Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Tim Lynskey, Matt Rutter.

There can be no doubt that Tim Lynskey, Matt Rutter and Robert Farquhar make a formidable and astonishing team. The exhaustive and physical brilliance that Mr. Lynskey and Mr. Rutter bring to the Unity Theatre is matched stride for stride in the writing by Robert Farquhar and in The Art of Falling Apart there is very little time for the audience to get blasé as they are bombarded with a section of a man’s life that is unraveling and unwinding before everyone’s eyes.

The audience for any of the shows that the actors appear in will be used to the unique breathless feeling they leave the theatre with, however it still catches you off guard as you watch the incredible mania, the absolute brute force they put themselves through as they go from one character to another in the blink of an eye.

The Big Wow team fill a stage devoid of any props, apart from two chairs, with such passion, such endeavor that the stage area seems to be constantly filled with a flurry of bodies, all of them showing that at the end of the day a person’s life, no matter how full, how packed and on track it seemingly is, is only one false step away from crumbling completely. The secret, or the art, of falling apart is how the person ultimately deals with it and who they get to help them repair their lives.

The scenes, initially random, are weaved together with precision, a writer’s dream that somehow mixes the utter absurdity of life with the equally important figure of hope. A hope that in the end, no matter how unraveled we become, there is always someone to guide us back – even if they are just that little bit of kilter themselves.

The exceptional talent that the three men bring to their performances all adds up to one of the finest, most uplifting pieces of theatre an audience is likely to come across and is a must see in the post festive period dark winter nights.

Ian D. Hall