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

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