top of page
Recent News
Archive
Bost celebrates 100 years with new Liverpool Playhouse residency
BOST Musicals has announced a new five-year residency at the Liverpool Playhouse as part of its centenary celebrations. The long-running organisation, founded as the Birkenhead Operatic Society Trust in 1926, will stage three shows at the Liverpool Playhouse between now and 2030. The inaugural production, Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, is set to be performed at the historic Williamson Square theatre on June 5-6. Directed and choreographed by James Lacey, the spectacular musical
Review: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold at the Liverpool Playhouse ***1/2
Berlin in 1963 was the central battleground between two conflicting ideologies which had recently brought the world to the brink of destruction. Twelve months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, two years after the Berlin wall was erected - dividing the communist East from capitalist West - both Kennedy (“ich bin ein Berliner”) and Khrushchev paid visits to the city in an appeal for hearts and minds. The perfect setting then, and perfect timing too, for the publication of John Le
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: 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: 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
Mischa Barton on her femme fatale role at the Liverpool Playhouse
The OC’s Mischa Barton is making her UK stage debut in a new production of Hollywood thriller Double Indemnity which comes to Liverpool this month – and it seems she’s looking forward to her first visit to the banks of the Mersey. “I’ve always heard such incredible things about Liverpool - the music history, the warmth of the people and the energy of the city,” says the British-American actor who has carved a busy and successful career on the small and big screen. “So, I’m re
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
Liverpool theatre shows this March
March is upon us. There are daffodils in the parks, chocolate eggs and hot cross buns – both traditional and not-so-traditional – in the shops, the days are getting longer and soon the clocks will ‘spring forward’. The days aren’t just getting longer with daylight at each end, but they are also, dare I say it, getting just that bit warmer too. With the hibernation of winter behind us, now is the ideal time to come out and enjoy everything Liverpool’s theatres have to offer. W
Review: The Woman in Black at the Liverpool Playhouse ****1/2
Sometimes you simply have to pause and marvel at our desire to be scared witless – surely humankind being a strange outlier among the rest of the animal kingdom. True, the experience is accompanied by the knowledge the films, TV shows, plays, stories or ghost hunts which provoke that thrilling adrenaline spike are a safe kind of scare. We remain physically, if not psychologically, unscathed – who hasn't had the urge to check over their shoulders or under their beds at some ti
bottom of page