The Maurie, written by Writing on the Wall’s Mike Morris, directed by Carl Cockram, and brought to audiences by the team that produced Waiting for Brando, is based on a 1920s short story by rediscovered Liverpool seaman and writer George Garrett. It celebrates the mighty ‘scouse boat’ The Mauretania, and the lives and conflicts of those who worked below decks in the ‘Subterranean Theatre’ of the ships’ stokehold. George Garrett, Merchant Seaman, writer and playwright, worked on The Mauretania as a stoker in the early 1920s. He lived in New York between 1923 and 1926 where he roomed with future Hollywood actors and worked to hone his craft while writing two plays heavily influenced by his hero, Eugene O’Neill. In the late 1930s thirteen of his short stories were published alongside the writings of George Orwell, Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden – an incredible achievement for a self-taught working class writer. He was a founder member of Merseyside Left Theatre, later to become The Unity Theatre.