Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
A star of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a riot of respectful impertinence and one of the ultimate must see’s of the entire month of August, never mind that rare glimpse of sunshine that has long gone past or in Olympic year the sight of carnivals in exotic cities, the real draw is in watching Kev F. Sutherland’s brilliant creation, Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets Do Shakespeare.
At the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe the extraordinarily compelling tour-de-force performance of Tom Stuart, in his own adaptation of the best-selling memoir, became one of the talking points of the Festival. Audiences were visibly moved by the story of alcoholic drag queen Aqua desperately trying to make a relationship work with Jack, a high-class rent boy addicted to crack. As part of a U.K. tour the play is coming to Liverpool Playhouse from the 2nd-6th February.
To the outsider, to those who either come into Liverpool once every year for a stag or hen night or the chance to lose heavily at Aintree, Liverpool may well seem a city of contrasts, a place in which many have pre-conceived ideas of how its people act, play, work and enjoy life. However to be an outsider who embraces the city and the surrounding areas with every fibre of being, that’s when the city really shows its vibrancy and complete uniqueness.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The Edinburgh Festival is a potential match made in Heaven for the enjoyable combination of dexterous word play and musical accompaniment that is in the hands of Philip Pope and Rory McGrath in this year’s cool and witty Bridge Over Troubled Lager.
The two comedians work together goes back so far that their comfortable approach to each other feels as though it pre-dates the time when Cornwall was annexed into the English culture. Such is the command of language at their disposal that the audience inside the Assembly Rooms were treated to a show in which the expected may have been seen coming just before the punch line but were nevertheless enthralled at the spectacle in front of them.
Fresh from an acclaimed run at this Edinburgh Fringe, Townsend Productions are set to tour Neil Gore’s new play We Will Be Free, a new drama set around the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, at the Lantern Theatre on the 19th, 20th and 21st September.
Set in 1834, We Will Be Free follows the extraordinary true story of George and Betsy Loveless. He was a Methodist preacher and the leader of the six Dorsetshire farm labourers who were tried, convicted and condemned to harsh transportation by an oppressive Government for having the temerity to swear a secret oath and form a union to fight against a succession of wage cuts inflicted by the local landowner.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Charlotte Wilson, Bethany Slinn, Iona Campbell, Bryony Holloway, Geraint Williams, Darren Begley, Jack Conway, Alex Cottrell, Sarah Peverley.
There is always a new way to look at anything in life, it just takes courage, conviction and imagination and as the weather was making its mind on whether to add a little extra spice and atmosphere to the occasion, The University Of Liverpool Drama Society’s interpretation of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market was weaving its dark, peculiar spell around a fascinated audience at the Kazimier Gardens ahead of it transferring to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Originally published on L.S. Media. July 17th 2012.
L.S. Media Rating *****
Think you know magic? Until you have seen the spectacle of Gateshead born magician extraordinaire Totally Ninja-David Alnwick on stage, you haven’t seen anything.