their best to ring the changes by programming some of the less frequently performed works. One such is The Merry Wives of Windsor, a comedy said by some to have been written to please Elizabeth I who wanted to see something else with Falstaff in it.

The Merry Wives has become far more popular in various operatic adaptations from Verdi to Vaughan Williams, and there’s some reason for this, as it is hardly the strongest of Shakespeare’s comedies. The plot is a bit on the thin side and its characters can become caricatures, but it is a jolly romp nonetheless, so a seemingly good choice for Northern Broadsides who do like to keep things lively. It’s also a return to something more in their house style than their astonishingly well-crafted Lear a year ago or the wonderfully imagined Winter’s Tale last autumn.

This is vintage Barrie Rutter, playing the part of Falstaff not for the first time. The bluster and bombast of the character could have been written for him, although somehow he doesn’t quite achieve the pathos that exists in the part quite as he did in his understated Lear.

Rutter directs a fine cast on a sparsely decorated stage, which suggests art deco in its wooden trees, helping to place the action in the 1920s. “Windsor” has been omitted from the title for this production, which sets the play somewhere above a line through Liverpool and Mablethorpe. The fops and flappers have a variety of accents suggesting a generic, affable northernness.

Strong performances come from Tom Dyer Blake and Andrew Vincent as Shallow and Ford and Adam Barlow, Jos Vantyler and Ben Burman as Nim, Slender and Pistol. The show belongs, however, to the Merry Wives themselves, played with unrestrained glee by Nicola Sanderson and Becky Hindley.

Not the finest piece of Shakespeare you’ll ever witness, but the writing sees to that, and apart from a few saggy episodes the whole thing trips along as merrily as the title decrees, and it makes for an enjoyable evening.

Becky Hindley, Barrie Rutter & Nicola Sanderson - Photo © Nobby Clarke

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

The Complete Deaths – Spymonkey at Liverpool Playhouse - 20/05/2016

When physical theatre troupe Spymonkey decided to take on Shakespeare together with writer/director Tim Crouch, they soon hit on the idea of collecting together every onstage death from the entire canon. Lunacy you may think, and it is, but of the inspired variety.

Toby Park begins by explaining that it is only the onstage deaths that will be covered, so no Lady Macbeth, no Antigonus pursued by a bear and no Ophelia, much to the dismay of Petra Massey who fancied herself drowning. However, this does leave some 75 deaths to enact, if we include the ill-favour’d fly from Titus Andronicus, and so the play moves on at a fair pace, with a scythe-equipped score-counter keeping track of the numbers on the forestage.

Some of the deaths are despatched at speed, at one point Stephan Kreis performs King John and Hamlet’s Gonzago simultaneously, but others are done with more lingering relish. Half the cast of Titus Andronicus are fed into a giant mincing machine, and Romeo and Juliet expire in a splendidly absurd suicide pact atop an upturned stock trolley. There is music too, with a lavishly costumed production number for Cleopatra’s demise that would not have looked out of place at Eurovision (methinks it would have gained more points than Joe and Jake). Another wonderfully contrived piece of surprise musicality is in the beating to death of hector by a mob armed with foam insulation tubes, cleverly cut to length so as to be musically tuned. Surely this must be the only time a Yazoo song will turn up in Shakespeare?

Throughout, Aitor Basauri strives in vain to be a “great Shakespearian actor”. The bard appears to him in repeated visions, advising him to “Always stand with your legs apart, roll your ‘R’s and spit when you speak”. Aitor takes him at his word and there is strutting, rolling and spitting in abundance, much to his co-stars’ confusion. There is also much gleeful confusion with language, including Aitor’s mistaken interpretation of Polonius being stabbed through the arras.

Add small paper puppets on a tabletop for Cinna the poet and shadow puppetry for the smothering of Desdemona, and all that’s left is the inclusion of flies – lots of flies – more tiny puppets that we see as they are followed by a live camera feed to a big screen.

Tim Crouch has tried to inject some moments of serious reflection into the piece, but Spymonkey’s madcap humour combined with infectious collaboration from the audience ensures that the whole evening is joyously bonkers.

Performances of The Complete Deaths at Liverpool Playhouse this weekend are part of a national and international tour, which continues with dates presently scheduled up to November.

Image (c) John Hunter for RULER

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

Lord of the Flies - Liverpool Playhouse - 2/2/2016

Older audience members’ familiarity with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies will mostly be memories of school literature classes or of Peter Brook’s excellent 1963 film adaptation. Meanwhile, groups of Merseyside students on school theatre trips are in for a treat this week, as Regents Park Theatre present their touring version of Nigel Williams outstanding stage adaptation to Liverpool under the stylish direction of Timothy Sheader. Seeing the work brought so vividly to life will surely illuminate any connected coursework.
Set before a backdrop of forest it’s easy to imagine the piece in the open air setting of Regents Park, but although it has been brought indoors there have been few changes to the staging for the transfer. The theatre management must have taken a deep breath when they read the technical script for the production and saw how much use is made of fire onstage, but wait, I’m ahead of myself…
Entering the auditorium we’re greeted by wreckage of a plane on a beach, its broken fuselage and wing sections dominating the stage, and mountains of luggage spilling beyond the proscenium. The obvious drama of Jon Bausor’s stage design perfectly sets the scene for Goldings allegorical tale.
It’s the casting, though, that makes this production really work. Most of the actors are a little older than they appear, but they have clearly been chosen for their ability to be believable as teenagers, as well as for their considerable acting talent. Especially strong are the central trio of Ralph, Jack, and Piggy, played by Luke Ward-Wilkinson, Freddie Watkins and Anthony Roberts. Ward-Wilkinson really captures the philosophical nature of Ralph and Roberts’ Piggy has tremendous appeal, while Watkins is genuinely terrifying as his Jack spirals into a lust for power and control. Another piece of casting that seems an obvious choice, but is probably no mean feat to achieve, is the appearance of twin brothers Thiago and Fellipe Pigatto in the roles of Sam ’n Eric, their apparent fraternal telepathy making the unison text delivery very slick indeed. Three children share the role of Perceval, and Benedict Barker inhabited the part with huge confidence on Tuesday.
The entire cast perform with boundless energy, utilising every inch and level of the sculptural set. As the play progresses, more and more parts of the airplane wreckage disintegrate along with the law and order that Piggy and Ralph try in vain to wrest back from Jack and his increasingly savage band of hunters. Fire, stolen from the sun with Piggy’s glasses, becomes both a bid for rescue and the demonstration of a quest for control, and its early refusal to be tamed makes for some nail-biting theatre.
The central tragedy of Piggy’s murder is cleverly adapted to balance palatability with horror, and the suddenness of the ending as rescue arrives is as arresting as it is in the source novel, a stark shift in lighting emphasising the transformation back into frightened children.
Lord of the Flies is at the Playhouse until Saturday and then continues with a further 5 tour venues until 19th March.
This review was originally written for and published by Good News Liverpool.

Photo (c) Johan Persson

The Hudsucker Proxy Liverpool Playhouse 5th June 2015

Is Norville Barnes really gonna jelly-up the sidewalk?

You could spot audience members who knew Joel & Ethan Coen's film because they were the ones chortling to themselves a split second ahead of the delivery of the gags. Other than a neat theatrical framing using the prologue, Simon Dormandy has remained reverently faithful to much of the screen text and narrative in his adaptation for the stage, making a very theatrical piece of cinema into a very cinematic piece of theatre.

However, taking it as theatre in its own right, this new adaptation co-produced by Liverpool Everyman Playhouse and Nuffield Southampton (where it premiered last month) stands as legitimately on the stage as though it has been born there, and those who have not seen the original neednt feel they have to revise beforehand.

In a nutshell, and with as few spoilers as possible, when company president Waring Hudsucker takes a dive from the 44th floor of the Hudsucker building (45th if you count the mezzanine) the board replace him with the seemingly witless mailroom assistant Norville Barnes in order to depress the stock. When he comes up with a stroke of genius that foils their plans, they have to resort to desperate measures to achieve their goal.

Not only has Simon Dormandy written the adaptation and co-directed with Toby Sedgewick, but he has also had to step into the shoes of Clive Wood, who was to have played Vice President Sidney Mussberger before having to step down following an incident in rehearsals. If the play gets the continued life it deserves beyond its current run we may yet get to find out what Clive Wood made of the role but, as it is, its hard to imagine a better fit for the part than Dormandy. For the same reason Tim Lewis, whose lead character is the lift-operator Buzz, adeptly takes a role originally rehearsed by Liverpool's own Nathan McMullen.

There are some excellent characterisations from a cast who all play multiple parts, and its hard to pick highlights, but watch out for Rob Castell's astonishingly malleable face, Tamsin Griffin's platinum blonde, Nick Cavaliere's swagger, David Webber's all knowing clock man Moses, and Sinead Matthews' wily but affecting Amy Archer.

Holding it all together is a magnetic central performance by Joseph Timms as Norville Barnes, whose fortunes rise and fall faster than the elevator. He is brilliantly cast in the part and fills the role with naive optimism and tremendous energy.

The production is made in association with Complicite, whose trademark physicality is visible in so many scenes, and the inventiveness of movement and the deft use of props and performance space keeps the piece rattling along with as much precision and clockwork as the great timepiece at the top of the Hudsucker building.

The look of the play is every bit as stylish as the acting is slick with Dick Bird's complex set, in which physical scenery blends with mapped video projection from Tim Bird. This allows for some brilliant cinematic touches, such as the rolling of the presses as a news item hits the front page. It also means that scene changes are as seamless as if they were on the screen. The whole look and feel captures the era perfectly.

Apply the final gloss of lighting and sound design from Paul Keogan and Gareth Fry and what you get is almost 2 hours of fast-paced theatre that delivers a morality tale with its tongue firmly in its cheek and is a joy to watch.

The Hudsucker Proxy continues at Liverpool Playhouse until 27th June.

Joseph Timms - Photo © Clare Park

The Absence of War – Liverpool Playhouse – 24/03/2015

"We need not waste time on the design of the envelope, so long as we trust the document inside"

Politicians thrive on conflict, and there’s nothing like a threat to national security to get them mounting their high horses but, in the absence of war, what is there to galvanise them to a cause and show their mettle?

Recent controversy over the relative willingness of various political leaders to take part in televised debate has once again made me despair that the people I want running the country are the ones with sound policies and the ability to carry them through, not those who polish up best and make good television personalities. I frankly couldn’t care less if an MP or a Prime Minister looks smart and has slick answers for Jeremy Paxman, and I suspect that George Jones would agree with me.

George who? I hear you ask...

David Hare’s play is over 22 years old, but sadly the issues it raises seem almost more relevant today than when it first appeared shortly after the failure of Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party to win the 1992 election. Hare was keen at the time to state that his play was not a portrait of that election, albeit based on research he did during the campaign. It is nonetheless very hard not to see it that way in retrospect.

Moreover today’s audience would be forgiven for seeing more than a few parallels between George Jones and certain other people who are struggling with their public image as they try to focus on the politics rather than the packaging.

George Jones is the leader of the opposition in David Hare’s Labour party, and he is up against Charles Kendrick, Prime Minister, who calls an election with no notice, throwing Jones’s campaign office into a panic. “You lot, you’re the maids” he says to his team “And as in Moliere you’re all of a tizz in order that I may be calm”. The role of the theatre loving party leader was played in its original incarnation by John Thaw, who famously made his professional debut on the boards of the Liverpool Playhouse. Reece Dinsdale, who played Thaw’s on-screen son in Home to Roost, now recreates the part for this touring revival.

I recall seeing a somewhat younger Mr Dinsdale 32 years ago in a play with Peter Ustinov, and have been interested to see his face appear fairly regularly in various guises over the years. He was a jolly good sparkling wine back then. Nowadays he’s an altogether more full bodied red, and shows himself as a fine character actor here. George Jones’s heart is in the right place and he believes passionately in his party’s policies. Problem is that, by the time he has been through the PR polishing process in which every member of the team is trained in what to say and how to say it, he seems unable to remember what those policies are and ends up saying almost nothing.

There is a splendid scene in which he is interviewed by veteran broadcaster Linus Frank on his election special and crumbles horribly before our eyes. Linus Frank is played with wonderful gravitas by Don Galloway, who also fascinatingly doubles as Charles Kendrick, the statesmanlike but overbearing Prime Minister.

There is an excellent ensemble cast under the breakneck direction of Jeremy Herrin, and of particular note are very strong performances from Cyril Nri as political advisor Oliver Dix, Charlotte Lucas as Lindsay Fontaine, the PR adviser, Maggie McCarthy, George’s diary secretary Gwenda and James Harkness, his minder Andrew.

As we’d expect from Headlong, who have co-produced this production with Sheffield Theatres Crucible and Rose Theatre Kingston, there is very slick use of physical staging, light and sound. Translucent rectilinear screens and projections rise and fall in Mike Britton’s set and there’s a proliferation of 1990’s style TV monitors that provide alternative views of the action as would be seen by a TV audience. Tom Gibbons’ sound design incorporates some rousing music, including that specified in the text for the Cenotaph ceremonies, but also some rather chilling allusions to Götterdämmerung.

David Hare’s writing shows once more its enduring currency and genius and this is a revival that is as finely crafted as it is timely.

In the current tour The Absence of War has already played in Sheffield, Norwich, Watford, Bristol, and Cheltenham. It runs at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 28th March, after which it will continue as follows:

Citizen’s Theatre Glasgow - Tue 31 March – Sat 4 April 

Oxford Playhouse - Wed 8 – Sat 11 April 

Rose Theatre, Kingston - Tue 14 – Sat 25 April 

Cambridge Arts Theatre - Tue 28 April – Sat 2 May 

Theatre Royal Bath - Tue 5th – Sat 9th May

Don Gallagher and Reece Dinsdale - Photo (c) Mark Douet

Educating Rita – Liverpool Playhouse – 06/02/2015

Because we could sing better songs than those…

Educating Rita may not have been born on the Liverpool stage but it always feels as though it has its spiritual home here, and Gemma Bodinetz justifies her qualifications as an honorary Liverpudlian in reviving it at the Playhouse in its 35th birthday year. The bittersweet tale of a hairdresser, whose search for self-improvement brings her to a teacher who likes her just the way she is, remains a timeless piece of wistful comedy.

In casting the iconic character of “Rita” the Playhouse have scored a hit here with the welcome return of Leanne Best, who has already long won over Liverpool audiences in a broad range of roles and who set the stage alight with her incendiary performance in The Matchbox. She inhabits the part of Rita as though the lines were written for her and delivers it with an irrepressible energy. From the moment she bursts through the door of Frank’s study we know we have a classic Rita.

To balance Rita’s hunger for enlightenment we need something approaching apathy in Frank, and it must be tricky to find an actor who can convey his lugubrious disinterest while having sufficient wit and shabby charm to make us like him. Con O’Neill who, like the play, has a spiritual home in Liverpool, is another great choice. There’s something in the quality of his voice that sounds world weary to begin with, and he succeeds in bringing out the shambling aspect of the alcoholic academic with alarming aplomb. Like Rita, we need to get frustrated with Frank but still like him enough to want to keep coming back. O’Neill makes us feel that here is a man who really doesn’t like himself very much but remains stubbornly conceited.

Gemma Bodinetz in her programme note agrees with Willy Russell that if a play needs explaining it’s probably not doing its job. The writing, which has been fine-tuned by the author to ensure its clarity to a modern audience, delivers its message with refreshing directness and it would suffocate with over-working. The only suffocating going on in this production is that caused by the lack of fresh air in Frank’s study, and the performances feel organic and natural. The pivotal scene in which Rita explains why she couldn’t make the party seems like a real revelation to both characters.

We do like our circular reading rooms in Liverpool. Not content with them in our libraries we put them in our theatres too. Ellen Cairns gave us a Victorian panelled affair for Glen Walford’s 2002 Playhouse “Rita”, with a big window dominating the rear of the set. For this new production Conor Murphy has designed a timeless, stylised version of a study; an arc of bookcases with exaggerated perspective and concealed doors. The window (necessary for the narrative) is invisible until Mark Doubleday’s lighting creates it through the fourth wall, putting us in the grounds outside, looking in.

Projections onto the sloped ceiling not only create additional detail but also carry us through the scene transitions, while Peter Coyte’s music perfectly defines the passage of time between scenes, with hours and sometimes weeks going by in a matter of moments.

Educating Rita has come back home and runs at Liverpool Playhouse until Saturday 7th March.

Leanne Best & Con O'Neill - image (c) Stephen Vaughan

Sex and the Three Day Week – Liverpool Playhouse – 08/12/2014

When we were young and in love I thought the sun shone out of one end and butter wouldn’t melt in the other. Fifteen years of captivity later I admit it – I was wrong! 

Purists may question the necessity of creating a new version of a piece by Feydeau, but Stephen Sharkey describes his re-working of L’Hôtel du Libre Échange as “lovingly ripped off”, which says it all. Sex and the Three Day Week is a light-hearted comedy that doffs its cap to one of the great masters of 19th century theatrical farce, while resetting the action some 80 years forward to the miner’s strike and power cuts of the 1970s.

The marriages of two neighbouring couples have fallen into a rut. Philip is hen-pecked by his “little kommandant” Angela, while Catherine is frustrated because her husband Robert admits he only married her so he didn’t have to waste time on “all that”. Cue plans for a dirty weekend for Philip and Catherine. What they don’t bargain for is the appearance at the Paradise Hotel of not only Robert, but his nephew Ben, their own French maid Fanny and an elderly friend Mrs Mayhew with her menagerie à trois*.

Throw in a resident sex worker with a striking resemblance to Angela, a black market coalman and a visit from the vice squad and there’s little chance left for the night of passion Philip had planned.

Stephen Sharkey has not only mapped all the original Feydeau characters onto his own suburban cast, but has also wittily mirrored key comedy plot points, such as finding an alternative to sticking Philip’s head in the fireplace to get him covered in soot, and here it’s thunder rather than rain that triggers Mrs Mayhew’s unfortunate speech impediment.

Whilst Sharkey’s text follows Feydeau in a three act format, director Serdar Bilis has wisely placed his single interval a short way into act 2, using two short entr’actes played out on the apron to cover the scene changes. The slow burning first act sets everything up before the farce really kicks in, and we get a taster of what’s to come later between the scene change and the interval. The second part is longer but moves a lot faster and contains the majority of the traditional farcical devices.

Both Edward Harrison as Philip and David Birrell as Robert give tremendous physical performances, while Natalie Casey’s Angela and Holly are splendidly characterised, and she too hurls herself about the stage with fearless abandon. The last time I saw Casey on stage was in Abigail’s Party a couple of years ago, and here she demonstrates again her huge talent for larger than life comic performance.

The keystone in the piece has to be the conniving but hapless hotelier Sebastian, for whom Javier Marzan is a brilliant piece of casting. While Sharkey has shamelessly (and intentionally) fused together some of his favourite comedy creations from the 1970s for this role, Marzan makes it his own, and he holds the stage and plays the audience with tremendous panache.

There are returns to the Everyman & Playhouse ensemble from recent regulars Eileen O’Brien and Robin Morrissey. Morrisey’s long-limbed frame and his flair for playing awkwardness work well for the gawky Ben, pursued by Lucy Phelps’ wickedly seductive Fanny (sorry). Meanwhile Eileen O’Brien has spiced up some of Sharkey’s writing, and some of her malapropisms as Miss Mayhew, while a little bizarre, sound all the funnier for falling from her lips. If Sebastian has a slice of Fawlty Towers’ Manuel in him, then there is more than a little of Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby in O’Brien’s Miss Mayhew.

Catrin Allen is a suitably quailing Catherine, sapped of all self esteem by her inattentive husband and hiding behind frumpy hair and glasses, but we suspect a passion beats within if Philip can only rekindle it.  Graeme Rooney ably fills a series of smaller roles, defined by a range of accents and costumes and a wig that makes a bid for freedom. Ken Dodd voices Miss Mayhew’s Mynah and I love the nifty way that he manages to get a curtain call along with the rest of the cast.

Clever settings by Hannah Clark enable us to see into the rooms of the seedy Paradise Hotel and even zoom in on the action when needed. Look out for some lovely business with a broken chair, which laughs at the suspension of belief the set requires.

Sex and the Three Day Week keeps audiences laughing pretty much from the start and is just the thing for a cold winter evening when you feel like a laugh but need an alternative from wall-to-wall panto. It continues at Liverpool Playhouse until 10th January 2015.

* Yes – I really do mean menagerie...

Juno and the Paycock – Liverpool Playhouse – 01/10/2014

The whole world's in a terrible state of chaos. 

Sean O’Casey’s 1924 classic is such a rich piece of text that it can be approached from various angles. This new reading doesn’t aim solely for its tragedy, it is more a tale of people that tragedy has already descended upon and who are stoically carrying on as more befalls them. It’s not aiming straight for the comedy either. There are a good deal of laughs, almost farce at times, but we never hear lines played just for the humour alone.

What director Gemma Bodinetz has achieved here is an epic, sweeping piece of human drama that balances light and dark, and tells its story with genuine warmth of affection for the writing.

The setting, a single, squalid Dublin tenement, is placed in an uneasy fractured world in Conor Murphy’s design. The one room dwelling is a skeletal affair beyond which we see into the street beyond, and this is depicted by a chaotic arrangement of discarded objects, as though someone had dismantled the entire barricade from the set of Les Mis and hurled it onto the stage. It rises to a pinnacle at one side and looms heavily over the action, and the cast weave in and out of it as they come and go like as many of the rats they live amongst.

Parts of the ensemble play musical instruments from amidst this wasteland, and those not otherwise occupied perch upon it and cast their inquisitive or accusatory gaze on the story before them like some ghostly chorus.

Niamh Cusack and Des McAleer are the long suffering Juno and her husband Jack, known as the paycock (or peacock) for his vainglorious strutting. Balance is the key again in these two sparring roles and they never allow their characters to become caricatures or excessively sentimental.

Juno slaves away to keep her family afloat, while “Captain” Jack spends his time drinking in the alehouse with his useless bevy of friends. He seems to care little of what his family do or say unless it reflects on his own inflated sense of self-importance. The daughter Mary (Maureen O’Connell) looks for upward mobility in exchanging her original intended for the pompous, ineffectual and apparently incompetent Charles Bentham (wonderfully sculpted by Robin Morrissey), but he leaves her only one unhelpful legacy when he discovers he won’t be marrying into money.

The son Johnny lives with both the physical and mental scars of his past, and some of that past’s shadows ultimately come to haunt him to tragic effect. Johnny is played by Donal Gallery, who brings a tremendous dramatic weight to the character. His last scenes on stage are filled with raw terror.

A wonderful foil to Jack is his drinking partner Joxer Daly, a daarlin’ man who may well be half cut but has plenty of homespun philosophy to offer. Joxer is a splendidly cast Louis Dempsey, who again never lets his larger than life character become purely comic. Aoife McMahon is Maisie Madigan, a neighbour with sage advice but debts owed to her, and her crazed performance has some startling moments (I trust they check that table over regularly). She also cuts quite a vocal dash with some fine singing.

Neil Caple is Needle Nugent, the local tailor who seems accommodating enough until he sees through the Captain and his mounting debt. Mary’s jilted first love Jerry Devine is similarly mild mannered, but there’s fire in him in Fionn Walton’s performance, kindled by both political beliefs and by the discovery that Mary has betrayed him, and his standards, in more ways than he could have imagined possible.

Maggie McCarthy plays Mrs Tancred, a neighbour whose own pain over her son’s fate is a sinister precursor of events to come. Finally, in an ensemble role, is Jonathan Charles, whoalso displays some fine violin playing.

Originally a play in three acts, this production cuts the first interval giving us a opening half that runs for over 90 minutes, but the effect is to maintain the dramatic flow and time stands still. A rapid and dramatic scene change is accompanied by some wild music that would be grand at any céilidh.

Music is used sparingly but to good effect, having a reason to be there whenever it appears but leaving the words their stillness when they need it. Peter Coyte, who has worked on a number of Gemma Bodinetz’s productions, once again provides a score that adopts the sound and atmosphere of the play, using traditional instruments and performance styles to great effect. Members of the cast play one two or even three different instruments, mostly upon the chaotic mountain of debris but occasionally amidst the action, and all accompanied by Fergus O’Hare’s deft sound design.

Lighting by Natasha Chivers is as subtle as the colour palette of the set and costumes enabling moments of visual drama to receive due prominence, including the suspended closing scene.

The world is still in a state of chaos, and this play has resonance with our times in more ways than Sean O’Casey may have imagined ninety years ago. The characters who populate this play have the power to show us that there’s a little of the spirit in us still and Gemma Bodinetz presents us with a paean to the indomitable human spirit.

Juno and the Paycock is a co-production between Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and Bristol Old Vic. It is the first play in 11 years that Gemma Bodinetz has opened away from her base in the Liverpool theatres, and having already enjoyed a hugely successful run in Bristol it continues at Liverpool Playhouse until 18th October.

Tickets and further information are available here:  http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/

Des McAleer & Niamh Cusack (c) Stephen Vaughan