Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Jake Abraham, Eithne Browne, Roy Carruthers, Daniel Davies, Emma Dears, Brian Dodd, Christopher Jordan, Maria Lovelady.

There is a horrible sense of deja vu as one looks around closely in hidden doors and hears the sounds of families at war with themselves that the period known as the Great Depression, the 1930s stumbling block to world peace has been making itself at home for the last few years and nobody has truly noticed. Thankfully the true depths that the world groped around in the dark with during that time has not materialised again but only perhaps good fortune, rather than political reckoning has saved the type of scenes witnessed by the writer Helen Forrester as she grew up impoverished in a city that was fighting for grim survival and without even Twopence To Cross The Mersey.

For many years the musical of the book has gained a great reputation, millions of admirers and with a passion to have the story of that cruel time exposed. Now, Rob Fennah has made Twopence To Cross The Mersey into a well respected straight play and one in which the hardship, the selfishness, depravity and sheer poverty comes emanating off the stage like a growth, a boil festering with pus and with that one universal element engrained into humanity, hope, riding alongside.

Emma Dears has this unerring ability to capture a scene with a single stare of well placed contempt. The last time she was on the stage at the Epstein Theatre, she gave such a stirring performance as Liza Minnelli that quite rightly audiences fell in love with her. As Helen’s selfish, demanding, mother, a woman who was out of her time the moment the Wall Street Crash devoured the souls and hopes of millions, she was just brilliant and her partnering with the exceptional Maria Lovelady was a thrill to behold. The desperation in the plight of the young Helen, Ms. Lovelady, was only resolved as matters span out of control, the antagonism between the two women as forceful and abrasive as politics or between the veil of secrecy employed by Victorians and their more forthcoming, realism and social conscious endowed post Second World War descendents.

The very real danger that grips the world after the 2008 financial crash, a depression in all but name as political words get used snakes and worms, is that by going down any street in Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, London and you can see the same levels of desperation, it is just more well disguised as people tend not to think of it when they are out partying from Thursday to Sunday with only three days in which to revel and make merry. The 1930s is not a place to visit again, Twopence To Cross The Mersey is that warning from history, that ordinary people, the young especially, cannot be made to suffer in neglect again.

A tremendous and well produced play performed by a cast who give everything and ask only for the well deserved appreciation they deserve in return.

Ian D. Hall