Behind You? Oh no it isn’t! – Snow White – Epstein Theatre Liverpool – 25/03/2016 (and other musings)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the theatre without an anti-pun shield and a raincoat

The wee small hours of this morning found me writing my review from last evening’s press night at the Epstein. Contemplating the strange new creature that is Easter Panto made me reflect back to the ten Christmas shows that I saw during a fortnight in December and to realise that many of them never found their way into these pages, with my words confined to the stuff I’d been asked to write elsewhere.

I reckon that I clocked up eight pantos of varying description and a further two Christmas productions in a two-week period and my diagnosis of theatre addiction was confirmed (as though confirmation were necessary) by the fact that I then chose to return to at least four of these shows again before they closed – some of them more than once.

But to the matter in hand and Snow White at the Epstein. I had already determined that I was going to go to this Easter show before I was asked to cover it. Having been to their Christmas panto, Cinderella, I was interested to explore how the format translates when moved away from the festive season and an additional draw was the reappearance of some of the same cast.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that there seems to be quite an appetite for it, with the theatre foyer packed to the gunnels with children of all ages, some even older than me. This one is running for just a week and a half, compared to the extended period that Christmas pantos enjoy, but when companies like LHK productions have a whole lot of sets and costumes in stock for an almost off-the-peg performance, the staging is no less colourful than you’d expect from a longer run. It is noticeable that there’s rather less polish than the show might be given if it were to be the theatre’s big money-maker for the year, but it was hugely entertaining nonetheless, with some memorable performances.

As with many panto producers, Lee Kelly has elected to cast from a mixture of professional performers and professional celebrities, and this often leads to an uneven result, but here the balance works well. Taking the title role of Snow White is Georgina Austin, who has danced with the company for four years but has now been given the chance to shine in a lead part, and shine she does. She’s clearly comfortable on stage and communicates really well with the audience, getting the children’s attention from her first appearance. More than this, she has a great singing voice and excellent diction so every word, whether spoken or sung, is easily heard, something some directors sadly forget to check.

The director of these Epstein pantos also writes the scripts and plays the dame. Michael Chapman is a firm favourite here and not without good reason. The writing contains the traditional mixture of humour aimed at both halves of the audience, with a good deal of thinly veiled bawdiness for the adults that creeps in beneath the radar of the youngsters, but Chapman gets the pitch just right and never oversteps the mark. He’s famously developed a unique way of dealing with children onstage and it is with absolute glee that the volunteers brave enough to get up there are shoved about, his hand in their faces. You’d expect tears, but what you get are broad smiles. Dame Debbie the palace cook (or Double D) is his alter-ego this season.

Of course Debbie has a son, Muddles the court jester, who’s the vehicle for a very welcome return from the Christmas cast, Lewis Pryor. Lewis was only sixteen when he wowed audiences with his exceptional Buttons. Now a veteran of seventeen, he’s back to prove that it was no fluke. When I reviewed the Christmas show I (and numerous others) said his was a name to remember, and he didn’t disappoint. Here is a young man clearly born to be on the stage and he can work an audience with all the flair and confidence of performers with three or four times his years and experience. An absolute natural, here is someone who deserves all the support and good breaks he can get.

Debi Jones is better known locally for her TV and Radio presenting, but her early training as a singer shows in her vocal performances here as a slightly too likeable Wicked Queen. Her magic mirror, arbiter of beauty, appears on a giant TV screen and is personified by Ricky Tomlinson. He got to sit and watch himself last night, as his performance is pre-recorded. Inevitably it is in one of his most enduring characterisations that he makes his proclamations as Jim Royle, slouched into a battered armchair.

When you’re looking for a celebrity face for your posters the world of reality TV offers a catalogue of names to choose from. For Prince Charming the producers have found a former star of The Apprentice and Celebrity Big Brother. James Hill is an entrepreneur with a sense of humour and who’s willing to be taken not so seriously in his role as Prince Charming. Some of his earlier stage movements would have been better suited to Madame Tussaud’s but he soon relaxed into the part and was clearly having fun. Lesser mortals may have dried when getting their lines tied in knots, but Hill laughed it off to the delight of the audience. Something else that delighted the audience (or certainly all those persuaded by a six pack and so forth) were his increasingly revealing costumes, which proved that a flair for business is not his only asset.

Tom Burroughs, who played Michael Chapman’s ugly sister in Cinderella, returns as the evil Henchman. With a wig straight out of the chamber of horrors he’s a good foil to the wicked queen and although the part isn’t quite as rich as the one he was given at Christmas he relishes every line.

There’s a somewhat insignificant turn from Olivia Horton as a good fairy, whose lines sadly disappeared into the ether before reaching row D of the stalls. Hopefully over the next few days the sound team can give her a bit of a boost so that she’s audible.

Most startling of all are the seven dwarves (or is that dwarfs – the programme and posters can’t agree?). We’re reliably informed that inside the costumes are seven children, but on the outside they tower above even the tallest of the other cast members. As they waddled off the set at one point, the foam heads bumping into the doorframes, my friend remarked that they looked like something out of It’s a Knockout, a thought I was beginning to think myself. There was something rather more sinister than cute about them, and the renaming of some of them didn’t go any further toward convincing me. When were there ever characters called Bossy, Basher and Boppi in the tale? They’ll be renaming Santa’s reindeer next and then where will we be...

As always with the panto it’s important to fill the stage with movement and colour, and once again a multitude of dancers from several local dance and drama academies have been assembled to do just this. Holli Jo Bradley has created some really elegant choreography for them and it’s a great showcase for the wealth of young talent that’s out there.

In the final analysis a panto has to be judged on whether it’s a good family outing that the smallest of children can enjoy along with their grandparents and everyone in between. By that yardstick this is a hit, judging by the cheers and screams of delight from an audience whose very youngest members had remained remarkably rapt for almost two and a half hours – no mean feat.

Sooner or later I will fill in the gaps from Christmas but, in the words of one of those shows, that’s another story, never mind...

Snow White runs at the Epstein Theatre until 6th April.

Snow White - LHK productions

 

Debi Jones, Ricky Tomlinson, James Hill, Georgia Austin & Lewis Pryor Photo (c) Bond Media

Living with the Lights On - Lantern Theatre - 11 March 2016

Tea and Hobnobs with the Devil

Mark Lockyer had a promising career with the RSC but whilst playing Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet in 1995 the events of his life piled up a little too high for him and he suffered a severe breakdown.

Mark’s one-man show Living with the Lights On, which visited the Lantern Theatre on Thursday and Friday as part of a tour, charts his recovery via a series of very dark places.

The performance gets off to a disarming start by seating the audience in the bar area rather than the auditorium, informally ranged around a table bearing a tea urn. Mark introduces himself to his guests and invites us to share tea and biscuits while he tells us a story.

The play hardly feels as though it’s been directed, as it appears to grow organically out of an informal chat, but Lockyer has clearly worked on honing the script and its delivery with Director Ramin Gray, as he achieves a perfect balance between the darkness of the material and a sharp and witty piece of storytelling.

He manages to weave various other individuals into the dialogue including Beelzebub, who he met during some of his darkest hours and who is characterised here as something reminiscent of Jack Nicholson. The performance moves back and forth between episodes of self-deprecating humour and moments of terrifying raw power, and the intimacy of the space in the Lantern’s bar makes for an intense but hypnotising 90 minutes in the company of an actor who has dared to reveal some of his own nightmares in this frank and honest examination of his own psychological disintegration and recovery.

Living with the Lights On is presented by the Actors Touring Company and continues touring to 23rd March.

This review was originally written for Good News Liverpool

The Environmentalists - Young Everyman Playhouse at Everyman Theatre / Who’s Afraid of the Working Class - LIPA at Unity Theatre 04 & 05 March 2016

The weekend saw two performances showcasing a wealth of talent, nurtured here in Liverpool.

The Environmentalists is the latest offering from Young Everyman Playhouse with a cast of 43 young performers onstage at the Everyman making a heartfelt plea for the environment. The message is pretty clear – although we may feel that our own individual efforts to protect the world we live in are to little or no effect, why not just do it anyway? We might just save the Earth.

 As with their last big ensemble performance at the Everyman, Until They Kick Us Out, the work has been devised by the performers themselves but, where that last piece was made up of a series of separate personal stories, The Environmentalists feels much more like a cry from a collective consciousness. The 90 minute span of the performance comprises a sequence of scenes that each take a different spin on the same subject, but there is still a clear focus to the work as a whole.

There are domestic arguments about food waste and turning off the lights, a host of dying penguins, a sea choked with plastic bags and two future people nurturing the last seeds left on earth. On sustainably sourced paper this might sound confused, but in the hands of YEP and their Directors Matt Rutter and Chris Tomlinson the whole comes together as a coherent and powerful argument that challenges one of the biggest environmental problems of all – apathy.

It would be unfair to begin singling out individual performances, as this is very much an ensemble piece but, as ever, each audience member is sure to go away with a lot of faces that they’re hoping to see back on stage again. What has been remarked upon with surprise by other youth theatres is that the Everyman and Playhouse have opened up their main stage for the performance rather than one of the studio spaces, allowing the whole YEP team, including those studying the off-stage and technical stuff, to experience full-scale staging in a professional producing theatre. This is a clear indication of the confidence and pride that the company have in YEP.

Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts have 32 actors graduating this year and, from Thursday to Saturday, 12 of these actors took to Unity Theatre’s main stage to present a specially commissioned new play from Liverpool writer Luke Barnes, Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?

Directed by LIPA’s Head of Acting Will Hammond, the play revolves around the life of John and his family, charting various periods from John’s childhood to old age. There are many complex themes explored and at times the writing feels as though it has a few too many ideas to work with. Action pulls back and forth through time and the cast do a tremendous job of holding the labyrinthine narrative together, with some doubling of roles, and there are some notably strong performances.

Chris Mohan is John’s son when John is an adult and his father when he’s a child, and the transformation is impressive, as is Connor Lee Dye as John himself, remarkably convincing in old age. Matilda Weaver, too, is compelling as John’s long-suffering wife, as are Sophie Cottle and Michael Bryan as their other son and daughter. James Botterill has a centrally villainous character, unlikeable but richly drawn, while Joseph Wood is given an unsympathetic “only gay in the village” part that he manages to make three-dimensional.

The increasingly popular trend for having actors play in their native dialects can sometimes be confusing, and here it leads to a Yorkshireman having three children who appear to have been brought up in England, Ireland and America respectively, but the passion in the performances carries us beyond the barrier of disbelief. Staging is dynamic and makes excellent use of space, while there is some nicely choreographed stage movement.

Watching these two very different shows within 24 hours delivers a tremendously positive message about the strongly beating creative heart of the city. Young Everyman Playhouse offers a great opportunity for local young people to learn every aspect of theatre-making, while LIPA attracts emerging creative talent from across the globe.

Don’t let anyone tell you that theatre is a dying art – come and feel its pulse in and around Liverpool’s Hope Street.

These reviews were originally written for and published by Good News Liverpool