Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Alan Price, Oliver Gomm, Howard Chadwick, Guy Lewis, Jon Trenchard, Andrew Whitehead, Robert Took, Gilly Tompkins, Hannah Edwards, Lauryn Redding, Alan McMahon.
The 18th Century was one of richness in the field of theatre. By the time Oliver Goldsmith’s play, She Stoops To Conquer, had been performed for its debut performance the sight of women acting on the stage was so commonplace that it was an absurdity to have been forbidden from performing in the first place. There had been so many plays that had benefited from King Charles II proclamation a century before, so many talented writers getting more emotion from a finished piece and so many gifted women being rightly lauded that it the art of the Comedy of Manners took off in such a way and perhaps no more so than in the fantastic She Stoops To Conquer.
For Northern Broadsides, one of the most frequent and rightly admired theatre companies to continually make their way to Liverpool, the stamp of humour is accelerated, it is hastened and has the urgency and authority of Barrie Rutter’s company welded into its very core being and in perhaps arguably one of the most enduring pieces from that time, Northern Broadsides really get under the skin of the work and bring something distinctly unique to the play, the undisguised element of laughter beyond the written humour; the way that a single line can throw such elegance into the performance and have you thinking about it all the way home, sheer class as an audience would expect of Northern Broadsides.
For both Jon Trenchard and Hannah Edwards, this was a night in which both young actors came rushing to the foreground and gave a delighted Playhouse audience more reasons to smile and laugh than they might have expected as they walked through the welcoming doors of the theatre. Each carried their own segments that revolved around them with grace and absolute honour whilst never once straying from the point of Oliver Goldsmiths play, the pursuit of laughter and of self determination.
Hannah Edwards especially, in a cast that was absolutely on fine form, was a sensation. The Chess like effect she had the players under certain control at times was astounding and her facial mannerisms, coupled with the way she bought a local angle into the performance was outstanding, one of the finest comedy roles by a female performer in 2014 in Liverpool.
She Stoops To Conquer endures and is enjoyed because despite it being very much of its time in terms of language and the pomp and ceremony implied within the text, it transcends across Time and could quite easily be transplanted into war-time Britain or even 21st Century Liverpool, such is the pull of mistaken identity and young adults being able to make up their own minds and not be shackled by out-dated Victorian dogma, that She Stoops To Conquer is a play in which to revel in all night long.
Ian D. Hall