Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Emma Bispham, Gordon Kane, Andrea Miller, Jerome Ngonadi, Danny O’Brien, Jamie Smelt, Karen Young.
“No legacy is so rich as honesty”, as the bard of Stratford noted in All’s Well That End’s Well, or if trust in honour isn’t the bag you entertain when thinking of wills, then to think of theatre as a plaything to be held at arm’s length is a foolish notion that we must discard quickly and efficiently if we are to continue thinking that society is an inheritance that we must preserve at all costs.
Never in our lifetimes has art, the artist, the show ever been as important, the thought of being enthralled and entertained, of having our souls renewed, of feeling something beyond the inheritance and heirloom of sadness, of pain, is arguably the point of surviving the winter’s tale of the last few years, and re-emerging in the light, battling against the falseness of daggers in men’s smiles and laughing, truly appreciating what the playwright lays at our feet in homage to our gift of presence.
By the pricking of our thumbs, something superb this way comes, and it is to Gerry Linford, the cast, the creatives, and the Royal Court Theatre that the engaging and tremendously comical Macca & Beth has found its way to the audience’s conscious and in the darkness that we have been surrounded by, has offered us with passionate belief a storm of hilarity and amusement that captures the very best of locally sourced inspiration and inspiring theatre.
If ever you want to know who truly loves you, then never talk about wills, inheritance, or money, instead remember the good things about them, be inspired to be a better person because of what they taught you, that is the finer point, and for Gerry Linford, Macca & Beth has been well worth waiting for, it is a love shared with an audience, a tale of the ages as Macca, a decent young man from County Road and the love of his life find themselves in Scotland for a reading of a strange and mysterious will inside the ancestral home.
Firm favourites of Liverpool theatre, Emma Bispham and Danny O’ Brien excel in the roles of Beth and Macca, suited perfectly for each other’s comedy timing, and as madness of the situation unfolds, the more the cast come together to produce a play of delight, a comedy of huge laughter, and one that comes directly from the writer’s, and the director’s, Paul Goetzee, enormous heart.
Where there is a will, there is laughter to be found, and a cracking cast delivers with precision and joy, Macca & Beth is the longing of return fulfilled.
Ian D. Hall