Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Lorenzo Novani.

Just as other symbols of community seem to be disappearing from our streets and neighbourhoods, the local fish and chip shop is also in danger of becoming an outmoded and obsolete form of kinship that transcended class, age and wealth.

A trip to the chippy was for many the chance to catch upon the gossip and talk of the area, especially if they didn’t want to spend time in the public house, it was the place to eat cheaply but with respect and in the dark days of World War Two it was the only food source that wasn’t rationed. The local fish and chip shop seemed indestructible and yet as Lorenzo Norvani shows in his delightfully poignant production, Cracked Tiles, the days of the community enjoying such a valuable resource are fast approaching a critical juncture.

Haunted by the death of his father, a second generation Italian chip shop owner, troubled by questions of the past and worried for the future of those who continue to use the family business, the young man starts to sift for the records, the invoices and the memories of all that he surveys.

It is only to be expected that the sentimental should come through in such reminisce but what Lorenzo Novani does is turn it into a pointed stick, it is one where as the character he is able to poke himself out of becoming too engrossed in the situation and whilst never being truly able to withstand the sight of ghosts that smile from behind the counter, that point out all the major defects in the building that has suffered from neglect, he is at least able to understand that the past sometimes has to be let go.

Cracked Tiles is one of those achingly beautiful monologues that comes along every so often and in which the audience catches their breath for a while as if it is the only way to suggest comfort in a world that is rapidly changing beyond recognition.

Fish and chip shops were never completely about food, like the public house and the newsagent, they were meeting houses for the ill informed and the disadvantaged, the extroverts and the social keepers, in the end it seems we are all prone to Cracked Tiles in which our lives slowly disappear away. Hauntingly beautiful, Lorenzo Novani has created something impressive.

Ian D. Hall