Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Jake Abraham, Roy Brandon, Paul Broughton, Lindzi Germain, Howard Gray, Phil Hearne, James Nelson-Joyce, Andrew Schofield.
We all count down the hours as a big day arrives, the end of the week and the chance to sit down with the feet up in the comfy chair or enjoy a holiday in which there is nothing to do but soak up the sun and breathe in the different air. Until the day of final reckoning when the chance to say goodbye to all those we have ever worked alongside, come rain or shine, come snow, hail, biting winds and the odd moments when the heat has driven us to distraction, leaves us with Time on our hands to think, and it is that thinking that makes the clock tick louder as it reminds us, we have nothing to do today and that we miss being part of the routine.
Council Depot Blues is one of the most loved of the Liverpool plays to have been performed in the city since the Capital of Culture in 2008. It is a production that warrants the accolades, fan adoration and the good words placed at its doorstep for many reasons but especially for one in particular, the determination of the writer, cast and crew to show and fully embrace that at the centre of our existence is Time, time to clock on and off, the punctuation and stamp of the proof of our very being, with only dreams to keep us going.
It is in the authority of Dave Kirby’s voice that resonates, the subject having been keenly observed during his own time working for the Corporation, and one to which each cast member portrays with an overwhelming sense of beauty, the melancholy, the hopes and betrayals, the guarded jealousy and the let downs and all done with a series of songs that the audience could not help but love and sing along to; they might never have worked for the local authority but each one knew the tune and the piper that plays it.
It is only right that in the 10th anniversary of the spotlight shown upon Liverpool for the Capital of Culture, an honour rightly endowed, that a play such as Council Depot Blues should stride back in through the door, clock on and pick up the guitar instead of the Monday morning groans and grey skies. Time is what we escape from, but this set of Blues, we should always embrace, we should take to our hearts and clock in as early as possible to see it in all its true life glory.
A sensational return for one of Liverpool’s much loved plays and with one of the city’s most experienced, much loved cast firmly entrenched in the joy of making Liverpool laugh.
Ian D. Hall