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Review: Haydn's Creation at the Tung Auditorium ****1/2
The Liverpool Mozart Orchestra set the bar high when it launched its 75th anniversary year last November with its president Sir Simon Rattle on the podium. Happily, it had another ace up its sleeve with which to bring the special season to a fitting close, and in jubilant fashion. The orchestra has performed Haydn throughout its three-quarters-of-a-century of music making, principally the prolific Austrian’s symphonies, but also occasionally other pieces, like his oboe concer
Review: Music of the Americas at Philharmonic Hall ****1/2
America celebrates a big birthday this July 4th. And just to show we here in the ‘old country’ don’t bear a grudge at being shown the door 250 years ago, the Phil went all-American in this exuberant Thursday night concert. Lest we forget, for many of those years Liverpool was the gateway to the ‘new world’, and those transatlantic links remain strong. But this was also a wider international affair, with the equally exuberant German pianist Frank Dupree making his first (but h
Review: Single White Female at the Liverpool Playhouse ****
Single White Female was one of several psychological thrillers that put the fear of God into cinemagoers in the late 80s and early 90s, alongside films like Fatal Attraction and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. And this new stage version of surely the second bloodiest flat share after Shallow Grave has a hint of both the infamous bunny boiler tale AND vengeful nanny vehicle about it. Rebecca Reid’s modern-day adaptation is described as ‘based on’ the original John Lutz novel/J
Review: Conteh at Liverpool's Royal Court ****
When Aron Julius first had the idea of embodying Liverpool boxing legend John Conteh on stage, he felt sure there must already be a play out there he could bring to life for a live audience. There wasn’t it seems. So rather than abandon the idea, Julius decided to write his own. Initially conceived as a one-man vehicle, with the boxer directly relating the much-chronicled highs and lows of his life and career, Julius – at that time appearing in the Royal Court’s acclaimed pro
Review: Double Indemnity at the Liverpool Playhouse ***
The 1927 murder trial of housewife Ruth Snyder and her lover Henry Judd Gray was a sensation - and among the phalanx of press in the New York courtroom were two writers who would go on to use it as inspiration for fictional tales. Journalist Sophie Treadwell revisited the murderous crime in her 1928 play Machinal. And then in 1936, fellow hack James M Cain produced his novel Double Indemnity, the cautionary tale of an insurance agent and a discontented wife who together plot
Review: Liverpool String Academy at the Tung Auditorium ****
It was the Liverpool String Academy’s inaugural concert at the city’s Tung Auditorium – but if there were any nerves among its youthful members, they certainly weren’t visible in what proved to be an accomplished and hugely impressive performance. Run by Early Music as Education (EMAE), a charity which basically does what it says on the tin by providing specialist music education for young people – irrespective of background or training – across Merseyside, Liverpool String A
Review: The Shawshank Redemption at the Liverpool Playhouse ****
Those of us of a certain vintage will remember going to see The Shawshank Redemption on the big screen back in 1994. Frank Darabont’s cinematic retelling of Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was a real gut-punch of a watch, and it was its misfortune that when it came to Oscar time – where it was nominated for seven awards – it found itself up against the twin juggernauts of Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. Three decades on, much of that gut-punch is
Review: Talking Head Twice at the Unity Theatre ***1/2
Liverpool Improvisation Festival returns to the Unity this May with a programme of shows from some of the genre's brightest talent. Ahead of that, LiF organiser Wing it Impro took the chance to present a new idea currently in development in what was a well-received scratch performance which brought the Unity’s 2026 Up Next Festival to a close. Boasting the tagline 'Inspired by Bennett. Shaped by you', Talking Head Twice offers a huge nod to the nonagenarian playwright and all
Review: Knickerbocker Glory at the Unity Theatre ****
When you call yourself Choc-a-block Comedy, it inevitably creates a certain level of expectation. But Trading Standards can stand down, because Laura Robinson and Aidan Rivers’ droll double act happily lives up to its name in this chock-a-block comedy confection whipped up and staged as part of the Unity Theatre’s Up Next Festival. In Knickerbocker Glory, the recent LIPA acting graduates (Robinson appeared at the Unity several times during training, while you might recognise
Review: Spinster at the Unity Theatre ***1/2
One of the key elements of the Unity’s annual Up Next Festival is the disparate range of work on show over one busy four-day period. That packed programme reached its zenith with a trio of double bills on Friday evening, mixing and matching six short pieces, from ‘architects of the absurd’ to a dark comedy exploring the background of the pandemic to a cabaret in the middle of a compost heap. First out of the starting blocks in the initial double bill of the night was Martha J
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