The Two Gentlemen of Verona - Liverpool Everyman - 11/10/2016

Since it came to life in the Everyman’s rehearsal rooms back in April, this co-production with Shakespeare’s Globe has been on a marathon tour, visiting venues across the UK and Europe before finally coming home for a 4 week run in Liverpool.

During the first day of read-throughs in April, director Nick Bagnall outlined his motives in setting this late 16th century comedy in 1966. It’s a story of young people breaking free from the tedium of their drab homelife and setting off to find excitement, adventure and love, and for Nick this immediately resonated with the youth culture and music of the 1960s. His Verona is all beige cardigans and Jim Reeves, while Milan is a very different world of long hair and flower power.

Valentine heads off to Milan while his friend Proteus remains in Verona to be with his beloved Julia, but then Proteus’s father sends him off to Milan after all. There Valentine has fallen for Sylvia, daughter of the Duke, but she is already promised by her father to Thurio. When Proteus sees a picture of Sylvia he immediately forgets his love for Julia and we’re on target for a four way tug of love, with all the deceptions and intrigues that Shakespeare goes on to use again in many of his later plays.

The period setting provides opportunities for a lot of music and, as the various love notes and messages are passed about on 7 inch vinyl, the characters break into song to deliver them. The entire cast play multiple instruments, with Guy Hughes as Valentine showing a prowess on the guitar that enables him to join the outlaws’ band in the forest.

There is much doubling of roles, with Amber James who plays Lucetta and Panthino also drawing on a moustache to bring us the self-important Thurio. Launce, servant to Proteus, is a great comic turn from Charlotte Mills, who engages wonderfully with the audience, while T J Holmes’s Speed justifies his name with a little bag of mysterious pills. When you’re touring so widely it’s not practical to have a dog in the cast, so Launce uses an ingenious device, guaranteed to raise a laugh, to bring us his dog, Crab.

The distinctively ’60s set acts like a climbing frame that the cast use every inch of, clambering up and down ladders, and Garry Cooper’s Duke revels in viewing proceedings from on high in a hugely physical performance full of exaggerated gestures.

Nick Bagnall loves the play but has never believed the problematic final scene. His solution gives us a happily ever after that isn’t shared by everyone and it really does work. His use of a song made famous by Janis Joplin brings an inspired twist and a weighty message to the ending. It’s a hugely funny production full of great performances, and by all accounts the ensemble has tightened up tremendously during the tour to give us the pacey show delivered here.

Recalling James Brown’s 1966 lyric, the play is set very much in a man’s world. It’s not intentional scheduling but it’s interesting to note nonetheless that there are many striking parallels with the patriarchal society of Sheridan’s Rivals that I reviewed last week at the Playhouse.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona plays at the Everyman until Saturday 29th October.

Cast of The Two Gentlemen of Verona on tour - image (C) Gary Calton

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

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

Mark Thomas - The Red Shed - Liverpool Everyman - 16/09/2016

The Red Shed is exactly what it says it is, and is the home of the Wakefield Labour Club, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Mark Thomas gave his first ever public performance there as an 18 year old student and it continues to have an important place in his life, so he decided to make a show that paid tribute to it.

It’s a story about the miners’ strike, he tells us, but promises that there will be no brass bands and that no young boys will discover a passion for ballet.

He brings on stage six members of the audience (pre-selected in the theatre foyer, so don’t worry about being pounced on in the auditorium). With chairs borrowed from real The Red Shed and a selection of face masks, these volunteers help Mark in the telling of his story, by miming the parts of various characters from his past.

Mark has a very vivid memory of the miners’ march back to work in 1985, and seeing all the children through the railings of a school playground, singing to their fathers, uncles and brothers as they march past on the way back to the pit. He had been invited to join the march, but cannot remember the name of the particular village or pit, or of the woman who invited him.

The problem is that, over the intervening 30 years Mark has re-told this story so many times that he can no longer tell how much of it is the truth and how much might be his own memory romanticising the details. He resolves to make the journey to find the woman, the village, the school and the children, and to find the truth behind his memories.

So it is that, through a series of anecdotes, some true and some clearly imagined, we follow his quest up hill and down dale through the former mining villages. The sites of the pits are frequently marked by no more of a memorial than a new branch of McDonald’s, and schools have been demolished or turned into something else. Nothing quite strikes a chord, until...

To tell what conclusions he reaches would be to extinguish the magic of Mark’s storytelling, and he should be borrowing another recent show’s hashtag, #KeepTheSecrets. In getting to his tale’s destination, he finds a convoluted route that takes in a number of other quests, including the campaign to unionise fast food outlets, discovering a little known fact that finally makes eating a Gregg’s Sausage Roll a guiltless pleasure.

Those who recall Thomas’s previous work will be familiar with his unique brand of storytelling, in which he blends fact and fiction to achieve powerful delivery of a message. There is a deliberate ramping up of the emotional tension in the room, with audience encouraged to participate in building the atmosphere. In 95 unbroken minutes, The Red Shed brings us stand-up comedy mixed with something more theatrical and plays to our sense of truth, whether it’s a truth that we know exists or a different truth that we’d like to make happen.

Following its 2 performances here at the Everyman, The Red Shed continues its extensive tour via Bristol, Nottingham, London, Glasgow and beyond. See Mark Thomas’s website for ongoing tour dates.

Mark Thomas in The Red Shed - Photo (C) Sally Jubb

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at the BBC Proms - 25/08/2016

THE Liverpool Phil are on something of an emotional and artistic high this year as they celebrate their 175th anniversary and 10 years with Chief Conductor Vasily Petrenko holding the baton.

Early in July, a concert to mark Petrenko’s 40th birthday featured Rachmaninov’s 3rd Symphony and the Cello Concerto No.1 by Shostakovich, composers that have become prominent in the orchestra’s repertoire both in concert and on record. On that occasion the cellist was Truls Mork, who was scheduled to repeat the work with the Phil at last night’s Prom, alongside the Rachmaninov Symphony.

When Mork had to withdraw due to illness on the morning of the concert there was some nail-biting in the Phil camp until the 25-year-old St Petersburger Aleksey Stadler came to the rescue, flying in just in time to get in one rehearsal with the orchestra before delivering a performance of huge stature. The Shostakovich concerto is a large and technically demanding piece, with the prescribed fireworks for sure, but with a deeply passionate core surrounding its central, extended cadenza movement. Nobody could have guessed that there had been so little time to prepare, as cellist and orchestra were so emotionally in tune with each other and the performance received a rapturous response from the capacity audience in the Royal Albert Hall.

Another work with passion at its core began the concert, as the Phil presented the world premiere of Torus by Liverpool born composer Emily Howard. Howard’s background in mathematics features strongly in her work, and Torus is built around the eponymous geometric shape, like a ring donut, but described by Howard as being like a stretched ball held together by a central void. It is an expansive piece, running nearer to half an hour rather than the estimated 20 minutes, and between serene landscapes in the strings that open and close it there are passages sounding like anger and despair. In her program note Emily Howard describes imagining a sphere with its heart ripped out, and at times the piece felt like an elegy for the sphere on which we live. There is a cinematic quality to the writing and in some of the desolate string passages it was almost impossible not to conjure images of the recent devastation of the Italian earthquake.

The program ended with Rachmaninov’s 3rd Symphony, not often enough heard on the concert platform. If Emily Howard’s music sounds as though it might have been written for the screen, it’s easy to see how so many writers of film scores have been influenced by Rachmaninov, with the passionate sweep of the melodies and the vivid, technicolour orchestration. The Phil were on sparkling form here and with Petrenko’s mastery of the balance between emotional depth and sheer Hollywood glamour it’s clear why audiences fill houses for their performances.

At the end Vasily threw us a parting gift with Shostakovich’s Tahiti Trot, played with characteristic humour and flair and charming the socks off the prommers.

Flying the flag for Liverpool on the world stage, at this most prestigious of music festivals, The Phil showed us again why the city is so proud of them.

Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO - Photo (C) Mark McNulty

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool

Edinburgh Fringe Previews - Unity Theatre - 21,22&23/07/2016

UNITY Theatre played host to three nights of preview shows last weekend, as a line-up of performers fine-tune their acts en-route to the Edinburgh Fringe. We managed to catch a selection of the comedy on offer and here’s our pick of the bunch.

Adam Rowe calls his show Bittersweet Little Lies and it evolves from a story about the day his dad taught him it was ok to lie sometimes. Rowe can accelerate from deadpan delivery to full-scale rant in the blink of a lazy eye and uses skeletons from the family closet as the basis for much of his set. This is good solid comedy that hits its mark well and the honesty of the delivery belies the title.

Tom Little used 31 Teeth in My Mouth as a title, but he’s already thrown this out and by the time it reaches Edinburgh it will be “Chicken Supreme? No, is isn’t”(probably). Whilst there are some well-judged comic pauses in his act, Little has his audience breathless following the seemingly random trail of weird and wonderful observations he makes. There’s nothing random about it though, as much of the material relies on convoluted construction and repeated links back to earlier segments. Here’s the sort of humour that builds laughs upon laughs – fasten your seatbelt.

Brennan Reece closed the weekend with his show called Everglow, which he has recently brought back from Australia. Beware this sort of comedy, as it has a sting in its tail. There is a disarming frankness in Reece’s manner and he has a tremendous confidence, using the whole of the stage in a very physical way. What is particularly special, though, is the architecture of his material, which comes full circle in a hugely satisfying way and, startlingly, manages to bring in elements of pathos that are genuinely moving. Expect the unexpected with this one.

At this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Adam Rowe plays The Caves at 17:20 from 5th August, Tom Little is at Nightcap at 13:10 from 6th August and Brennan Reece at Pleasance Courtyard at 18:00 from 3rd August.

Adam Rowe, Tom Little & Brennan Reece

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool

Queens of Syria - Liverpool Everyman - 15/07/2016

To light a candle is better than damning the darkness.

So explains one of the women during one of the interpolated video segments of this production from Developing Artists and Refuge Productions, brought to the UK on tour with the support of the Young Vic.

Queens of Syria began life as a 2013 drama therapy project in Amman for Syrian women displaced from their homeland, working toward playing out Eurpides’ Trojan Women. The parallels with the ancient drama are clear, but what we see on stage is no longer 13 women presenting a piece of classic theatre. It has become something close to documentary – a kind of community autobiography.

Verbatim theatre often takes the words of real people and places them in the mouths of actors, but there is no way to fully describe the power of hearing a group of women retelling their own experiences in this way. Theatre audiences will have become familiar with frequent references to “The Refugee Crisis” in mainstream performance in recent years, and the participants in Queens of Syria fire a broadside at this in the closing segments of the work.

“Shall we make a play about it” quotes one. “That’s a sad story, but do you have a sadder one” says another. These jibes about the (usually) well-meaning efforts of theatre and media producers, directed straight at the audience, are a reminder that what we are seeing is not staged for effect, but to help us put real faces and real lives to the reports we’ve heard in news bulletins. To humanise the inhuman experiences that people have suffered. To make us recognise that every one of them had homes, lives and families like our own that have been shattered forever.

This is not easy to watch, but if it can use the lighting of its own small candles to start illuminating the darkness of the horrors created by civil war, then maybe we can stop seeing a problem and begin looking for solutions.

Queens of Syria gave two performances as part of the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival at the Everyman on Friday and Saturday and continues touring to Leeds, Edinburgh Durham and London.

Queens of Syria - Photo (C) Vanja Karas

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool

Stefan Pop - Recital at St George's Hall Liverpool - 25/06/2016

Following on from recitals earlier this year with Ekaterina Lekhina and Yunpeng Wang, Liverpool Opera Four Seasons introduced Liverpool to yet another former winner of the Placido Domingo Operalia competition, lyric tenor Stefan Pop.

Pop has appeared at many of the world’s greatest opera houses, from La Scala Milan to Deutsche Oper Berlin, and from Mikhailovsky St Petersburg to London’s Covent Garden.

In the intimate setting of St George’s Hall’s concert room he gave a recital featuring some of the most popular tenor arias including music from, among others, Verdi, Puccini and Rossini. Opening with Questa o quella from Rigoletto, it was immediately clear why comparisons are being made between Pop and Pavarotti. A powerful, bright, colourful tenor voice combined with a lively and hugely engaging stage presence immediately had the audience captivated. In the first half of the programme he also gave us Oronte’s act 2 aria from I Lombardi and took us to the interval with Che gelida manina from La Boheme.

Being a “Pop” concert it naturally came plus support, and we welcomed Barbara Ruzsics (who appeared with Lekhina earlier this year) and Andreas Z Magony. Ruzsics gave a delicately phrased Exultate Jubilate and Debussy’s Nuit d’etoiles, while Magony added concert arias as well as E lucevan le stelle from Tosca. His is a strong voice but his phrasing was at times a little awkward and he had some tendency to focus on projection over tuning.

After the interval the stage belonged to Stefan Pop, beginning with Rossini’s impossibly complicated tarantella, La Danza, which he navigated with thrilling flair. This was followed by the act 3 duet from La Traviata, where he was joined by Ruzsics.

After two more solos for Pop and Magony, the singers began to play musical games, turning solos into duets and duets into trios, with Pop and Magony sharing roles, and ending with two encores – the Brindisi from Traviata and a duet version of Nessun Dorma.

The evening was again beautifully accompanied at the piano by Kirsty Ligertwood who on this occasion also gave us an instrumental interlude in part 1, with a heartfelt solo performance of Debussy’s Clair de Lune.

Liverpool Opera Four Seasons will continue their series in the autumn and have promised us some surprises. Keep an eye on Good News for details of what’s coming up next.

Stefan Pop - Photo (C) Lucian Enasoni

Review 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

RLPO close their 2015/16 season - 09/06/2016

Last  week the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic brought their main concert season to a spectacular close in a concert given performances on Thursday and Friday nights.

Vasily Petrenko conducted an orchestra of over 100 players, beginning the evening with Skryabin’s exotic and opulent Poem of Ecstasy. This is sumptuous scoring for large forces and can often sprawl or feel overblown, but this performance was well controlled and the ebb and flow of emotion kept under a tight rein by Petrenko. Strikingly, every detail of the dense orchestral textures was clearly defined even in the most heavyweight passages, the massive climax at the close supported by the hall’s organ, felt rather than heard, just beneath the surface.

The emotional tension was relaxed when the orchestra were joined by Welsh harpist Katrin Finch, ending a brief residency with the Phil in a performance of the rarely heard Harp Concerto by Reinhold Gliere. The concerto has a cinematic romanticism, bringing to mind the scores of Korngold, and uses a surprisingly large orchestra to accompany an instrument like the harp. Finch’s playing, though, had the power to project through the orchestral sound whilst never losing its delicacy. The concerto’s central theme and variations movement in particular was a great showcase for her playing, which probably made converts of some of those listeners not generally keen on the harp.

The concert closed the season with Stravinsky’s epic Rite of Spring, one of the most notoriously groundbreaking works of the 20th century. We have heard Vasily conduct the Phil in this work a number of times, but never with this kind of power and electricity. Having got his reading of the score under their skin, the players added extra layers of raw, elemental urgency to their playing. Every detail of the writing was absolutely clear and in place, but the energy and tension in the performance was simply breathtaking, and well deserving of its standing ovation.

The stage was festooned with microphones, as the performance was being recorded for a Stravinsky project to include The Rite of Spring, Petrushka and The Firebird.

Whilst this concert brings the 2015/16 season to an end, the Phil will give more performances during the summer, starting on 18th June with a sold-out concert of the music of John Williams.

The 2016/17 season, which will be Vasily Petrenko’s 10th with the orchestra, begins on 15th September. Tickets are already on sale to subscribers and general booking opens on 4th July.

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool

The Government Inspector - Liverpool Everyman - 01/06/2016

David Harrower’s wonderfully irreverent adaptation of Gogol’s satirical farce was made in 2011 for the Young Vic and Warwick Arts Centre. Director Roxanna Silbert has brought it to the stage with breath-taking energy in this new coproduction from Birmingham Rep and Ramps on the Moon.

Pre-show music that could have come straight from the soundtrack of Grand Budapest Hotel helps to set the scene in the slightly tired lobby of a once opulent hotel, somewhere in a forgotten backwater of Russia. Ti Green’s set is a multi-level skeleton affair with staircases, the revolving door beloved of farce and a fully functional elevator, all as transparent as the duplicity of the play’s key characters.

David Carlyle plays the manic Mayor, thrown into a spin by the suggestion that a Government Inspector is coming to town, or may already be in their midst. When Robin Morrissey’s dapper but itinerant Khlestakov turns up he’s immediately taken for the inspector and soon learns to capitalise on the mistake, with the whole town falling at his feet.

Carlyle and Morrisey are joined in the central sextet by Kiruna Stamell and Francesca Mills, who give towering performances as the mayor’s wife and daughter, Anna and Maria. Both fall for Khlestakov in a big way and literally hurl themselves at him at times. Michael Keane brings wry wit to Khlestakov’s servant Osip, while Sophie Stone is hugely expressive as the postmaster with a rather too keen interest in the contents of the mail.

There is also a splendid double act from Stephen Collins and Rachel Denning as Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, a pair of local squires who propagate the idea that Khlestakov is the inspector. They display gleeful relish in the quick-fire delivery and the characters’ propensity to finish each other’s sentences.

Ramps on the Moon is a consortium of six major theatres and strategic partner Graeae Theatre Company, whose work in making theatre accessible to all is ramped up to a new level in this production. The cast of deaf, disabled and non-disabled performers seamlessly blend signing and audio description into the performance. This adds to the frenetic movement on stage but gives so many additional cues, along with surtitles and projected words and imagery, that the clarity of the storytelling is magnificent.

There is occasional shadowing of characters, in some cases a speaking actor will be followed about by another who is signing their words for them. Elsewhere Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin, played wordlessly by a signing Jean St Clair, has her spoken dialogue delivered by Rebekah Hinds, who follows along behind. Meanwhile Amanda Wright, playing a police sergeant, has a head-mike which she uses to provide the live audio-description to users’ headsets from the stage, rather than as more usually done from the control booth.

This is high-energy, wonderful farce staged with boundless imagination. The Government Inspector plays at the Everyman, Hope Street until Saturday 11^th June and comes highly recommended.

David Carlisle and cast - photo (c) Robert Day

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

George Egg, Anarchist Cook - Unity Theatre Liverpool - 31/05/2016

If you’ve ever thought the iron in your hotel room smelled odd or found bottles of shampoo in the mini-bar, perhaps George Egg has been there before you.

George is a stand-up comedian who spends half his life on the road (just look at the list of dates on his website) and far too much time for his liking in hotel rooms. Being a lover of fine food too, he’s got pretty fed up with arriving back late after a gig to find that the only sources of food are the night porter with the room service menu or the late night supermarket. So it is that he’s devised countless ways to rustle up something tasty with what he can find in the hotel room and a few items picked up on the way back.

George’s love of good away-from-home cooking meets stand-up in his show “Anarchist Cook” which hit Liverpool’s Unity this week after returning from a stint in New Zealand via London and Norway.

Part comedy gig, part demonstration, it’s hard to pigeon-hole this show, which is a feast for all the senses. In the space of roughly 80 minutes he rustles up a three course meal using a selection of simple ingredients, rather a lot of those little UHT milks and some forage from the hotel lobby. All cooked with appliances such as the iron, the kettle and the mini-bar fridge, the results look and taste good, being presented to the audience to sample at the end of the show. From home made cheese (really) to poached sea bream and fluffy pancakes, everything is done pretty much to perfection.

Coming to the end of the evening you’re left wondering whether you just dreamed it or did he really just do that, whilst delivering some great observational humour. Not only does he demonstrate the three courses that he presents on stage, he also throws in numerous other recipe tips, including a method for curing homemade salami that boggles the mind. You can even buy recipe cards at the end.

I can’t say I’d recommend trying this in the next Premier Inn you stop in, unless you don’t mind a surcharge, or using your own iron at home like this but the recipes do adapt for preparation with more conventional equipment.

George isn’t the tidiest of cooks (there’s a dreadful mess on the floor) but he has impressive knife skills to go with his infectious sense of humour. Anarchist Cook is a cross between Saturday Kitchen and the Tommy Cooper Show, and well worth a visit if you find it hitting a venue near you.

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

Physical Fest Double Bill - Unity Theatre - 27th May 2016

I was delighted to get an invitation to this double bill of remarkably contrasting performances, which forms part of this year’s Physical Fest and which had Unity buzzing with atmosphere. Oog, is a solo performance by Al Seed, which has been touring since its emergence in Glasgow in 2014. Cabaret from the Shadows is a locally-grown piece, developed at the Lantern theatre by Liverpool based but multi-national Teatro Pomodoro.

For Oog we enter to find a hunched, seated figure onstage, completely obscured by the folds of a mud and blood soaked army great-coat. Under a focused shaft of light, he begins to move by gradual increments, his dirt-caked face emerging tentatively from the upturned collar like a frightened tortoise hiding in its shell.

Here is a shell-shocked soldier, cowering in a subterranean world from which there seems to be a way of escape that he is too frightened to attempt. Al Seed animates his character with meticulous precision, every movement minutely synchronised to a pulsing, desolate soundtrack from Guy Veale, which appears to turn every breath and heartbeat into a terrifying memory of shell-fire and bloodshed.

This is one of those “had to be there” pieces that pretty much defies analysis, but is powerful and finely crafted physical theatre that leaves its audience simultaneously stunned and elated.


Al Seed - Oog - Photo (c) Maria Falconer

Cabaret from the Shadows changes the mood entirely, occupying a surreal world of unhinged comedy. Occasionally when the moon is full, we’re told, this group of misfits are allowed back from their shadow world to entertain us. Essentially a sequence of set pieces linked together by some running themes, the show uses the company’s skill with bouffon and musical clownery to give us a substantial hit of illusory weirdness – in a good way…

Opening, closing and interspersed by company musical cabaret numbers, there are some ideas here that seem to come from nowhere. Leebo Luby is a guitar playing chicken, continually taunted by Carmen Arquelladas who keeps carelessly smashing the eggs he lays. Miwa Nagai allows herself to be painted by a member of the audience, while Simone Tani becomes, among other characters, a risqué dancing Christ and a life-size voodoo doll, tortured for the sins of someone’s work colleague.

The entire cast play a variety of instruments, but it’s Duncan Cameron who must clock up the most, acting as a kind of half-crazed emcee and carrying the weight of the musical input. He also finds a very unusual way of playing a harmonica whilst wearing a straightjacket – you’ll just have to try and imagine that.

Cameron keeps challenging the audience to tell him whether they’ve gone a bit too far maybe a bit too soon in the evening, but this self-censorship just adds to the irony with which they dip their mischievous comedic toes into so many political subjects that theatrical productions seem unable to avoid allusion to.

This was a one-night-only folks, but watch out for Al Seed’s Oog and Cabaret from the Shadows, because as sure as night follows day they’re bound to be back.

Cabaret From the Shadows - Photo (c) Yoel Orgelby

This review was 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

Vaughan Williams - Andrew Manze - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – 05/05/2016

The RLPO and Andrew Manze went straight into the UK Specialist Classical chart at No.11 last month, with the first in a projected complete Vaughan Williams symphony cycle with Onyx Records. The first disc contains symphonies 2 and 8, and Manze was signing copies after the concert at Philharmonic Hall on Thursday evening.

On this occasion, in an all Vaughan Williams programme, they were performing symphonies 3 and 4 in advance of recording sessions for the next album.

Whilst the city was holding widespread 75th anniversary commemorations of the May Blitz this week, the Phil’s programme serendipitously felt perfectly aligned to these events. Beginning with the quintessentially English pastoralness of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, the first half moved on to the anger and brutality of the 4th symphony, widely considered to be Vaughan Williams’ response to the mounting tensions that presaged World War II.

The second part of the concert returned to gentler mood beginning with mezzo soprano Jennifer Johnston in the short but beautifully formed Linden Lea. This was followed by the 3rd, Pastoral Symphony, a work of serene reconciliation, opening and closing in splendid stillness around its central folk-dance scherzo. As the originally engaged tenor was indisposed, a late decision was taken to use the suggested alternative to the wordless cantilena, beautifully articulated by principal clarinet Benjamin Mellefont.

Vaughan Williams is repertoire that the Liverpool Phil have long associations with and it runs in their blood. It’s well over 20 years since their acclaimed recorded cycle with Vernon Handley and in Andrew Manze they have once again found an intelligent interpreter who really understands this music. The playing was immaculately articulated and imbued with tremendous warmth, and it is clear that orchestra and conductor really enjoy working together.

As the current concert season nears its end we await the announcement of the 2016/17 programme, and this week’s audience will surely be hoping for more of the same from Andrew Manze. Meanwhile, he returns this coming Thursday and Friday to conduct a programme of Rossini, Mozart and Mendelssohn.

Andrew Manze - Image (c) Chris Christodoulou

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

Pleasure – Liverpool Playhouse – 04/05/2016

Pleasure is a new one-act chamber opera by Liverpool born composer Mark Simpson, to a libretto by Melanie Challenger. One of a series of co-commissions from Opera North, Aldeburgh Music and the Royal Opera House, the production played for one night only in the composer’s home city at the Playhouse on Wednesday, en-route from its premiere in Leeds toward dates in Aldeburgh and London.

A cast of four soloists are accompanied by the Manchester-based contemporary music ensemble Psappha conducted by Nicholas Kok.

Lesley Garrett sings the role of Val, a faded beauty of a toilet attendant in a gay nightclub, to whom the regulars pour out their hearts as a mother-confessor. Timothy Nelson is Nathan, Val’s estranged son, who sneaks in to leave a gift for her, and here begins an emotional and ultimately tragic encounter between mother and son.

There is a sub-plot, in which club regular Matthew (Nick Pritchard) admires Nathan’s beauty and propositions him, which perplexes Nathan who is not gay but who seems to be deeply affected by the advances.

The only person to understand much of Val’s past is Anna Fewmore, the resident drag queen, sung here by Steven Page. The part is by turns grotesque, comic and knowing, much in the manner of Shakespeare’s fools, and provides a sounding board for Val’s thoughts.

The soloists are well cast in the roles and all are in fine voice, with the delivery pin-sharp making every line clear through the weighty textures of the music. The ensemble is placed on a raised platform overlooking the stage from the rear, and some of Anna’s numbers are performed from a projecting platform at this upper level, including a high-camp striptease with balloons.

Simpson has a distinctive musical language that’s hard to pin down, but nods toward the sound world of Thomas Ades. The score has a richness of texture and a strong rhythmic drive, and is well balanced with the voices. The composer has set the piece outside the club, in the toilets and out in the street, so that he only alludes to the dance music beyond. In his programme note he explains that this is a conscious decision to stay in his own musical style without having to resort to pastiche of techno or electronic music.

In the earlier scenes Melanie Challenger’s text is a little clumsy, with some of the character development feeling rather clichéd, but it settles down as the work progresses.

Director Tim Albery negotiates his cast sinuously around the obstacle-course of a set from designer Leslie Travers - a massive, deconstructed neon sign that depicts the various passageways and plumbing of the club.

The narrative, though short, is one of traditionally operatic tragedy. Val and Nathan’s story could have happened anywhere, but Mark Simpson chose to set it in surroundings familiar to him from his teenage years, basing Val on a real toilet attendant who many Liverpudlians still recall, if you ask in the right places.

Pleasure is at Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh this weekend followed by a week of performances at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Steven Page as Anna Fewmore - Image (c) Robert Workman

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool and Seen Magazine

Going Viral - Unity Theatre - 29/04/2016

Daniel Bye premiered Going Viral last summer at the Edinburgh fringe to general acclaim, and he’s now touring it nationwide, spreading his infectious blend of wit and wisdom as surely as an epidemic.

The piece (written and performed by Bye) is set in the round, so Unity’s seating has been rearranged to create a double row of seats around the central stage. As we enter we are asked to fill up from the front row, to help with the dynamic of the work, and the fact that about two-thirds of the first audience members to enter choose to ignore this and sit to the rear (some even trying to create a third row) is interesting to observe. These people are already wary of being placed in a situation where they may be visible to each other or need to interact.

The performer is already in the room and as the lights go down he invites us to share a bottle of hand sanitiser, while he begins to explain why we’re here. Bye has a unique and engaging way of storytelling, with parts of the text feeling very improvisatory and conversational, but it’s all mapped out and takes us on a fascinating journey through the world of epidemiology.

We’re asked to imagine that we are all in the position of the key protagonist, a man on a plane from Kuala Lumpur, who finds himself the only person seemingly immune to a strange outbreak of weeping. The story progresses as the epidemic spreads through human contact, and the government makes efforts to arrest its progress by discouraging empathy. Daniel Bye, meanwhile, coyly slips in some sensory tear-defying tests on himself, appearing to prove that he is genuinely immune to weeping. Katherine Williams’ well considered lighting script follows Bye around Emma Tomkins’ sparse set, and depicts the progress of infection.

Under the surface of this part-story part-lecture style of presentation lie more uneasy thoughts. Not only do we gain some fascinating insights into the anatomy of a virus and the mechanics of an epidemic, but we’re also challenged to consider how modern life makes us all wary of our fellow humans – a message especially, maybe, for those audience members who made a beeline for the back row.

This is tremendously engaging, thought-provoking theatre, and has its audience held enthralled for the full 80 minutes. Interestingly though, the delivery puts everyone oddly at easy in their exposure, and the audience are soon willingly drawn into vocal participation.

Daniel Bye continues to tour Going Viral to a further nine venues to late June, with tour dates available on his website, www.danielbye.co.uk and alongside it he also tours his show for a younger audience, Error 404. If you do book tickets to see the show don’t be scared of the front row, he doesn’t bite. And one more thing; you’ll never be able to look a liquorice allsort in the eye again...

Daniel Bye - Image (c) ARC Stockton

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

Szymanowsky, Rachmaninov & Schoenberg - Philharmonic Hall Liverpool - 28/04/2016

On Thursday the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic were joined by the latest in a run of outstanding soloists that Phil audiences been treated to in recent weeks. Chinese pianist Niu Niu may be only 19, but he’s already an experienced concert performer and recording artist and his 2013 EMI album of Liszt transcriptions was recorded in the RLPO’s studio, The Friary in West Everton, so he’s no stranger to Liverpool.

Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was a great choice of work for Niu Niu to debut with the orchestra, its variations enabling him to demonstrate a wide range of colour and texture, from dramatic weight to delicate fluid playing.

The prolific Polish conductor Jacek Kaspszyk, making a welcome return to Liverpool, opened the concert with the rarely heard Concert Overture from his countryman Karol Szymanowski. An early work, the overture feels as though it owes much to Richard Strauss in the opulent scoring and shifts in dramatic energy. A substantial piece for large orchestra, we are left wondering why this doesn’t feature more often in concert programmes.

A similar question might be asked of the work that occupied the second half of the concert, and the extravagant orchestration probably serves partly as an answer in both cases. Schoenberg’s orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor turns a relatively unloved chamber work into what is effectively a symphony. Another early composition, both for Brahms and for Schoenberg, it begins feeling very much like the symphonies of Schumann, flirting with Mendelssohn in its intermezzo movement before finally finding the world of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances in its exuberant “Rondo alla Zingarese” finale. For this work, Kaspszyk placed the French horns to the far left of the stage behind the back desks of first violins, which created an unusual but intriguing spread of sound.

Sadly, the appearance of names like Szymanowsky and Schoenberg on a concert programme often frightens audiences off at the box office, and there were quite a few empty seats in the hall. This is a shame, as these two less familiar framing works to Rachmaninov’s perennial crowd-pleaser were hugely well received and, above all, the whole concert felt like enormous fun for audience and performers alike. Appropriate for the concert to end on an exuberant note, as it also marked the final appearance of first violinist David Whitehead, who is retiring after 32 years’ service with the orchestra.

Niu Niu - Image (c) Mark McNulty

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

Iphigenia in Splott - Everyman Theatre Liverpool - 14 April 2016

Following a triumphant opening run last May at Sherman Theatre Cymru, Gary Owen’s award-winning Iphigenia in Splott embarked on a 12 venue national tour, beginning at the National’s temporary space on the South Bank and ending this week at Liverpool’s Everyman.

It’s the second of two one-woman shows to appear here in as many weeks in a specially adapted stage layout, the first being A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, reviewed here last week. But, apart from fiery delivery from a solo performer, the two shows could barely be more different. While the former is a deeply introspective piece that makes the audience work along with the actor, Owen’s Iphigenia gives us a lot more signposts along the way, handing us the moral message neatly packaged at the end.

Sophie Melville plays Effie, who skulks onto the stage shrouded in her street uniform hoodie and begins by addressing us in accusatory tones – she knows what we all think when we see her, she tells us, in no uncertain terms. This modern day Iphigenia has little similarity with her Ancient Greek counterpart, sacrificed by Agamemnon at Aulis, but the references are clear enough as she is pushed to an ultimate test for the ills of an ailing society and ultimately makes her own sacrifice for which, she makes clear, we are all deeply in her debt.

Melville’s performance is pin-sharp and keeps the audience on the edge of our seats and holding our breath for much of its unbroken 75 minutes, and under Rachel O’Riordan’s expert direction she times every passage perfectly, whether storming about the stage or holding us in silent suspense. Even passages of laboured breath become supplementary dialogue.

Hayley Grindle’s stage design and Rachel Mortimer’s lighting are inseparable, as the almost bare stage is formed into time and place with the movement of light within an array of flickering tube lamps, and further atmosphere seeps from Sam Jones’s subliminal, pulsating soundtrack.

We can all share the anger of Effie as she rails against austerity and the fact that those least able to defend themselves are left to bear the greatest burden, and her own story of self-redemption is a powerful one. Gary Owen touches further contemporary issues but without ever straying from his central message, introducing, among others, an ex-soldier whose life has been shattered by an IED.

There are times when the writing is almost too tidily done, leaving little work for the audience to do, but there’s no denying the power of both the story and its delivery, and a standing ovation at the end speaks for itself. And the question we are left with in the closing lines – just exactly what will happen when we can’t take any more?

Sophie Melville - Photo (C) Mark Douet

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool