Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Performers: Paul Taylor, Elaine Stewart, Edwina Lee, Esther Dix, James Bray, Helen Kerr.

Writers: Mark Anthony Rossi, Anthony Ellison, Mary Vigar, Sally Fildes-Moss, Mark Konik, Richard Lyon Conlon.

In September of 2013 Grin Theatre paved the way for a new way of looking at writing and performing in Liverpool with six monologues crafted by writers who weren’t known to the public. These six monologues formed the basis of the first Voices performed at 81 Renshaw Street. If something works as they say, keep going, and Kiefer Williams and Helen Kerr of Grin Theatre have done just that by hosting a very cool night of six different monologues for Voices 2, each individual, each creatively interesting and all carried out by the various performers’ voices with great care and reverence.

Voices 2 for the first time was a distinctly international affair with several of the writers coming from out of England. It was a touch that was both incredibly heartening and heart-warming. To find in the streets of Liverpool, in the performance room of a highly admired café, words being spoken with diligence that had been written many thousands of miles away was one to savour.

From Mark Anthony Rossi’ Eye of a Needle in which the voice was showing the gradual despair that those who become unemployed feel, from the looks on the faces of well-meaning friends to the gradual emancipation of spirit and decline, the monologue could have easily been written over 80 years ago at the height of the Great Depression, to Mary Vigar’s Mama’s Bidet which underlined the care system, or its lack of, in the country to Sally Fildes-Moss’ eco driven monologue and the new world order in which we are bringing our children into the tantalising Push, each of the six new 15 minute monologues had the audience entranced and fully immersed into what was being said.

Grin Theatre will be hosting Voices 3 this June at Café 81. On this night the foundations, which had been laid perfectly in 2013, now had a steady structure in which to house all aspiring writers, each story deeply personal and a real chance to enjoy something completely off beat.

Grin Theatre continues to uphold the idea of getting people to have a voice.

Ian D. Hall