Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Lisa Parry, Carl Cockram, Joel Shipman, Daniel Hayes, Paul Duckworth, Laura Campbell, Lois Young, Tom Wilson, Nicola Bentley, Alice Bunker-Whitley, Andy Frizzell, Phil Saunders,

There are pivotal moments in history that may go unnoticed by the wider world in general but to whom are just as earth-shattering, just as profoundly important to the greater good of the community and ground breaking in the lives it touches upon that they also deserve a time of reflection, of wide-spread celebration and revisiting.

The Unity Theatre in Liverpool might never have existed, certainly not in the form that it proudly holds dear to its heart today if not for George Garrett. A Liverpool man who fought for the right of those he saw being downtrodden and abused, a worker from Liverpool who went to New York as a stoker and a man who organised the first Hunger March on London and who came back immersed in the writing of Eugene O’Neill and a founder of the Merseyside Left Theatre, which in turn became the Unity Theatre. It would be a fair comment to suggest that theatre goers in the area owe a great debt of thanks to George Garrett.

Even those who make the theatre one of their most valued past-times may have been surprised to find that he also was a man of incredible depth when it came to writing plays.  In a very special night with Writing On The Wall and with many of the Garrett family in attendance, The Unity Theatre, Producer Mike Morris and Director Carl Cockram presented a script in hand event, a special, very remarkable reading of his play Two Tides.

Whilst the evening may have appeared to be put on in which an audience were allowed a sneak look at a rehearsal of sorts of a play before it was ready to present as a full blown night of theatre, this was a very symbolic deed to provide a tribute and above all, respect, to a man who was worthy of much praise in a city that knows how to treat its true heroes properly.

Even as a script in hand piece, there was no doubting the absolute sincerity in which the cast, including Paul Duckworth, Daniel Hayes, Lisa Parry and Laura Campbell who gave such enticing readings in a claustrophobic space, revelled and in which the audience saw the genius behind the thought of George Garrett without it being encumbered by set or design. To see this type of theatre placed before an audience, as naked as a seasoned naturalist and as beautifully read as a Pulitzer Prize Poet delicately setting free words to an attentive room, was a privilege.

There are many reasons to be thankful for the amount of theatre in Liverpool, one very big one is surely George Garrett. A great night presented by the people behind Writing On The Wall.

Ian D. Hall