Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Jake Abraham, Jamie Clarke, Guy Freeman, Stephen Fletcher, Lindzi Germain, Abigail Middleton, Mia Molloy, Michael Starke.

Band: Howard Gray, James Bretton, Mike Woodvine, Greg Joy.

Billy Riley is the hero you may not have heard of but because of his ingenuity, his fortitude and love of a fish and chip supper, there is forever a part of the South Pacific that is Scouse, where bananas are abundant, where a certain newspaper gets used for its rightful position as a cleansing aid, and where the descendants of the ship-wrecked, press-ganged mariner burst into song as a right; some enchanted evenings are always worth remembering, especially in Scouse Pacific.

Perhaps inevitably, it is to the great art of parody that the audience is treated to some truly exceptional moments, not only the loving, sincere touch that Fred Lawless brings to the crowd’s attention of what it means it means to be a Scouser, the fight from the inside against the powers that be in Westminster and the often insecure caricature that the rest of the country carries when talking about the city and its people but also in the music used during the play which highlights just how versatile the language of the city is for its writers and artists.

Liverpool’s populace has long put up with the distortion of its unique culture and outlook, it is only right then that its writers satirise those of other persuasions and thoughts and turn it back on them, by placing a lost tribe of Scousers on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and showing how they adapt against the odds, by placing the brilliance of new lyrics to one of the epic songs of Rock history, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, the inevitable love tangle that is The Wirral and Liverpool though the eyes of the ever excellent Jamie Clarke’s Donna Marie and Guy Freeman’s Richard Head, parody is its own reward, and the Happy Talk is one that is infectious and worth every moment in the company of the tremendous cast.

There may be nothing like a dame when it comes to the parody and intimate performances, but Fred Lawless’ takes it wonderfully one stage further, he constructs an image that is a perfect representation of the people of the city he loves, indomitable, funny, and one that can survive anything people in power throw at them.

Ian D. Hall