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Review: Mark Simpson's The Immortal at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall ****
Mark Simpson has revealed what he calls his ‘big and wild’ ambitions were ignited by the performances he watched and music he experienced as a youngster listening to concerts at the Philharmonic Hall. But while he may have dreamed a dream, one wonders if the Liverpool schoolboy really imagined he’d one day be feted as the orchestra that so influenced his youth premiered his own compositions in the same concert hall. Over the two decades and counting of his professional career
Review: Bember at the Unity Theatre ****
One of the few positive things to emerge from the Covid pandemic was the Unity Theatre’s Up Next Festival – designed to support and nurture new work by local talent. This year’s Up Next is the fifth annual festival, and over four days (it runs until Saturday) it is showcasing 20 pieces at various different stages of development, from rehearsed readings to fully formed productions. Up first at Up Next on its opening night was Bember, Winnie Grace Southgate’s dark comedy/comi-t
Review: From Classical to Romantic at the Tung Auditorium ****
There’s a scene in Amadeus where the impish composer and musician is welcomed by Emperor Joseph II who plays a somewhat ponderous little piece composed specially by Salieri. A giggling Mozart (Tom Hulce) proceeds to take the melody and improvise wildly and gleefully, showcasing his genius but guilelessly ridiculing the furious court composer’s effort at the same time. It was an era when soloists were expected to extemporise and ornament their performances. Mozart is said to h
Review: Waiting for Godot at the Liverpool Everyman *****
It may be a play where, as the tagline goes, “nothing happens…then nothing happens again”, but Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic masterpiece on the human condition is rich in incident and Shakespearean in scope. And it also fair twangs with vividness and life in this tremendous new co-production between Liverpool, Glasgow Citizen and Bolton Octagon, which features a pair of peerless performances from Everyman alumni Matthew Kelly and George Costigan. Jean Chan’s frayed set (even th
Review: Come Together at Liverpool's Royal Court ****1/2
The Beatles juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down, seven decades after it first set off on the road to stardom and immortality. Since Come Together – Tom Connor and Mark Newnham’s homage to Lennon and McCartney - was last staged at the Royal Court two years ago, Ian Leslie’s fab, and unexpectedly moving, book John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs has been published (if you haven’t read it, you really should). Meanwhile, in the last few weeks, Sam Mendes has started filming
Review: Two at Shakespeare North Playhouse ***1/2
There’s a satisfying sense of symmetry about this Shakespeare North Playhouse revival of Jim Cartwright’s perennially popular Two. There’s the physical symmetry of the octagonal bar designer Kay Buckley has placed in the middle of the Cockpit Theatre’s octagonal stage, around which the action swirls to a background hubbub of pub noise. And then there’s the casting, which brings the two-hander full circle. The playwright was originally commissioned to write Two for John McArdl
Review: The Constant Wife at the Liverpool Playhouse ****1/2
What would you do if you discovered your other half was cheating on you? Pack a bag and leave? Throw them out and change the locks – having first taken scissors to their wardrobe? Or go down the Beyoncé route and channel you pain into an acclaimed best-selling album? Constance Middleton (Kara Tointon), the heroine of Laura Wade’s larky, sparky, stylish adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s 1920s ‘comedy of manners’, opts for a more measured but no less decisive and devastating r
Review: War of the Worlds at the Liverpool Playhouse ***
HG Wells’ pioneering, prescient sci-fi classic has been presented in a myriad of ways over the 128 years since it was first published – from films and TV series (the Beeb’s 2019 version was partially shot in and around Liverpool) to Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio bulletin version which put the frighteners into listeners in New Jersey to Jeff Wayne’s musical spectacular with its giant hologram face and tripod fighting machine. Wayne’s huge, immersive arena show underlines one
Review: Dear England at the Liverpool Empire ****1/2
When Bill Shankly told a journalist that football wasn’t just a matter of life and death but was “much more important than that” he was articulating his total dedication to the game. But he could just as easily have been giving voice to the feeling of generations of diehard England fans who have celebrated (and mythologised) the team’s highs and loudly mourned their many lows. Pressure and expectation weighs heavy on the shoulders of every successive England squad, both men a
Review: The Memory of Water at the Liverpool Everyman ****
It’s been 30 years since Shelagh Stephenson’s darkly comic play premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, going on to transfer to the West End and Broadway and winning an Olivier to boot. And while the creamy tones of Nat King Cole might punctuate scene changes in this sparky revival at the Liverpool Everyman, it’s the sound of the Spice Girls which drags us back aurally to 1996, the year of genetically modified crops, royal divorces, Dunblane, Dolly the sheep and Trainspotting. In
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