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.

The Wonderful World of Dissocia – YEP at Playhouse Studio Liverpool – 05/11/2015 & 06/11/2015

When the company of this new Young Everyman Playhouse production of Anthony Neilson’s play have gone to such lengths to keep us guessing, even so far as not providing programmes until after the performance, I am reluctant to post this commentary until after the final performance.

However, as the play was first produced in its present form over a decade ago, its unconventional and deliberately disconcerting two act form and mysterious unravelling is well documented.

A Quote from Neilson in the pre-publicity suggests a kind of Alice in Wonderland but with more sex and violence, and he has also been known to liken the first act to the Wizard of Oz. But the Alice reference seems very clear as the chief protagonist, Lisa Jones, descends not so much down a rabbit hole as in an elevator in search of an hour she has lost. It seems that she crossed the date line in a plane at the same time as the clocks went back – don’t worry – it all becomes clear, but not until after the interval.

On her unlikely quest Lisa meets a range of fantastical characters, from a pair of insecurity guards (possibly channelling Tweedledum and Tweedledee) to a scapegoat and singing polar bear. The people of the land of Dissocia in which she finds herself seem domineered by a mad queen with a penchant for oatcakes and dogged by unhelpful public servants all working to their own peculiar brand of logic.

It is only in act two that everything falls into place but not until the audience is led perplexingly back into the auditorium via a completely different route, to find the room changed almost beyond recognition. In this much shorter segment (barely more than a quarter of the whole play) every scene recalls to mind the characters and events of act one as we learn of Lisa’s struggle to cope with mental illness.

It is deeply moving stuff, but served up with copious amounts of surreal humour, and it is to the huge credit of YEP under the direction of Chris Tomlinson that they not only pull it off but do so with tremendous success.

Lisa is played by Naimh McCarthy (Wed & Thur) and Poppy Hughes (Fri & Sat) and it is staggering to think that both actors have prepared the weighty part for just two performances, while doubling other roles on their other nights. I managed to see one performance by each of them and was struck by the way that both made the part their own while entirely buying in to the director’s concept of the piece.

A multi-skilled cast who I am not going to begin to count because of the complicated role-doubling (but there are a dozen or so of them!) succeed in bringing lucidity to the host of weird and wonderful characters they play while demonstrating again the company’s strong use of stage movement, bringing the tiny Studio space to vivid life. We even discover musical talents including a saxophonist and a beat boxer in their midst.

Along with our two Lisas, there are some very strong performances, including Isobel Balchin’s stoical Jane and Alice Corrigan’s Britney. The two insecurity guards James Bibby and Stuie Dagnall at first appear as likely candidates for the panto, but Bibby later turns to a far darker form of comedy and Dagnall also gives us a really delicate performance as Lisa’s partner Vince. Elliot Davis shows remarkable skill and subtlety of movement, with every twitch and blink carefully measured.

Set, lighting and sound designs are to the same high standards of imagination and technical skill that we’ve come to expect from YEP.

There is a great deal to remember this production for, from its fearless approach to discussing not just Dissociative Identity Disorder but mental health in general, to the sheer joy of seeing so much emerging talent displayed again by this vibrant company. YEP continue to offer us an optimistic view of the future of Liverpool’s Everyman and Playhouse.

YEP publicity design for The Wonderful World of Dissocia

Narvik – Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 10/09/2015

Returning to the Playhouse Studio, a space reopened in 2011 by her “Swallowing Dark”, Lizzie Nunnery here combines her stark theatrical writing style with another strand of her work, as singer-songwriter, but Narvik is not to be confused with a musical.

Nunnery appears onstage, along with composer/musicians Vidar Norheim and Martin Heslop (Bright Phoenix), and all three engage in the stage movement whilst providing the soundscape for the play. There are a small number of folk-inspired songs, reminiscent of sea shanties, amidst a sea of sound and colour that seeps out of the woodwork of the stage, as they use a variety of found objects as well as traditional instruments to create their music.

Narvik is big on atmosphere, and Richard Owen’s lighting nuances a detailed set by Maeve Black, which makes use of every square inch of the Studio’s performance space, ropes weaving out over the heads of the audience.

The warp and weft of the story are the lives of Jim, a Liverpool fisherman and Elsa, an Oslo schoolteacher, which become entangled with those of Kenny and Lucya. The play opens with Jim, at 90, who falls and lies calling for help. As his consciousness drifts we follow his memory back to 1940, when Jim finds himself in Norway working as a warship radio operator with Kenny and meets the enigmatic Elsa. So we are reminded of the involvement that the town of Narvik had in WWII, through the lives of two people brought together and torn apart by the conflict. He may not have a girl in every port, but Jim’s romantic tale is far from straightforward.

Joe Shipman delivers a powerful performance as Jim, successfully navigating the journey from youth to old age and back several times throughout the play’s 70 minutes, although his opening scene is just a little awkward in the writing. Lucas Smith’s bluff, pragmatic Kenny is a perfect foil to Jim’s brittle character and Smith does a good line in smouldering behind heavy brows. Nina Yndis, by turns coquettish and knowing, has tremendous presence on stage, both as Elsa and as Jim’s Russian brief encounter Lucya.

Lizzie Nunnery pays tribute to the Battles of Narvik through the wartime memories of her grandfather, and Director Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder finds both anger and tenderness in Nunnery’s words.

Narvik is produced by Box of Tricks theatre in association with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and it plays at the Studio until Saturday 19th September.

Nina Yndis, Lucas Smith & Joe Shipman

Image © Decoy Media

Plastic Figurines – Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 08/04/2015

I’m going to stick my neck out here and suggest that Ella Carmen Greenhill’s new play, which premiered in Liverpool last night, is not a play about autism – it’s a play about people. More specifically it’s about that way that a brother and sister, each facing their own individual challenges, deal with the impact of the loss of their mother. It’s a play about grief and bereavement; love, pain and hope.

And it is beautiful.

We keep fixing back on a thoughtful Rose in “the present” in the inauspicious surroundings of a hospital waiting area, and her memories trigger successive scenes in flashback. We are then introduced to her brother Mikey on his 18th birthday. I’m not going to destroy anyone’s enjoyment by telling you too much detail, but it’s important to note that the narrative pulls back and forth through time.

The evolution of the work from a 15 minute short to this full length one-act play, commissioned by Box of Tricks Theatre, has clearly involved a tremendous amount of research and character development, as well as the construction of the fractured timeline.

The result is a pair of finely drawn characters who have been brought vividly to life in two astonishing performances from Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel.

Mikey has autism but, refreshingly, this is played as one (albeit very significant) aspect of his personality, and it is his personality that is key. Great care has been taken to ensure that what we see on stage is a young man, not a condition. It’s clear that in his background work Jamie Samuel has assembled a host of possible mannerisms and has then thrown most of them away, so that he uses the subtlest ways of delivering Mikey’s difficulties. This subtlety enables the more emotionally charged scenes to become all the more impactful. A good example is where what begins as a very funny scene with a chocolate bar quickly evolves into something of terrifying power.

Jamie Samuels’ performance is so mesmerising that you do sometimes have to make a conscious effort to turn attention to Remmie Milner’s Rose, the level headed and mature big sister who has given up her new life to look after her little brother. This too is a beautifully crafted performance, and again the gentle delivery of most of her part throws some of the pivotal moments into sharp contrast.

As the piece reaches its dramatic climax we are left with an open ended future for Mikey and Rose. Writer, director and cast remain tight-lipped over their personal ideas of their ultimate fate, but I left the theatre with a tentative optimism. More importantly, they are characters that I found myself really caring about.

Ella Greenhill’s moving text feels completely natural and the flow of the narrative, while fragmented, is clear and concise and Adam Quayle’s direction has a wonderful lightness of touch. The set by Katie Scott has an elegant simplicity that enables it to carry us back and forth in time and place with the aid of clever lighting from Richard Owen, while Chris James’ splendidly subtle sound design  provides clarity to the settings.

I last saw Remmie Milner in the main house here in Melody Loses Her Mojo and Jamie Samuel in Jumpers for Goalposts at the Bush (see my earlier postings) and I have also seen some of Ella Greenhill’s previous writing, so I had high expectations for this piece. So much so that I bought seats for two consecutive performances and am returning again this evening. I wasn’t disappointed and may well need to buy another …

Adam Quayle told me that half a director’s job is done if they can find a great writer and great actors, and based on this principle he was on to a winner with this. The writing is insightful, delicate and real, and Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel give flawless performances that are impossible not to be drawn into.

And the Plastic Figurines? – Buy a ticket and find out…

Plastic Figurines plays at the Playhouse Studio until Saturday, after which it embarks on a national tour visiting 14 additional venues until 16th May, and if there’s justice in the world it will have a life beyond this. For venues and dates, see Box of Tricks’ website:

http://boxoftrickstheatre.co.uk/production/plastic-figurines/

View the rehearsal video diary on YouTube Here

Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel "It'd be like I was flying".

Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel in rehearsal - Photo (c) Lucas Smith

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

Black – 20 Stories High – Playhouse Studio – 28/01/2015

This week we saw Benedict Cumberbatch being roundly berated in the press for being racist when he thought he was being quite the opposite. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had got into hot water by using the wrong terminology, intentionally or not, but this occurrence came with perfect timing to get the subject of racial abuse into everyone’s minds, ahead of the opening night of Keith Saha’s new work in the Playhouse Studio.

Nikki doesn’t see herself as racist – she doesn’t see her family as racist – but when a new family (who happen to be black) move into the street she can’t help noticing the reaction. Over the next hour or so we see her confront the opinions of her family, her neighbours and ultimately herself as she struggles to understand and to form her own view of the situation.

Abby Melia makes a hugely impressive professional debut in what is very nearly a solo performance as Nikki. At first she mirrors the behaviour of her own community but when she turns up for her work placement at the day nursery, and finds herself meeting them via their children, she becomes increasingly torn between her need to conform and her realisation that she’s met a good family.

Craig Shanda spends much of the play behind the decks providing the soundtrack to the piece, and he delivers his lines musically. He represents rather than plays the role of Precious, the elder son of the new family who Nikki finds a bond with as the play progresses.

This is a tremendous piece of writing from Saha, who attacks the issues head on but never offers any easy solutions or happy endings. It’s important for a piece like this to act as a catalyst for discussion rather than a neat explanation. In early scratch performances, the author says people thought it might be set some decades ago, failing to believe that people really behave like this today, but he observes that if anything we are going backwards in our post 9/11 world, with undercurrents of racism on a sharp increase. It will be interesting to see the reactions that this piece gets in its various diverse tour destinations, and when it airs in school performances.

Director Julia Samuels worked with the cast over a 2½ week period to consolidate the journey that the characters go through and their work has paid off in a powerful and compelling performance. Miriam Narabbo’s simple but effective set, with some touches of playroom quirkiness, is lit by Douglas Kuhrt.

Touring from 3rd February via The MAC Belfast, The Key Peterborough, Contact Manchester, Bolton Octagon, Lawrence Batley Huddersfield, Burnley Arts Centre, St Helens Chester Lane Library, The Albany Deptford, and MAC Birmingham, Closing 20th March.

Half Baked – Young Theatre Makers at Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 31/10/2014

You somehow feel that none of the young staff of Renée’s bakery are going to be winning the Great British Bake-off anytime soon with their hapless efforts, but Alex Joynes new piece certainly rises to the occasion and there is no soggy bottom in this warm-hearted play about teenagers coming to terms with the struggles and disappointments that life throws at them.

The struggling high street independent is under a hostile takeover from Cotstabucks and while some of the employees consider applying for jobs with the company they are all looking to make the enforced change into an opportunity to spread their wings.

There are tales of rejection on both romantic and career paths woven into this gently witty piece, along with portraits of young people discovering who they are and coming to terms with each other’s different views of the world.

The six-strong cast are Josie Sedgewick Davies, Emily Woosey, Lucy Harris, Tom Harrington, Nick Crosbie and Jamie Brownson. All are locally based and four have previously been seen in Young Everyman Playhouse productions, including The Grid, which was co-written by Alex Joynes.

Set design is by Adele Hayter, who is a graduate of LIPA and won this year’s design prize from the Everyman & Playhouse. Half Baked is directed by Chris Tomlinson and Natasia Bullock and the remaining production team are all members of YEP.

Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and YEP are promoting the Young Theatre Makers project along with Birmingham Rep and New Wolsey Ipswich.  Half Baked, co-produced by YEP as part of this programme, will be playing in various northern venues in November prior to a national tour next spring. 

Cartoonopolis - Lewis Bray - Liverpool Playhouse Studio - 22/10/2014

Lewis Bray presented us with a short extract of Cartoonopolis earlier in the year and since then I have been looking forward to the appearance of the longer work…  I was not disappointed.

Lewis has a teenage brother Jack, who has autism and although like the rest of his family he is from the Wirral, Jack speaks with an American accent learned through his love of cartoons. He has built his own world inhabited with these characters, some familiar to us and some created through his own rich imagination.

In Cartoonopolis Jack is Mayor Bray, and he calls the tune. The central section of the play sees a battle between the forces of good and evil in his realm. Surrounding this we see the back story, experiencing Jack’s world through the experience of Lewis and the rest of the family.

What Lewis does is give his brother a voice and has us understand him the way his family do. In doing so he has created a work filled with astonishing frankness and tremendously affectionate humour. He manages to expose many of their difficulties and frustrations, often caused by the misunderstanding of others or lack of cooperation or support, but he never allows it to become protest or posturing.

We are left wanting to cross the border into Cartoonopolis with Jack, and to experience his world the way that Lewis seems to be able to do.

Lewis Bray is a tremendously talented improviser with a terrific ability to flip back and forth between numerous characters, both real and imaginary. Early on, as he first depicts his mother, he throws us an aside to the effect that she’ll kill him when she sees this, but I strongly suspect that she will find the characterisation as affectionately humorous as we do.

Cartoonopolis is written and performed by Lewis Bray, directed by Matt Rutter and Chris Tomlinson and was lit by Christina Eddowes. If, as Matt Rutter tells us, this was a scratch performance then audiences are really in for a treat when it returns in February.

Sizwe Banzi is Dead – Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 10/06/2014

Watching Matthew Xia’s new production of Sizwe Banzi is Dead it’s hard to believe that it is over forty years old, not least because the themes are so resonant with the here and now. Certainly when first presented in 1972 Cape Town in the midst of apartheid the play must have made waves, but so much of it still rings true that it drives home just how far we still have to go.

A guard ensured that audience members filed into the auditorium on the correct side of a rope barrier, according to colour. The generally pallid capacity audience made this difficult to carry to its logical conclusion but the point was well made, and it was clear that pertinent parts of the dialogue were directed pointedly to the white or non-white sides of the room.

This is a piece written almost like two separate plays that both deliver a similar message about freedom and identity. The first 40 of its 100 minutes are a monologue from a photographer named Styles, who proudly tells the story of how he fought to own this tiny studio in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. Tonderai Munyevu plays this part with mesmerising stage presence and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. He has Styles characterise numerous other players in his tale, including his own elderly father and some twenty-odd members of a family who arrive to have a group photograph taken. Can there really be this many ways to say “Cheese”? Munyevu’s storytelling is utterly captivating and in the muggy heat of the studio (it was still thundering outside the theatre) it was impossible not to be transported by him.

Styles’ narrative is interrupted by a knocking at his door and in comes a man claiming to be Robert Zwelinzima, although he seems strangely unsure of his name. He parts with his money and poses for a photograph, and at a click of the shutter he becomes frozen in time in this image.

And so to the other half of the story, in which we flash back to discover how Sizwe Banzi has been persuaded reluctantly to trade his identity for his freedom. He is played by Sibusiso Mamba, while Tonderai Munyevu remains to play his friend, Buntu.

Banzi has a stamp in his passbook that imposes requirements he cannot fulfil, and he cannot remain in Port Elizabeth. All he wants is to retain his dignity as a man – to work and to provide for his family – but there seems no way out of the dilemma. Not, that is, until Buntu literally stumbles across a dead man in the street, behind a bar where they have been drinking. This man is Robert Zwelinzima, and Buntu manages to talk Banzi into surrendering his identity in order to assume ownership of dead man’s passbook. Somehow though it now feels more as though the passbook owns him.

The bright, energetic, optimistic world of part one in Styles’ studio contrasts starkly with the second part’s slower paced and much darker atmosphere, but the ever present spectre of apartheid looms heavy over both. What does a man have to do to be able to own himself?

Sibusiso Mamba combines a gentle dignity with determination and despair and his outrage at having to surrender his very identity is both terrifying and heartbreaking.

Matthew Xia is familiar with the Playhouse’s Studio and he has used the space to maximum advantage, with his perfectly cast duo of actors giving him first rate performances. Hyemi Shen’s lock-up garage of a set is a box of magic and there are some beautiful details of theatricality in the staging, including the portrayal of the deceased Zwelinzima and the arrival of lunch.

Lighting by Ciaran Cunningham and sound design by Richard Hammerton complete the atmosphere.

Sizwe Banzi is Dead was originally written and devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani & Winston Ntshona and presented first in Cape Town and then in London, and over four decades on it remains as fresh as paint in this masterful new production from Eclipse Theatre Company and the Young Vic.

This is the end of a six venue tour following its opening run, and it closes here in Liverpool on Saturday 14th June. At the time of writing every performance is sold out, but please do check with the box office for returns to avoid missing out.

Scene Change – Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 22/05/2014

Scene Change is a recent innovation from Young Everyman Playhouse Producers, in which the Studio offers a bi-monthly showcase for, in the words of the group’s web page, “...the very best of Liverpool’s freshest creative talent. From writers to artists, magicians to musicians - we’ve got every scene covered. Scene Change aims to raise awareness of Liverpool’s newest arts contributors, providing a platform for those just starting out and those developing an existing reputation”.

On this occasion an hour or so was filled by four segments; a piece for four actors followed by three solo performances.

Introduced as an acting masterclass, the Greg Bike Show brought us a comedy in which a father and son (Liam Hale and Dom Davies), sparring with each other in their championing of different acting techniques and abetted by two colleagues, demonstrate the principle with “Dead Dog on the Pavement”. Sharply witty and played with great timing, this was both well written and presented. Follow @GregBikeShow on twitter for details of them heading to Edinburgh Fringe. 

Second was a segment from stand-up comedian Mike Osbourne, who has a keen ear for word-play and irony. Comedy is a particularly subjective thing, but this brand of humour went down well with the audience and it certainly worked for me.

Next up was Lewis Bray. He is working on a full length play called Cartoonopolis that will be presented later in the year at the Studio. Here he gave us an scene from the piece, in which he plays various members of his family including himself. The play tells the true, touching and often funny story of his own brother and the cartoon world he inhabits within his imagination. Based on this extract, here will be one for the diary when it appears in full.

Finally came a dark, almost sinister short work by past YEP writer Sarah Tarbit, in which a wheelchair-bound man reflected on his life. It is sadly true that, faced with a person in a wheelchair, we often see a disability rather than an individual. Despite how far we have come, taboos still remain and many people fail to consider that someone with a physical disability has the same capacity for desires and frustrations as everyone else. This piece challenged that misconception head on and raised some uncomfortable but important questions. Daniel Murphy gave a poweful delivery and was directed by YEP young director Rio Matchet.

Scene Change is not widely publicised and its audience is largely made up of members of Young Everyman Playhouse, but tickets are available at a bargain price and a follow for @YoungEveryPlay on Twitter will keep you posted on upcoming dates.

Many thanks to the YEP members who kindly supplied me with the names of the artists involved!