Until They Kick Us Out – YEP at Liverpool Everyman Theatre – 26/02/2015

I'm Satire - or, if you didn’t get your English GCSE, Taking the Piss…

Last year Young Everyman Playhouse stormed the new Everyman stage and took possession of the space with “The Grid”. This week they continue their path to world domination by forming their own political party, for which Until They Kick Us Out stands as a manifesto.

In last night’s post-show debate it became clear that, when you get them to really think about it, people in general – young and old alike – are not so much disengaged with politics as with politicians and the parties they represent - they’re all the same, and they’re all rubbish. How then do you convince someone who’s turning 18 that it’s worth registering and casting their vote when faced with the rhetoric and in-fighting that characterises the run up to an election?

This 90 minute show has grown out of extensive discussions YEP members have had about what politics does and doesn’t mean to them. Often theatre devised and developed this way can become episodic but YEP, under the direction of Matt Rutter and Chris Tomlinson, have woven their stories into a tapestry in which a very clear picture emerges. The performers have dug deep and uncovered individual experiences, sometimes funny, often painful but always telling, that enable them to connect the personal with the global.

These personal experiences punctuate and inform a narrative in which, scene by scene, the case for engaging with the political debate and making your vote count is powerfully made. Until They Kick Us Out injects the often dry subject of politics with YEP’s inimitable energy and makes for a genuinely thrilling piece of theatre.

The 33 listed performers appear as a chorus, and it is impossible to credit them individually, but there are a great many stand-out performances, and everyone will leave the theatre with a personal list of faces they will be looking out for in future.

There are some very witty scenes as the chorus explore political history and education, particularly in an almost Pythonesque mockery of the suffragette movement, and the use of strong movement and music has particular effect as the show builds to its defiant conclusion.

Special mention must go to the movement director Grace Goulding, who has choreographed the piece like a well-oiled machine, and to the team of YEP technicians for their high-impact sound and lighting work.

Until They Kick Us Out is guaranteed to deliver the tingle factor and to leave you wanting more, but hurry – it closes on Saturday night.

Postscript: UTKUO revives for 3 more performances on 28, 29 and 30 April in the run up to the election, which sees a cast member stand for the Wavertree constituency.

(N.B. This review is also published at seenliverpool.com)

Photo (c) Brian Roberts

Cartoonopolis - Liverpool Playhouse Studio - 13/02/2015

The gestation of a play is something that usually happens behind the closed doors of workshops and rehearsal rooms, but Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse's first Ignition Artist Lewis Bray has offered us tantalising glimpses of the growth of his play Cartoonopolis over the past year, from a short scene early in the process, through a scratch performance and to the full length piece that has played to sold out audiences this week in the Studio.

I have written about this work before, and I don't intend to repeat myself - take a look back to the entries for 22nd May and 22nd October 2014 in my blog.

This week, the one-man show has become a two act piece, still presented on a very bare stage with only a chair, a screen and some clever lighting, so there is nothing to distract us from the multi-faceted performance of Lewis. Not even a faint rustle of sweet wrappers from the audience, as they were all mesmerised.

I've heard it argued that the material may have been expanded a little too far and someone has suggested cuts, but I have to say that what has been added is essential new material, and if Lewis and his co-creatives do decide to cut anything I do hope that this additional writing survives. The version we saw last autumn came right from the heart and explored some important subject matter, but now he has dug even deeper into the characters - especially the real life ones - to find some really hard-hitting stuff. Not only do we get a telling perspective of autism from within Lewis's brother Jack, but now we also get a real feel for the impact, both positive and negative, on the whole family and the dynamic of their lives.

Cartoonopolis holds its audience through its sheer honesty and openness, as well as the drive and detail in the performance and the wit and wisdom of the writing.

LEP invite someone to be an Ignition Artist when they see "an extraordinary talent [that] should not be ignored" and there is a reason that Lewis Bray has become the first artist recognised in this scheme.

I was very fortunate to get a seat on the only night I had free this week. If you want to see this show you'll have to queue for a return today, but if you do and you're lucky, it will be worth it.

 

 

Lewis Bray - (c) Brian Roberts Images

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

That’s Amore – Tmesis Theatre – Unity Liverpool – 31/01/2015

Tmesis theatre present Aspects of Love – but someone already used that title, so That’s Amore it is...

A good friend of mine decided not to go and see That’s Amore because Physical Theatre isn’t really his thing. I think he missed a treat. Anyone who’s a bit unsure about the genre should give this a go, because it stretches its boundaries and has very broad appeal.

For a start, the taboo of words is thrown out of the window. Whilst the majority of the 70 minutes is delivered through movement and dance it is punctuated by, at first, vocal sounds and later with brief exchanges of words. There is also a spoken narration that interjects now and then to remind us of the brain functions and electrical impulses that make us feel and experience both the pain and the pleasure of love.

Not that we need words to follow what the show is about – the title is a hint and the movement and the score, assembled from a wide variety of musical material, delivers an exploration of love in all its aspects. A series of projection effects complete the atmosphere.

Sinuous movement takes us from the beginnings of human experience, reminiscent of the opening of 2001, through a continuous tapestry of scenes, interwoven so that we lose the boundaries between all manner of expressions of the emotion that drives so many of our decisions.

Tmesis Artistic Director Elinor Randle steps back from performance for the first time in a decade to direct a group of four performers, all of whom deliver some beautiful form in their movement and bring passion, despair, wit and charm to bear in the ebb and flow of the work. Adam Davies, Elena Edipidi, Jennifer Essex and Ross McCall work together almost as a single unit at times, and at others play out solo and group scenarios.

That’s Amore is both though provoking and hugely entertaining, and is guaranteed to make you smile.

Touring from 4th February via: Norwich Arts Centre, Rose Ormskirk, The Met, Bury, Square Chapel Halifax, The Brindley Runcorn until 27/02/15 at Barnsley Civic.