Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Hamish Adams-Cairns, Lisa Marie Berg, Roxanne Browne, Alice Devlin, Harry Kearton, Paul Tonkin.

You were never alone with a Strand cigarette, smoking Marlborough suggested that you were ready for adventure, Camel that there was a touch of the old colonial lurking in you and as for Players or Capstone full strength, that touch of a small cough that came along with the birds singing the dawn chorus was arguably only ever really to be expected. Smoking is bad for you of that there can be no doubt but millions round the world still enjoy the taste of the habit and the sight of the grey Ash that collects in any make do ashtray.

Devised by the company Bric a Brac and taken from countless interviews with the friends and family of George Crozier, Ash is a hard hitting play that combines elements of really enjoyable interaction between the story and the cast and the frightening prospect that for many who either smoked, encouraged by successive governments and health officials as a way of combating stress, especially during war time, or were subjected to second hand smoke for decades by a partner or parent whose habit they also endured.

Like many others in the country, George Crozier started young, half encouraged and compelled by a mother who also smoked and then who carried on the deadly association between craving and possible diseases that would eventually kill them.

The fantasy portrayed by cigarette makers, the clever advertising, the marketing tools of companies with billions of dollars at stake, was on show as the clever and subtle messages of promotion were to be seen, the evocative brand names that hooked the eyes before the lips even took their first drag of a lit cigarette, these images were to be seen and felt, to remind what the lumps, the coughs, the heartbreak were all based upon and with the cheery smile, the merry dance, another person was hooked on the habit. As George’s mother, played by Lisa Maria Berg, worked out, she had spent 35 years cooking meals and ironing shirts but she had also smoked 200,000 cigarettes in her life. A waste of money and as it turns out, a waste of life.

A hard hitting message carefully hidden in plain sight by a very adaptable troupe of actors and one that really gets under the skin, Ash at Zoo is positive play on the surface but one that arguably will be one that has audiences questioning just what they have been allowed to be pumped into their bodies via the power of suggestion and advertising; very good material and put together extremely well.

Ian D. Hall