Liverpool Sound and Vision 9/10
Cast: Jake Abraham, Lindzi Germain, Howard Gray, Emily Linden, Mark Moraghan, Stephen Pallister, Rachael Rae, Daniel Ross, Francis Tucker, Lenny Wood.
The gentle voice of match day D.J. George Sephton greets the audience to the Royal Court as if he was welcoming all to a day on which Championships were being decided, trophies were being collected and the memory of a thousand greats were going to line up alongside the pitch and show the reason why Nicky Allt’s You’ll Never Walk Alone is one of the most important plays you will ever see performed in Liverpool.
Yes it is funny, how can a play set in Liverpool not be? The humour is as important to the Liverpool psyche as the music and football. What comes through sitting in amongst a sea of red, even for the honest neutral, is the passion, the sense of belonging to not just a football club, not just in the adoration of a man who bought back pride, the late great Bill Shankly, but to a city, whether you born here or not, you can still feel enveloped by the feeling of belonging that Nicky Allt’s play commands.
With passionate Liverpool fan Mark Moraghan leading the way, a man who more than earned his spurs over the years and Jake Abraham in the roles of Tommy and Gerry, the clubs history was seen through the eyes of a family who had lost one of their own and a seat in the Kop became silent. From the early days in which the formation of the club was devised and the split from Everton became a cold fact, to the days of Bill Shankly who made the people happy, to Kenny Dalglish, the European Cup wins, League Championships and the dark days, the days in which a nation mourned and a cover up began that is one of the most unforgiveable and deceitful days to have been fostered upon the city and the voice of a mother who lost her son one day in April 1989, this was the sound of a club, of a city that has seen it all and in some cases came out fighting to restore the good name it richly deserves.
The entire cast and musicians were just terrific, from the ever delightful Rachel Rae, making a superb return to the Royal Court Theatre, to Lindzi Germain as the matriarch glue in the family and the ever outrageous Lenny Wood who could make a tin of beans break out in a smile, the mood and sense of occasion was captured perfectly. Mark Moraghan and Jake Abraham though typified Liverpool and in in Mr. Moraghan’s case the love of a club deeply entrenched into the football lover’s hearts.
No matter the team you support, no matter where in the world where you are from, if you have been privileged to grasp a ticket for an away game at Anfield, if you have stood with ears open as the Kop starts to sing almost as a single entity and that haunting melody of You’ll Never Walk Alone fills the still air of Merseyside, then you know exactly what the club means to many thousands of fans and just what that Kop stands for. It is amongst the two finest songs to be heard at a football ground and the one that chills and enthuses the heart in equal measure.
To hear a theatre full of the same passion sing the same song, with no forethought of whether they are Red or Blue, is equally as stirring and as the curtain came down on a fantastic performance, a play that beats to the core of Liverpool as a city as well as one of its two football clubs, then you know you have witnessed something rather unique by watching You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Ian D. Hall