Ruby Slippers – Lantern Theatre Liverpool – 20/02/2016

Ruby Slippers is Break a Leg Productions’ debut play, written by Emma Culshaw and David Paul, and directed by Jackie Downey and saw its sell-out premiere performance at the Lantern Theatre on Saturday.

James Rogerson plays Raz, the owner of The Ruby Slippers drag club. He presides from behind a bar adorned with a pair of said slippers and photographs of his movie idols, who age him a little for some of his mystified younger patrons. Many have defected to a new bar down the street along with most of his star acts, leaving the business on the rocks.

Loyal drag queens Destiny and Phoenix (Owen Farrow & Jordan Sims) soldier on amid worries for the future of the club, but their more immediate concern is to sort out Raz’s love life once and for all. Everyone can see that he and his new flatmate Ryan have fallen for each other in a big way, so why don’t the two of them get together? Ryan (Jamie Paul) has a secret, however, which makes everything far more complicated than it seems.

When Destiny and Phoenix force the issue Ryan’s revelation sets emotions running high, and the future becomes uncertain for everyone.

Ruby slippers is an important piece of writing, in that it tackles issues of prejudice from both inside and out of the LGBT community. What the authors have done, in one scene in particular, is to eloquently articulate confusions between sexuality and gender identity. What comes across well is the lack of understanding for the many differences and distinctions between gay, transvestite, drag queen and transgender, something which is paradoxically blurred by the inclusiveness of the term LGBT.

An important question we’re left with is to ask whether what Raz feels is prejudice or an understandable sense of loss – almost bereavement – as is suggested by another character in another emotional fulcrum of the work.

Rogerson hurls himself into the part of Raz with huge energy, while Debra Radcliffe gives a particularly strong and insightful performance as Helen, Ryan’s mother, whose lioness instinct leads her to deliver some of the best dialogue.

Jamie Paul has perhaps the hardest job to do as Ryan, torn between love and identity, and there are some scenes where he is simply left to play mute vulnerability. The intention seems to be to highlight his internal dilemma but the effect, occasionally, is to arrest the dramatic flow.

Farrow and Simms (the former also known on the Manchester drag scene as Divina De Campo) bring us glamour, certainly, but also carry some pretty weighty writing too. There is a strangely camp but very witty performance from Emma Vaudrey, who delivers a parallel narrative thread that drives the play to a resolution.

This weekend’s three performances at the Lantern have all sold out, and the play has a planned series of future appearances across the North West. The first of these is at Manchester’s KIKI in Canal Street next Sunday, 28th February. Watch out for further dates coming up, with the play returning to Liverpool at the Epsein Theatre in the autumn.

 This review was originally written for and published by Seen Liverpool.

James Rogerson and Jamie Paul - Rehearsal photo (c) Jane Macneil

The Broke 'n' Beat Collective - Unity Theatre Liverpool - 09/02/2016

In a world where young people are pigeon holed or hold their problems locked away internally, Broke ‘n’ Beat Collective encourages us to think inside the box.

Keith Saha of Liverpool based 20 Stories High and Sue Buckmaster of Theatre Rites have worked together before and Liverpool audiences will remember their work on Melody Loses her Mojo in 2013. Both are committed to helping young people to find a voice through theatre, and here they join forces to explore a collection of issues that are often ignored or misunderstood.

In something that seems to have grown out of a set that Miriam Nabarro designed for Saha’s 2014 ‘Black’, she has now created a world that lives entirely in cardboard boxes, stacked up at the rear of the stage. The cast unfold boxes to reveal scenes from young lives, while out of other boxes emerge puppets and props enabling the stories to be told.

Broke ‘n’ Beat Collective introduce themselves as a band playing a gig, in which each of the numbers they perform recounts a young person’s story. The material comes from direct workshops with real people, but the off-the-wall delivery enables us to see each of their lives from a different angle. Principal narrator is poet and singer Elektric (Elisha Howe) and alongside her are b-boy dancer Ryan LoGisTic Harston, puppeteer Mohsen Nouri and, creating most of the soundtrack, champion beat-boxer Hobbit (Jack Hobbs).

Hip-hop theatre meets puppetry in many different ways during the show’s unbroken 70 minutes, but the effect is constantly alive and thought-provoking. The four performers cross over between each other’s disciplines in sequences where dancers perform as if puppets, with boxes on their heads, where one or more operate puppets to a narrative, and where all there is is the music.

A girl cuts herself because magazines give her a negative body image, so she’s played by a puppet made entirely of paper, while another gives birth to a baby made entirely of boxes. There’s humour with a boom box becoming the head of a dancing puppet, but there’s a political message behind this too.
Running through the whole show is a thread following Omar, a boy in a grey hoodie who feels marginalised and invisible and reacts with a mixture of fear and aggression. This puppet – an empty hooded top – is startlingly human in form despite its lack of a face or lower body, and the skill of the puppetry here is really striking. The sequence when Omar finds a voice and finally connects is, along with the Paper Girl, among the most emotionally charged parts of the work.

What Saha and Buckmaster achieve in spades here is a perfect balance between emotional tension and engaging humour, and the entire piece is delivered with such energy that it can’t fail to keep its audience engaged. Rarely will you find such weighty issues leaving you with quite such a sense of exhilaration.

Broke ‘n’ Beat Collective plays at Unity until Saturday 13th February after which it continues on a 14 venue tour ending April 2nd.

This review was originally written for and pubished by Good News Liverpool.

Ryan LoGisTic Harston  & Mohsen Nouri with Omar - Photo (c) Theatre Rites

I Am Not Myself These Days – Liverpool Playhouse Studio - 3/2/2016

First performed at the Edinburgh Fringe last August, Tom Stuart’s adaptation of Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s biography begins an 8 venue tour this week at the Playhouse Studio, in a home gig for Everyman Playhouse Associate Director Nick Bagnall and produced by Fuel Theatre.
Tom Stuart not only made the adaptation but also performs the work, and his affection and commitment to the source material are evident from the outset. His characterisation of Josh is seen almost exclusively through the persona of his drag-queen alter ego, Aquadisiac / Aqua, and the show charts the fall and rise of Josh as he descends into a vodka-fuelled nightmare world abetted by his new partner Jack, a sex worker with a crack addiction and a colourful assortment of clients. Josh’s epiphany, as he finally (and literally) casts off the guise of Aqua to save himself from self-destruction, is as powerful and heart-breaking a piece of theatre as you’re likely to see.
The writing is uncompromisingly stark and honest and takes turns between acid wit, hysteria and rage. Stuart delivers an explosive and visceral performance with blistering intensity but with passages of astounding calm and beauty, and the physical energy of the work is quite literally jaw-dropping.
Nick Bagnall’s familiar pace and darkness are clearly visible in the staging, which is presented on a distressed, geometric stage design by Ti Green. The set marries with Guy Hoare’s lighting in a manner that slips us swiftly and with style between times and locations: an apartment balcony, a nightclub, the open road.
Emotional balance is under masterful control, with the audience compelled to belly laughs one moment and holding our collective breath the next. It’s impossible to know whether to be on the edge of the seat or pressed down into it by the overwhelming intensity of the words.
Tickets for this week are in short supply, but snapping up the last remaining seats is highly recommended.
I Am Not Myself These Days is at the Playhouse Studio until Saturday evening and then tours a further 7 venues ending in Shoreditch on 12th March

This review was originally written for and published by Seen 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