Jenny knows that there’s something seriously wrong with Pete. This man is just not behaving right. Helped and hindered by two incompetent Guardian Angels, who will do anything to keep their jobs. Jenny turns detective.
With her marriage in crisis and a mistress at the door, will she be able to save the day? Will she want to? What would you do?
Working in Collaboration with Tom McLennan, Vauxy theatre performed ‘One of the Damned’ as part of the memorial events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Robert Tressell.
A sideways and abstract look at the work of poet and artist Adrian Henri.
The year is 1966 and Adrian is preparing to give a performance at Liverpool’s Hope Hall but in the time honoured tradition, things are not quite as they seem, nor do they go to plan. Proceedings are interrupted by ‘visitations’ from his friends – Yoko Ono, George Melly, John Lennon and members of The Scaffold – Mike McCartney, Roger McGough and John Gorman.
Adrian and friends perform songs and poetry including Tonight At Noon, The Woo Woo and Love Is.
Written by Dhanil Ali.
Directed by Chris Darwin.
A Vauxy Theatre production.
All Adrian Henri material copyright Adrian Henri estate
Performances:
Thursday 10th to Saturday 12th February
Unity Theatre, Hope Place, Liverpool.
8.oopm Unity 2
Tickets £12.00/£10.00 concessions
Preview Thursday 10th £8
REVIEW: Love, Light and Adrian Henri at the Unity by Catherine Jones Liverpool Echo
IT’S billed as “an event, a happening, an imagining”. So anyone expecting a straight play about the poet and painter’s life and work is likely to be disappointed.
Love, Light and Adrian Henri is, as Dhanil Ali – who penned the script and portrays the man himself – is keen to point out, an ‘abstract’ piece with occasional leanings towards the surreal.
Henri is preparing for a ‘happening’ at Everyman predecessor Hope Hall, but proceedings are interrupted by ‘visitations’ from his old friends – Yoko Ono, George Melly, John Lennon and members of The Scaffold Mike McCartney, Roger McGough and John Gorman.
Yet surely Ali (who successfully shrugs on the physical presence of the bearded, round-faced bard of Canning Street) can’t have imagined the extra dimension to his ‘surreal’ happening on its opening night, with McCartney and Gorman actually among the audience watching actors Lee Woudberg and Charles Rogan respectively disporting themselves at the mic alongside a flat cap-wearing, be-earringed Roger McGough (Adrian Davies) in a lively performance of The Scaffold’s number one Lily The Pink.
Henri’s friends all produce their party turns – Yoko (Tomoko Suzuki) being wrapped in bandages, Marc Morrison’s John Lennon reading his off-beat verse, and Richard Helm’s pyjama-clad George Melly, full of booming bonhomie, wandering in and out throughout the evening until he takes to the mic himself for jolly rendition of the jazz raconteur’s cheeky, near-the-knuckle Nuts.
They are all, it’s true, caricatures of the originals, which can eventually feel frustrating – particularly, I suspect, if you are the original. But the dramatisation of this parade of pals feels affectionate rather than arch.
In the midst is Ali’s Adrian, shuffling around the stage between performances of Henri’s poetry, either with or without the accompaniment of a lively, grooving band.
And in a way this is the true heart of the piece; the pleasure of hearing that terrific verse once more, and performed with evident love (the L word looms large in the evening).
There are certainly parts of the show that need finessing, and Ali’s own delivery ranges from supremely confident and engaging to diffident and shyly halting.
But as a happening, you won’t find anything like it in Liverpool this month.
Tom Mclennan’s play, ‘Girls With Balls – the story of the Dick Kerr ladies football team, is an imaginative look at the rise and fall of the most successful women’s team of all. There is no doubt that the women’s game got its initial boost from the fact that men’s league football had been cancelled to allow many of the players to do their patriotic duty on the battlefronts of the First World War. Yet, even when the men’s game had started again in earnest, womens’ football continued to thrive side by side with it. On Boxing Day 1920, the Dick Kerr Ladies Team played in front of a crowd of 53,000 at Goodison, and many were turned away.
At a time when women’s football was at its height, the Male Football Association banned women’s teams from their grounds. What lay behind the FA’s decision? Was it a backlash against the rising tide of female emancipation? A tactic to ‘nobble’ the economic threat all these well attended matches posed to the considerable profits being siphoned off by the Boards of the men’s clubs? (The takings from the women’s matches went to charity!)
Share the Dick Kerr Ladies highs and lows and the behind the scenes boardroom struggles as the Vauxy Theatre take you back in time for a seriously funny drama.
Performances:
Gladstone Theatre- Wednesday May 26th 2010
Port Sunlight, Wirral, CH62 4XB. Tel; 0151 643 8757
Show starts- 7.30pm All Tickets £7
The Sylvestrian , Thursday 27th May 2010
Sylvester St L5 8SE Tel: 0151 330 0211 Show starts 7.30p
Contemporary Urban Centre -Friday May 28th 2010.
Rhyme Without Reason
by John Dillon.
A one act comic conflict between father and son
An old man, who has failed in everything he has attempted in life, from school, through work, from marriage to parenthood decides to get his house in order before he kills himself. In doing so he finds an envelope which contains his attempts at poetry.
Recently bereaved, but cheerfully suicidal, John is visited by his concerned son. The offspring wants the parent to overcome his fatalistic urges and believes a review of his father’s earlier attempts at poetry would be good therapy. He is wrong.
Through them he relives his time: the people and the places he knew, the attitudes, the hopes and beliefs he once held, and how his greatest love was always the city of his birth.
A piece that looks at how loving concern can turn to boiling anger, how familial empathy leads to relative resentment, how a father and son grow apart by being close, Rhyme Without Reason, shows how a Liverpool father and son handle the eternal question of how to deal with life’s traumas, by just having a right kick off.
Performances
Unity Theatre – Tuesday 23rd to Saturday 27th March 2010
By Catherine Jones, Liverpool Echo -‘Provoking Passions’
Scottie Road, 1961, and the stage is set with skiffle soundtrack, pulpit, tin bath and the most uncomfortable wood-framed sofa known to man.
And uncomfortable is a word that springs to mind a lot during writer John Dillon’s thought-provoking and, at times, powerful snapshot of life during a balmy August. (more…)
It was my first visit to the David Gareth Jones Theatre in Hardman Street, and my first reviewing encounter with the Vauxy Theatre Company, who are performing John Dillon’s play, Wearing Colours, there at lunchtimes this week.
Not only was the trip worthwhile, it was revelatory, proving yet again that the byways of dramatic output can be as absorbing and rewarding as the repertory and commercial highways. Mr Dillon is a writer of potential and should be persuaded to keep at it. And his script – set immediately before and after the European Cup tragedy in Brussels – receives exemplary treatment from director JohnWycherley and the four actors portraying Liverpool fans. (more…)
In 1985 Liverpool and Juventus contested the European Cup Final in Brussels. Events off the pitch that night rendered the match meaningless.
Based in an Ostend hotel room, four Liverpool fans give voice to the emotions of that evening; from the optimistic expectations to the angry inquests of the immediate aftermath.
This new production in Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year, attempts to express the views of those who are the lifeblood of this city’s most enduring of cultures – football.
Along with thousands of other supporters, Ralph, Eddie, Toddy and Mitch have travelled to Brussels with the expectation of seeing Liverpool win The European Cup for the fifth time. But things don’t turn out as they had expected and instead, they must come to terms with the reality of what happened in The Heysel Stadium that night, when thirty nine people were crushed to death. (more…)
Twenty years ago John Dillon struck a new and vibrant chord for Merseyside writing with his strong, emotive piece, Wearing Colours.
Later this week Liverpool theatregoers have a chance to see if that power is retained.
In its final performance before a three-date run at the Unity starting Thursday, Vauxy Theatre company took Dillons latest play, Some People, into the heartland of community theatre in Netherley.
It was a bold step even for a company which have never been afraid to take chances and, in the main it worked.
Some People is a honest and unflinching tale told with a darkly comic voice and, if it lacked anything, it was a larger audience.
Set against the backdrop of Liverpools 800th birthday bash and elevation to European Capital of Culture, the play brings international celebrations down to the personal – down into the lives of three homeless, dysfunctional characters who have little in common apart from their alcohol and pharmaceutical- fuelled conversations and the lack of a roof over their heads.
They meet on a park bench and, as the firework display lights up the sky, their conversations reveal the darkness of their situation.
Intellectual down and out Danny, through his love of poetry, tries to communicate with Frazer, a spiteful, intolerant bigot, a graduate of the school which teaches that when making a point, the fist is mightier than the word.
Then there is Marie, a seasoned purveyor of sexual services whose lost and shattered dreams and heroin addiction have driven her down to where her only hope of comfort is to befriend Danny and Frazer.
Michael Christopher is superb as the eloquent Danny. He breathes a love for poetry with an alcohol-laced breath you can almost smell.
If Dave Williamson is less convincing it is because Frazer is a character who shuns warmth and familiarity.
The cast is completed with Laura Holden who fills Marias lost life with a tangible and utterly convincing hopelessness.
Dillon has a rare talent. He gives his characters three distinct and totally different voices; three people from different worlds bound together by societys indifference. Their tales are not for the easily offended and the telling is not suitable for minors but they are engrossing tales told superbly well with a dark, compelling humour.
WARNING: This play contains scenes of a violent and sexual nature and has strong language throughout
Production Photos
Performances
The Brindley Theatre, Runcorn. Telephone: 0151 907 8360
28 & 29 March 2008.
Southport Arts Centre. Telephone: 01704 540011
3 April 2008
The Valley Theatre, Netherley. Telephone: 0151 709 4988
10 & 11 April 2008
The Unity Theatre, Liverpool. Telephone: 0151 709 4988
