Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 71/2 /10
Cast: Jennifer Bea, John Burns, Anna Hudson, Leon Tagoe.
There is almost nothing better in life than a day at the seaside. The chance to eat an ice cream as the sun causes it to dribble and linger upon your fingers, to take in the maritime air and generally have the type of day that at one time was the staple of British life up and down the country. The seaside was where it was at and families flocked there in their thousands. Places like Blackpool, Scarborough, Southend and Brighton were the destinations of choice in which to blow off steam and have some much needed downtime.
There was a however the dark side to it all, the out of season wraith like emptiness and the slow degeneration which even now has come to symbolise the rush for the Mediterranean holiday over the chance to spend time in paddling in the North Sea of English Channel. There was also always the chance that you might spend the day with people who just didn’t want to be there, whose lives had taken a turn and for whom the prospect of being upon the big dipper was an excitement that just didn’t float their sunshine boat.
For Jennifer Bea and Teapot Tantrum the chance to bring back Beside The Seaside to the Unity Theatre was a very tempting outlook and under the directorial eyes of the fine Richie Grice, the play, written by the superb Ms. Bea was a lovely reminder of what the British holiday was all about, the fun, the anticipated eagerness to explore, not just the surroundings but also the very inner depths of the friendship and the wayward stalls that lured you in with candyfloss and mystic readings. It is the type of thing you would not get as you laid out sweating with sun cream on a beach, the only thing being wayward was the price of entry into the clubs and the sometimes dodgy water.
With secrets and lies and a healthy dollop of over stimulation tugging at the fabric of the friendship of Mags (Jennifer Bea), Tina (Anna Hudson), Callum (Leon Tagoe) and Max (John Burns), Richie Grice directed the foursome into revealing more about themselves and their fears than a fortune teller could ever hope to produce as she sits in a tent on the prom gazing into her crystal ball.
With some excellently observed jokes coming through, the boundless enthusiasm of all four members of the cast was highly evident; Jennifer Bea’s Beside The Seaside is a delight not to be missed.
Ian D. Hall