John - DV8 Physical Theatre - Liverpool Playhouse - 23/10/2014

Lloyd Newson’s company DV8 premiered his piece “John” in Vienna in August and since then it has appeared in Lyon, Budapest and Athens before arriving at the Liverpool Playhouse for its UK premiere, ahead of a major run at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton in London.

As with some of their previous works, John uses verbatim dialogue, in this case the result of interviews with 50 men, one of whom was John, the focus of this piece, and whose story is told here with a form of directness that only this sort of physical theatre could achieve.

We follow John from a disturbed domestic background through scenes of crime and alcohol and drug abuse, to a period when he finds a way of being close to people without having to commit or become too involved. Further description of the narrative would detract from the work’s unfolding drama – this is not a tale that needs spoilers.

The performance style enables us to confront otherwise uncomfortable scenes both head on and obliquely at the same time, through the use of powerful movement and dialogue. Hannes Langolf plays John heading a nine-strong cast and delivering a remarkable performance, on stage for more or less the entire work. Lloyd Newson’s choreography is fluid and informs the action with dreamlike and occasionally nightmarish expression.

John is presented on a stage that revolves almost constantly throughout, with a complex set by Anna Fleischle that changes shape and configuration with each revolution. To accommodate the performance the steep Playhouse stage was fitted with an anti-rake, which necessitated the removal of the first few rows of seats in the stalls to avoid obstruction of sight-lines by the raised forestage. With this adjustment the view was good from all levels, including the gallery.

It is an uncompromising story told with uncompromising honesty and contains graphic scenes, but every moment of it has been carefully assembled to give clarity and weight to the piece. The movement becomes more and more stylised as the work progresses and this has the effect of simultaneously distancing us from and bringing us closer to the reality of the characters.

John is a remarkably hypnotic work that has the capacity to enthral an audience from first to last.

Following its two performances at Liverpool Playhouse this week, John continues in repertory at the NT Lyttelton until January 13th  and then proceeds to Brighton, Barcelona and Salford, with further 2015 tour dates to be announced.

Cartoonopolis - Lewis Bray - Liverpool Playhouse Studio - 22/10/2014

Lewis Bray presented us with a short extract of Cartoonopolis earlier in the year and since then I have been looking forward to the appearance of the longer work…  I was not disappointed.

Lewis has a teenage brother Jack, who has autism and although like the rest of his family he is from the Wirral, Jack speaks with an American accent learned through his love of cartoons. He has built his own world inhabited with these characters, some familiar to us and some created through his own rich imagination.

In Cartoonopolis Jack is Mayor Bray, and he calls the tune. The central section of the play sees a battle between the forces of good and evil in his realm. Surrounding this we see the back story, experiencing Jack’s world through the experience of Lewis and the rest of the family.

What Lewis does is give his brother a voice and has us understand him the way his family do. In doing so he has created a work filled with astonishing frankness and tremendously affectionate humour. He manages to expose many of their difficulties and frustrations, often caused by the misunderstanding of others or lack of cooperation or support, but he never allows it to become protest or posturing.

We are left wanting to cross the border into Cartoonopolis with Jack, and to experience his world the way that Lewis seems to be able to do.

Lewis Bray is a tremendously talented improviser with a terrific ability to flip back and forth between numerous characters, both real and imaginary. Early on, as he first depicts his mother, he throws us an aside to the effect that she’ll kill him when she sees this, but I strongly suspect that she will find the characterisation as affectionately humorous as we do.

Cartoonopolis is written and performed by Lewis Bray, directed by Matt Rutter and Chris Tomlinson and was lit by Christina Eddowes. If, as Matt Rutter tells us, this was a scratch performance then audiences are really in for a treat when it returns in February.

Not About Heroes – Unity Theatre – 14/10/2014

“…Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

With the WWI centenary commemorations this year and Remembrance Day fast approaching, what better time to revive Stephen MacDonald’s 1982 drama, based on the poems, letters and other writings of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen?

The story is set almost exclusively in 1917 at Craiglockhart War Hospital, where Sassoon and Owen met and became friends before Owen returned to the front, only to be killed in action almost exactly a week before the signing of the armistice. Sassoon is at first scathing about Owen’s poetry but rapidly becomes deeply affected by the younger man’s skill, and champions his work. It is an awkward friendship that balances itself between Owen’s idolatry of his mentor and Sassoon’s aloof correctness. Sassoon’s violent opposition to Owen’s return to action in France and Owen’s stubborn resolve are both telling and painful.

The formula could easily have become contrived, but the skilful writing draws the extracts together into a cohesive and deeply moving story. Director Caroline Clegg and her two actors pace the piece beautifully. Alasdair Craig is the starched and somewhat stuffy Siegfried Sassoon, in whose performance we catch glimpses of him melting to Owen’s charm. Wilfred Owen is played with affecting candour by Simon Jenkins, who captures the young poet’s insecurity, his bearing and his debilitating stammer in a way that makes the part mesmerising to watch.

A simple set by Lara Booth is surrounded by a semicircle of flats, ominously mirroring overgrown headstones from a war cemetery. Dressed with vintage furniture, sandbags and books, it has all it needs to cocoon the play and never distracts from the hypnotic action. An equally spare score from Ailis Ni Riain underpins the text wth the melancholy strains of a lone cello.

This is a superbly crafted production of a beautiful piece of writing that is both a moving tribute to Sassoon and Owen and a fitting memorial to all those whose lives have been lost or permanently altered by conflict.

Highly recommended.

The current tour from Feelgood Theatre  takes in 17 venues and began at Craiglockhart. Liverpool Unity is its 13th stop where it plays until Saturday 18th October.

It continues to Derby, the Wilfred Owen Memorial at Ors (France) and then Shrewsbury and ends with a four week run at the Trafalgar Studios London.

Further details can be found at:http://www.notaboutheroes.co.uk/

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall,
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each, slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

Eric and Little Ern – Epstein Theatre Liverpool – 10/10/2014

He’s not going to sell much ice cream going at that speed is he?

1999, the Nuffield Hospital, Wexham – Ernie Wise is in his hospital bed following heart bypass surgery, shortly before his death. The doctor looks very familiar and turns out to be his 15 years dead comedy partner Eric Morecambe.

Has he come to take Ernie with him or is it all Ernie’s memories? It doesn’t really matter, but in either case the scenario offers an opportunity for the pair to re-enact a sequence of scenes taken from their television shows.

Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel (as Eric and Ern respectively) first impersonated the duo for their own amusement but over time the idea formed for a full length show, which they have devised together, and the result is directed here by Owen Lewis. They certainly manage to look the part, and they get the vocal and physical characterisations and mannerisms spot on. Only the tiniest occasional slip of an accent reminds you once or twice that you aren’t actually watching Morecambe and Wise on the stage.

Simply staged, with the hospital bed to one side and a sofa and sideboard to the other, all is set for reliving many of the texts from the original shows, both in the living room and in some of the famous bedroom scenes. “Are you going to read your paper or are you going to annoy me?” asks Ern. “I can do both!” comes the perky reply and the banter goes on almost seamlessly, with the links between sketches smoothing over the edits and making it seem more like a long reminiscence than a series of extracts from the TV scripts. It’s safe to say that you really can’t see the join.

Toward the close of the first act, the famous red velvet tabs come down and they prepare to go back out on stage one more time before heading off to a great variety theatre in the sky.

Act two is entirely on the forestage in front of the curtain, and it is easy to believe that we are in the theatre for a genuine Morecambe and Wise show. More of their vintage humour follows with Eric disappearing behind the billowing velvet now and then - as he did - and at the end they skip off the stage to the familiar strains of “Bring Me Sunshine”.

The show did indeed bring me sunshine, along with a few fluffy clouds of faint sadness for a brand of sharp, yet gentle humour that seems to have been almost lost from our stages and screens. It was great to see a surprising number of young people in the house, clearly enjoying the material along with those of us old enough to have seen it in its first incarnation.

Fans old and new of Morecambe and Wise will love this affectionate tribute, which plays one more evening at the Epstein before continuing its tour in Bromley and Ipswich next, followed by dates in over 30 more venues. For further details, visit http://www.ericandlittleern.com

Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel - Photo (c) Steve Ullathorne

Bright Phoenix – Liverpool Everyman – 04/10/2014

Tell me something you really believe in and then I’ll tell you if I believe you.

In the spring the Everyman took us to Hope Place where the street and its community wove a tale linking past and present, exploring the changes in our city from a hilltop view.

For the autumn she carries us further down the hill to Lime Street, where the now derelict Futurist Cinema rises as a Bright Phoenix through the imagination and haunted memories of a group of friends who have been left to fall into the same dereliction as the once grand Picture Palace.

Back then they stole into the darkened cinema to inhabit the characters on screen, and now they shelter under its broken rafters recalling their past and dreaming of a future in which they regain dominion over their city.

Bright Phoenix is a surreal and magical piece of theatre that tells the story as though we see the characters' past and present through a kaleidoscope – broken fragments of coloured glass tumbling around in the light allowing us to catch glimpses of episodes in their lives, sometimes clearly remembered, sometimes illusory.

In a city undergoing a renaissance, we find ourselves reflecting on forgotten lives, fractured communities and lost treasures, that have been allowed to decay and become little more than memory.

Paul Duckworth returns to the Everyman as Lucas Firebright, who has been gone for two decades since he tried to escape from the tragedy of his teenage years. Now he returns home to find his childhood friends and rekindle old loves with the people and places that formed him, and to confront the horrors of his past.

Lucas meets his old one-eyed friend Spike (Rhodri Meilir), whose life follows him in a shopping trolley, and the conspiratorial Lizzie (Penny Layden) who he once canoodled with in the darkened cinema, to the disgust of her brother Alan “Icarus” (Carl Au). They are serenaded from the rooftops by Stephen Shakey (Mark Rice-Oxley) who is subsequently forced to join them under the starlit roof of the Futurist. We also find Lizzie’s son Calumn (Kieran Urquhart) who has his own entrepreneurial way of making a living.

Cathy Tyson cuts a strange and other-worldly figure as Elsie, as derelict as the boarded up shops of Lime Street, but who later emerges refulgent in the guise of Rita Hayworth as Gilda, putting the blame on Mame.

The remainder of the parts (including “The entire population of Lime Street”) are all brought to life in a series of colourful characterisations by Rhian Green.

Through memory and dream-like sequences we discover the history of Lucas and his friends, how Spike lost an eye and what befell Alan Icarus before Lucas fled the city. We see their vision of the night-time from the rooftops and follow their quest to regain a voice in the community.

Martin Heslop has composed a multicoloured and atmospheric score which is performed live by Laura J Martin and Vidar Norheim, who become part of the theatrical landscape almost as the street musicians of the city accompany the night revellers down the road.

Ti Green’s apocalyptic stage design pulls the stage round at a slight angle, with seating rearranged to wrap around the action even more than usual. The skeletons and scaffolding of disused buildings provide a rich landscape for movement and some bold technical effects have enabled many of Jeff Young’s stage directions to be lifted imaginatively from the page, including the “Wound of Liverpool” opening up as the fabric of Lime Street is rent apart.

The cast all give tremendous performances and to begin describing them would have me writing till morning. It is clear from the ambition of the staging that they must all have worked astonishingly hard to bring this piece to fruition in all its surreal vision.

Jeff Young has rekindled an old love affair with the Futurist in writing this piece set in and around the old cinema. His characters are the Everyman and Everywoman of the streets and they sing a plaintive and strangely beautiful song to their city. Director Serdar Bilis has brought the work to vivid life with all its twists, turns and bold imagery, to create a work of beguiling magic that will haunt the memory.

Bright Phoenix plays Liverpool Everyman until 25th October and tickets and further information can be found here: http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/Content/Home.aspx

Carl Au as Alan "Icarus" Flynn - photo (c) Jonathan Keenan

Futurist Cinema Lime Street - Photo (C) www.liverpoolpicturebook.com

Those interested in the past, present and maybe future of the Futurist Cinema can read more at: http://thefuturistcinema.wordpress.com/

Juno and the Paycock – Liverpool Playhouse – 01/10/2014

The whole world's in a terrible state of chaos. 

Sean O’Casey’s 1924 classic is such a rich piece of text that it can be approached from various angles. This new reading doesn’t aim solely for its tragedy, it is more a tale of people that tragedy has already descended upon and who are stoically carrying on as more befalls them. It’s not aiming straight for the comedy either. There are a good deal of laughs, almost farce at times, but we never hear lines played just for the humour alone.

What director Gemma Bodinetz has achieved here is an epic, sweeping piece of human drama that balances light and dark, and tells its story with genuine warmth of affection for the writing.

The setting, a single, squalid Dublin tenement, is placed in an uneasy fractured world in Conor Murphy’s design. The one room dwelling is a skeletal affair beyond which we see into the street beyond, and this is depicted by a chaotic arrangement of discarded objects, as though someone had dismantled the entire barricade from the set of Les Mis and hurled it onto the stage. It rises to a pinnacle at one side and looms heavily over the action, and the cast weave in and out of it as they come and go like as many of the rats they live amongst.

Parts of the ensemble play musical instruments from amidst this wasteland, and those not otherwise occupied perch upon it and cast their inquisitive or accusatory gaze on the story before them like some ghostly chorus.

Niamh Cusack and Des McAleer are the long suffering Juno and her husband Jack, known as the paycock (or peacock) for his vainglorious strutting. Balance is the key again in these two sparring roles and they never allow their characters to become caricatures or excessively sentimental.

Juno slaves away to keep her family afloat, while “Captain” Jack spends his time drinking in the alehouse with his useless bevy of friends. He seems to care little of what his family do or say unless it reflects on his own inflated sense of self-importance. The daughter Mary (Maureen O’Connell) looks for upward mobility in exchanging her original intended for the pompous, ineffectual and apparently incompetent Charles Bentham (wonderfully sculpted by Robin Morrissey), but he leaves her only one unhelpful legacy when he discovers he won’t be marrying into money.

The son Johnny lives with both the physical and mental scars of his past, and some of that past’s shadows ultimately come to haunt him to tragic effect. Johnny is played by Donal Gallery, who brings a tremendous dramatic weight to the character. His last scenes on stage are filled with raw terror.

A wonderful foil to Jack is his drinking partner Joxer Daly, a daarlin’ man who may well be half cut but has plenty of homespun philosophy to offer. Joxer is a splendidly cast Louis Dempsey, who again never lets his larger than life character become purely comic. Aoife McMahon is Maisie Madigan, a neighbour with sage advice but debts owed to her, and her crazed performance has some startling moments (I trust they check that table over regularly). She also cuts quite a vocal dash with some fine singing.

Neil Caple is Needle Nugent, the local tailor who seems accommodating enough until he sees through the Captain and his mounting debt. Mary’s jilted first love Jerry Devine is similarly mild mannered, but there’s fire in him in Fionn Walton’s performance, kindled by both political beliefs and by the discovery that Mary has betrayed him, and his standards, in more ways than he could have imagined possible.

Maggie McCarthy plays Mrs Tancred, a neighbour whose own pain over her son’s fate is a sinister precursor of events to come. Finally, in an ensemble role, is Jonathan Charles, whoalso displays some fine violin playing.

Originally a play in three acts, this production cuts the first interval giving us a opening half that runs for over 90 minutes, but the effect is to maintain the dramatic flow and time stands still. A rapid and dramatic scene change is accompanied by some wild music that would be grand at any céilidh.

Music is used sparingly but to good effect, having a reason to be there whenever it appears but leaving the words their stillness when they need it. Peter Coyte, who has worked on a number of Gemma Bodinetz’s productions, once again provides a score that adopts the sound and atmosphere of the play, using traditional instruments and performance styles to great effect. Members of the cast play one two or even three different instruments, mostly upon the chaotic mountain of debris but occasionally amidst the action, and all accompanied by Fergus O’Hare’s deft sound design.

Lighting by Natasha Chivers is as subtle as the colour palette of the set and costumes enabling moments of visual drama to receive due prominence, including the suspended closing scene.

The world is still in a state of chaos, and this play has resonance with our times in more ways than Sean O’Casey may have imagined ninety years ago. The characters who populate this play have the power to show us that there’s a little of the spirit in us still and Gemma Bodinetz presents us with a paean to the indomitable human spirit.

Juno and the Paycock is a co-production between Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and Bristol Old Vic. It is the first play in 11 years that Gemma Bodinetz has opened away from her base in the Liverpool theatres, and having already enjoyed a hugely successful run in Bristol it continues at Liverpool Playhouse until 18th October.

Tickets and further information are available here:  http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/

Des McAleer & Niamh Cusack (c) Stephen Vaughan