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Review: Young Frankenstein at the Liverpool Playhouse ****
It’s five years now since the Liverpool Playhouse last staged an overt ‘Christmas’ production – Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for a socially distanced season mid-pandemic. Since then, while they’ve continued to rock ‘n’ roll up the road in Hope Street, the Playhouse has experimented with its festive offerings, from Fantastically Great Women and fantastically feisty female monarchs (SIX the Musical) to the spookily supernatural (The Woman in Black) and the outrageously camp in th
Review: Matilda the Musical at the Liverpool Empire *****
It recently entered its 15 th year on the London stage, putting it in the top 10 of longest-running West End shows. But when the RSC commissioned the stage musical version of Roald Dahl’s children's book Matilda back in December 2008, it was a leap of faith for a company best known for presenting the works of Shakespeare to generations of theatregoers. Not only that, but they enlisted musicals first timer Dennis Kelly to adapt the book, and kohl-eyed, wild-haired Aussie come
Review: Stella at the Unity Theatre ****
Robert Farquhar’s sharply scripted, comi-tragic one-woman play Stella charmed audiences when it was given an initial outing at the Unity Theatre’s Up Next Festival earlier this year. It sold out then and it’s practically sold out again on its pre-Christmas return to the Hope Place stage with the kinetic Kalli Tant reprising her role as the lead (in fact all the play’s) character(s). Pleasingly for a story about a young woman on a tumultuous journey of self-discovery, the audi
Review: Rachmaninov with Sir Stephen Hough at Philharmonic Hall ****1/2
It’s turning into a season of homecomings in Hope Street. Earlier this month, Sir Simon Rattle brought his acclaimed Bavarian orchestral outfit to the Philharmonic Hall to kickstart a pre-Christmas European tour in fine fashion. And in the spring, Huyton piano genius Paul Lewis returns to play Beethoven on the hall’s Steinway. Sandwiched in between, Sir Stephen Hough, whose formative years were spent in the Art Deco auditorium – surrounded by its ‘daring’ gold relief of naked
Review: Jack and the Beanstalk at the Liverpool Everyman ****
This year’s Everyman Rock ‘n’ Roll panto comes with a content warning – for silliness, songs, glitter and water guns. And if the physical glitter is mostly confined to Liam Tobin’s extravagant false eyelashes, there’s certainly plenty of silliness, a thumping soundtrack of songs and a traditional seasonal soaking on offer. After a rocky couple of Christmas seasons around the time of Covid, with changes in personnel and storytelling emphasis (it all got a bit too serious and p
Review: The Scouse Christmas Carol at Liverpool Royal Court ****1/2
‘Will Charlie Dicko spin so fast in his grave that a sinkhole opens up?’ the Royal Court ponders in the marketing for its entertainingly larky take on the Victorian scribe’s much-loved, much-told Christmas ghost story. I’m not so sure. Because the ghost of Dickens past like a lark himself. Take the ‘lighthearted and frolicksome’ farce, Mr Nightingale’s Diary, which he penned with Punch editor Mark Lemon and performed on stage at the Philharmonic Hall in 1852 with his chums (i
Review: Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at Philharmonic Hall *****
Monday is not a usual music-making night at the Phil, but when one of Liverpool’s most famous sons (Sir Simon Rattle) drops in with one of the world’s foremost orchestras (the Bavarian Radio Symphony), it would be rude not to break with convention. And there was certainly a real sense of occasion in the auditorium for this bonus highlight of the 2025/26 season. Rattle, who turned 70 earlier this year, and his latest crack German outfit, are on a whistlestop European autumn to
Review: Liverpool Mozart Orchestra at the Tung Auditorium ****
How do you mark 75 years of music making in Liverpool? How about by inviting the city’s most famous (non-Beatle) musical export to launch your special anniversary? Wishful thinking? Reaching for the stars? It turned out not for the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra whose opening concert of its 75 th season serendipitously coincided with a rare visit home for its illustrious president Sir Simon Rattle, in town to open a European tour with his own current outfit the Bavarian Radio Sy
Review: Little Women at the Liverpool Playhouse ****
Those Little Women have been on a big journey over the course of 2025 with this sprightly new production of the classic coming-of-age tale crisscrossing the UK. But it’s apt the tour of a story which opens amid the brutal upheaval of the American Civil War should finish here in Liverpool, and in this week too. While it officially ended six months earlier, the American Civil War finally concluded on November 6, 1865, when Captain James Waddell sailed up the Mersey in the CSS S
Review: Top Hat at the Liverpool Empire ****
The Empire is currently celebrating its centenary - and back in the same space in March 1926, Liverpool audiences would have been treated to Mr ‘top hat, white tie and tails’ himself Fred Astaire treading its boards. Astaire appeared with his sister Adele in George Gershwin’s Lady be Good. And it evidently proved to be good, because they returned to Lime Street for another run in early 1927. By the mid-30s, Astaire had gone from big theatre star to even bigger screen star. An
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