Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Hannah Aspinall, Ruby Bains, Emily Barker, Rebekah Brown, Sami Bueid, Charlotte Clarke, Jordan Connerty, Charlotte Dawson, Charlie Diable, John Dixon, Joseph Edwards, Jade Fazakerley, Grace Fordham-Bibby, Amber Higgins, Jake Holmes, Poppy Hughes, Chloe Hughes, Morgan Hughes, Connor Kelly, Luke Logan, Jenny Lowe, Molly Madigan, Grace Emily Maud, Niamh McCarthy, Callum McCourt, Jonathan McGuirk, Lewis McVey, Michael Meechan, Jack Molloy, Michael Moran, Aiden Morgan, Charlie Noponen, Yasmin Ormesher-Lunt, Jamie Pye, Phil Rayner, Matthew Roberts, Harry Sargent, Kaila Sharples, Sakura Singh-Corke, Marth Small, Natalie Vaughan, Matthew Woodhouse.

The road we travel on remembers every misdemeanour, every encounter, every footstep, broken, drunken or dealt with purpose, every chill wind that hits in the face as we cross the street, every sunny day in which we remove our jacket and whistle in the face of the coming adversary. The road remembers so we don’t have to, for in the mundane walk it takes solitude for granted, in every spring of a step it flourishes under the gaze of joy, and it remembers and takes notes.

For the actors that make up the celebrated Young Everyman Playhouse Theatre group, the Road is not just another performance in which to shine, to showcase their own thoughts, to place a spotlight on the problems facing the youth of the city, it is a play of conscious, written by the renowned playwright Jim Cartwright and delivered with a force of collective will that is passionate, disturbing, beautiful and with the unexpected edge of digging deep into the mind and demolishing the walls between fear and optimism with the bulldozer of clarity.

Road sings, a play that doesn’t necessarily require action to explain it, arguably a modern building block that sits comfortably next to Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, the modern failings of loneliness, of infidelity, of squalor, of the poor scrabbling for the odd pound, this is the Road we have taken since, and it makes Under Milk Wood feel like a sepia snapshot of bliss and contentment; it is also a play to which takes extreme dedication to perform, to get right if placed with action driving it, and under the careful, urging eye of Matt Rutter and Kate Tredall, YEP took the Road away from the cul-de-sac and found the signpost pointing to freedom of expression.

YEP have built a strong and unquestionable case for the work they have put together, the polish and dynamic of enlightening others to the issues and problems of growing up in a world dominated by yesterday’s theories and cultures but to tackle Road, to bring it to life under the auspicious lights of the Everyman Theatre, is proof enough of their intent going forward into the next decade, that the signpost is deeply engraved and points the way to an ever increasing awareness that the group, whoever may be part of it, has a voice that cannot, and must not be silenced.

Drama and thought at its most fearsome, Road is a play of force.

Ian D. Hall