Following a
highly successful three week run in 2006, Liverpool’s
own Brick Up The Mersey Tunnels is still packing in audiences
that many of the so-called “big productions”
would die for.
Why? Because
it’s damn funny and brilliantly performed.
Fed up with
how the so called “posh” people of Merseyside
- those from the Wirral - are continuously putting down
Scousers, Dickie Lewis (Andrew Schofield), Nick Walton
(Carl Chase) and Gerard Gardner (Davy Edge) form The Kingsway
Three and, simply, brick up the major traffic arteries
that join the peninsula to the metropolis.
This, of course,
means the self-righteous, over-bearing, stuck up Anne
Twacky (Eithne Browne) - a Liverpool born, bred and desperate-to-forget-it
JP now living in suburbia - can’t get to work in
a city she despises, but is nonetheless happy to work
in.
Dave Kirby
and Nicky Alt’s script is something special, delivered
by an astonishingly talented cast. Schofield, the name-dropping
conservatory builder, Dickie Lewis, is superb. Roy Brandon’s
hen-pecked, line dancing Dennis Twacky, is utterly hilarious
and Chase’s narrator and eventual rebel, Nick Walton,
is wonderful. While the gorgeous Suzanne Collins, playing
cafe-owning dreamer, Maggie, delivered one of the night’s
many highlights by singing Somewhere Over The Mersey,
it was the delightful Browne who stole the show and made
it her own.
Who is ever
likely to forget the Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia
being turned into The Blue Rinse Mansions of the Wirral?
Shakespeare
it might not be but, honestly, who cares? This is still
a superb night out.
Chris
High
The
Stage - July 18th 2007 |