Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 9/10

Cast: Ross Almond, Natalie Barton, Ruby Bains, Leo Bertamini, Ellen Boyland, Erin Clarke, Stuey Dagnall, John Dixon, Olivia Dougherty, Joe Edwards, Georgie Evans, Spike Fairclough, Will Flush, Grace Fordham Bibby, Alisha Foriyire, Helena Harvey, Amber Higgins, Jake Holmes, Chloe Hughes, Esther Johnson, Connor Kelly, Neve Kelman, Luke Logan, Niamh McCarthy, Callum McCourt, John McGuick, Jack Malloy, Aimee Marnell, Chloe Nall-Smith, Joe Owens, Jamie Pye, Phil Rayner, Jess Reilly, Adam Rohan, Nathan Russell, Harry Sergeant, Kaila Sharples, Hannah Thornton, Ellie Turner, Laura Tryer, Natalie Vaughn, Tommy Williams.

The most dangerous thing in the world is not dangerous thought or the sense of absolute, frightening rhetoric but the crowd that follows it, that takes the words of one person and turns it into a religious or state-driven dogma that must be adhered to or else find yourself on the outside, the victim of state sponsored hate, fear, aversion. The Crowd grows in strength, pulling in the unfortunate, the scared, the ones who see it as a way to exact some sort of imagined revenge, or worse who see it as advancement; to go against this state of control is to be brave, to be human, and not a drone, and yet the crowd finds a way to dominate, to influence, to leave you stateless and perhaps facing death.

Throughout history, through film and literature we have been permanently warned what evil lurks within the heart of the crowd, to question is to become a problem, to allow any political dogma the chance to breath is to ensure that figures from the extremes become the norm, and that the crowd becomes rabid, calling for blood, that the cruel insinuations and whispers are part of controlling every person’s thoughts.

For the aspiring actors that make up the Young Everyman Playhouse troupe, and for the young generation that have grown up in the shadow in the perceived and perhaps very real danger of the previous generations taking away their chances of keeping such political damnation at bay as borders become closed and the media inciting howls of condemnation against the rule of liberty, the thought of The Crowd could be one in which the dichotomy of rule and order is sharply felt against their natural instincts to use social media to share positive ways of saving the planet and being seen as inclusive in accepting gender/transgender/sexuality equality.

In what could be considered as Y.E.P,s most ambitious and tellingly most insightful production to date, it was fitting that the sculpted script and powerful sense of delivery should be on show as we crawl towards the date when all could become senseless., The vision of the army on the street a stark reflection of the crowd being geed up to hate, and as the three narrators starkly, and with almost poetic reassurance, show the various scenes that intertwine and portray a picture of a possible future where the state encourages people to denounce someone because they have one child too many, because they are gay, because they act in a manner that offends one person’s sensibilities.

The Crowd is a potent piece of theatre, a play in which we are reminded that it only takes a moment in which to turn a nation against itself, it may be already too late.

Ian D. Hall