There are certain words that strike dread into the hearts of theatre goers.

Like when a show is billed as “A, B and C (substitute names of known actors) supported by children from the XYZ School of Dance”.  You just can’t help thinking back to those torturous times when you sat through the local dance school’s annual show watching your son/daughter/nephew/niece  perform their faltering routines.  And after the show, everyone would say: “Aw. Didn’t they do well” before heading for the pub to recover.

Well let me tell you; the youngsters treading the boards at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre last night didn’t just do well – they were bloody marvellous!

The (A, B and C) known actors were, as always, extremely entertaining. Keiran Cunningham as the bus driver. Mark Moraghan and Pauline Daniels as the warring teachers.  Stephen Fletcher and Georgina White as the love-struck student teachers. We were treated to the polished comedic performances we have come to expect of the Royal Court regulars and they showed us their singing and dancing talents too.

Georgina, on the other hand, showed us a whole lot more besides, as  she stepped out of her dress to reveal a skimpy baywatch-orange swimsuit!

But Our Day Out the Musical was all about the kids.  A group of the most talented 12 to 16 year-olds you’ll find anywhere, they flawlessly performed energetic dance routines and sung pretty much all through the show without missing a single note.

They were extremely convincing as unruly remedial pupils and you can’t help but marvel at the amount of discipline it must have actually taken to portray such an undisciplined bunch!

The limelight however, fell on jack-the-lad characters Chris Mason and Jack Rigby, and on Sophie Fraser and Abby Mavers who played schoolgirls who had a crush on their handsom teacher. All four did full justice to the remarkable insight of Willy Russell’s script and I’m certain we will see a lot more of all four on the stage and screen in the future.

Under the directorship of the talented Bob Eaton, the show was choreographed to perfection within an imaginative stage set comprising dozens of cubes that effortlessly became a classroom, coach, castle, beach and fun fair.

Our Day Out the Musical runs at the Royal Court until October 6th.

If you like comedies, go and see it.  If you like musicals, go and see it. If you like theatre go and see it.

If you don’t like any of the above, go and see it. I promise – you’ll be converted.

Production photographs by Dave Evans, courtesy of the Royal Court Liverpool

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A few shots from this year’s Mathew Street Music Festival held at Liverpool over the bank holiday weekend.

(Click images to enlarge)

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Over the next few months, Jayne & Chris are aiming to produce a range of fantasy photographs.  The theme for the first phase will be Mermaids.

If you would like to model for one of these shots, let us know via our Contacts page.  In return, you will enjoy a fun day at our studio (or on location) with Jayne doing your make-up and possiblky some body-painting.  No payment, I’m afraid, although you will get a digital image or print of the finished result.  Plus:  if you want any non-mermaid photographs, we’ll be happy to do those at the same time and give you a massive discount on prints or a digital portfolio.

You will need to live within a reasonably short distance of the studio or be prepared to make the journey (possibly a couple of times).  Everywhere on this map is two hours or less from our North Wales studio.

By the very nature of the subject, some nudity will be involved.

The following examples (by kind permission of the paranormal-psychic-yoga blogspot) will give you an idea of the diverse style of image we are aiming for.  We will be combining photography, artwork and digital wizardry to create the final images.

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Free Photos Occult Angels Fairies Gothic Celtic Alchemy Photos Glitter Graphics
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Free Photos Occult Angels Fairies Gothic Celtic Alchemy Photos Glitter Graphics

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Free Photos Occult Angels Fairies Gothic Celtic Alchemy Photos Glitter Graphics

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Free Photos Occult Mermaids Fairies Gothic Celtic Alchemy Photos

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Jayne and Chris Birchall are not responsible for external links.

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Some of my favourite shots from this weekend’s On the Waterfront event at Liverpool’s Pier Head.

To view at their best hit F11 or select “Full Screen” from your browser’s View menu.

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These are your album layout proofs, size of each double page spread is approx 20″ x 9″.
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What a great surprise!  An early birthday present from my very thoughtful wife.

I’d always wanted to see Rod Stewart in concert.  Jayne bought the tickets months ago and kept it secret until the day of the show.  I didn’t even know he was due to appear at the Echo Arena in Liverpool.

The concert was great.  Rod Stewart truly deserves the much misused term “Superstar”.  At 8pm on the dot the curtain went up and we were launched into two and a half hours of Stewart classics.  No second rate support act.  Just the man himself with his fantastic band of accomplished musicians and backing singers.

Best of all, we managed to sneak a camera past the Nikon Police!

The lady who searched Jayne’s bag told us we’d have to “leave the camera with that man over there” in one of the locked cages.  Yea right!

We were jostled in the crowd. Jayne headed for the loo and no one chased after us.

It really annoys me that because a camera looks like professional equipment, you are not allowed to take it into these venues.  Yet they never enforce the ‘No Photography’ rule.  People were firing off their built-in flashes left, right and centre with no intervention from the security personnel.

All in all it was a good gig and we were lucky enough to have good seat right alongside the stage.

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

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Next time you feel smug at having nabbed the last space in a Merseyside car park, you’d better hope the other person who had her eye on that space wasn’t Sylvie Gatrill, or you could get back to find your car’s been cut in two with a chain-saw!

You see, Sylvie ‘knows people’ - mainly stage hands and scenery builders in the region’s theatre-land – who are quite adept at the art of vehicle dissection!

And if proof were needed, the play that has just finished its run at the Royal Court, Night Collar, featured a black taxi cab with its roof and side removed to give the audience a clear view of the action, and now a caravan has been afforded the same treatment for the latest offering at the Theatre Royal in St Helens.  Both plays were directed by Sylvie Gatrill.

Four Girls and a Caravan is a brand-new comedy written by Liverpool actress Lynne Fitzgerald and her partner Steve Simpson.  It explores the relationship between four friends as they embark on a fateful holiday in the welsh hills.

All seems rosy as the brash and rather ‘worldly’ Stacy and Danielle (played by Lynne Fitzgerald and Lynn Clarke) and the pseudo posh Rhonda (Claire Bowles) hilariously recount their adventures and past conquests to their younger and more naive travelling companion.

Played by former Brookside actress Suzanne Collins, Amber Hawthorn’s first lesson was that however good you look in tiny pair of tight shorts, coupling them with expensive designer boots is not a good idea as you traipse across a rain-swept hillside.  Cow dung is not the most alluring fashion accessory!

But there was more, much more, for this dizzy blond to learn in what was to become a baptism of fire.  Quite literally actually, as Scene One ended with the caravan being blown to bits in a gas explosion!

There can’t be many stage plays where the four main characters die a third of the way through.  The thing is, these girls didn’t realise it until the end of the second scene which they spent, quite literally, in limbo.

The second half of the show saw the four at the Pearly Gates negotiating their fate with a three-foot tall Saint Peter who – if you didn’t already know – is a scouser! The same actor, Shaun Mason, then performed some sort of celestial transformation to become a six-foot game show host in the fourth and final scene.

Helped by the obligatory game-show eye-candy in the form of Chantelle Nolan, the Huey Green like character took the four girls through a truth-or-dare type confessions game.  As each of the dead friends vied for a place in heaven, the revelations shocked all four!

I won’t spoil it for you with the details, or reveal whether they went ‘Up’ or ‘Down’.  Suffice to say, there was a guest appearance from God (albeit on the silver screen) in the form of Radio City presenter Pete Price.

Four Girls in a Caravan is a great new comedy and it’s a shame there are only four performances in this it’s first run.  It deserves a longer showing and there would be no better venue than the Royal Court in Liverpool with it’s larger audiences who love, appreciate and expect this kind of raw scouse humour.  I do hope the caravan gets towed there soon!

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Connections:

You can hook up with the characters on Facebook. Amber, Rhonda, Stacy and Danielle

The play runs at the Theatre Royal, St Helens until Saturday 10th July 2010

More on the Liverpool Echo website

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Click on the images to enlarge.

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Just ignore the date of this post -  it’s nearly Christmas!

Well at least it was last night in Liverpool’s theatre-land where Night Collar was enjoying its second airing in eighteen months.

A second but much shorter airing, running for just two instead of the four to six weeks that is usual for comedies at the Royal Court.

Maybe they were unsure whether the comedy would work so obviously out-of-season.  To be honest, I had expected it to have been rewritten to take place during the summer months.  After all, with the exception of the reluctant Santa, none of the of the characters were particularly tied to the festive season.  The Elvis impersonator, the prostitute, the naked stag-night victim, the tranny and the warring drunken couple could be typical punters for any scouse cabbie on practically any weekend of the year.

That said, a lot of the one-liners had been brought bang up to date and the play was very funny.  It was almost a packed house – good for a Thursday – and raucous belly laughs were in abundance.

Former Brookside actor Louis Emerick did a fine job throughout, portraying the cabbie, as did Eithne Browne playing a brash prostitute one minute and a poignant cancer sufferer the next.   Danny O’Brien had a small part as the naked reveller (well it was supposed to be cold ) but to his credit he did play it large. He also turned his hand equally well to playing the tranny and a Jack-the-Lad character.

But for my money the Royal Court Oscar went jointly to Linzi Germain and Alan Stocks whose portrayal of the drunken husband and his equally drunken ‘woman scorned’ was nothing short of brilliant! They were so so funny – and oh so believable!

We see  so many badly-acted drunks on stage and screen but Alan in particular is always very convincing.

In fact I later mused that the only time I’ve ever seen him sober is at the bar after the show!

To sum up:  As far as “Royal Court” comedies go, it didn’t disappoint,  and yes, I would recommend anyone who enjoys a good laugh to go and see it.  I just wish that, having decided to stick with the Christmas theme, they had taken the bull by the horns and gone to town on the scenery and stage set to inject a real Christmasy feel to the night.  One of the best Christmas parties I  ever attended was actually held on a summer solstice night – so it can be done!

Night collar runs until 10th June – don’t miss the taxi!

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* Please excuse the quality of the mobile phone pic (no cameras allowed in the auditorium). My dropped hints about going to dress rehearsals for some decent shots have fallen on deaf ears up to now!

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See also on the Daily Post and Liverpool Echo websites

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Early as always, leaving time to enjoy a pre show meal, I stood in the queue outside Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre with my lovely lady.

There were lots of other lovely ladies in the queue.  And as the doors swung open to let us in, I glanced back at the by now burgeoning queue to see that there were lots and lots of lovely ladies.  In fact I was the only bloke in that first wave of theatre-goers!

I should have thought, the clue is in the title… Ladies Night!

You see, we always book for the first night of the next show.  It doesn’t matter what the show is called or whether we have seen it before.  We just book it. We simply love this unique theatre with its stalls set out cabaret-style with tables at which to eat your hearty meal (for just a tenner!), with its friendly helpful staff, its beautifully quaint and ornate décor – and of course… The Bar!

Hang on. It’s a theatre and I’ve not mentioned the shows yet.  Truth is, we’ve kind of started to take for granted the fact that the show is going to be good.  It always is, almost without exception, bloody good.

Anyway, as the only fella sitting in the auditorium, I was beginning to think I should have maybe read the flyer properly and given this one a miss.  I could have left my lovely lady to whoop and ogle with the rest of the lovely ladies whilst I retired to the Penny Farthing around the corner with a cool Guinness or three.

In the event, I’m glad I didn’t.  For a start, I ended up not being the only male member (no pun intended) of the audience that night.  As the theatre filled up, I counted seven others in the stalls. Not a huge contingent, granted, and the relief on their faces as we made eye contact assured me they’d all had the same feeling of trepidation!

There was a sense of solidarity in our minority.  We all seemed to strut our masculinity toward the bar at the same time in much the same way the girlies always seem to make for the loos in convoy. As soon as the curtain went up, all that was forgotten.  For Ladies Night was a hilarious comedy loosely based on the “Full Monty” theme, although it pre-dates the film by a couple of decades.  Originally written for the New Zealand theatre circuit, it has been specially adapted for Liverpool audiences to produce the sort of scouse comedy that the Royal Court does so very well.

The first night audience were on form right from the start too.  Wonderful good humoured heckling was to be expected on a night like this. One of the most memorable was “Hey mate. If you get your kit off we’d wish we’d gone to Specsavers”.

The story line was predictable but that’s not a criticism.  The first half was very much about  five down-on-their-luck lads struggling with the idea of getting their kit off in front of a female audience despite the fact none of them were what you would call an Adonis.

Will they? Won’t they?  We knew they would of course. And it was during the break that I started to feel a little uncomfortable again. The greater part of the second half of the play was to be the actual “show” that the five would-be strippers were putting on at their local club.  How would I feel sitting amongst all these ladies, alongside my own lovely lady, watching five average looking blokes stripping off in the name of entertainment.

When I say “average” I mean, variously: skinny, chubby, geeky, god’s-gift and camped-up-to-the-eyeballs.

To their credit, they were bloody great. Dare I say – I actually enjoyed their routines.  They were well choreographed, confident and downright sexy.

There – I’ve said it!

The lovely ladies, of course,  loved it!  They were standing in the aisles, whooping, clapping to the music and singing along.  And you could see in the way these five actors were soaking up the adulation, that any doubts they may have had about appearing in this play had gone the same way as their clothes!

I always wind up my little reviews with a “would I recommend it or not”.  I might be forgiven for saying I’d recommend Ladies Night to 50% of the readers of this blog.

But I’m not going to do that.

Fellas: Don’t go to the Penny Farthing whilst your missus goes to Ladies Night.  Don’t use the World Cup as an excuse not to accompany your lovely lady to this show.

Go along and enjoy the show.  It really is very funny and very well done.  Anyway, there will be at least six other blokes in the audience offering their solidarity.

Ladies Night runs at the Royal Court until June 26th.

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Please excuse the quality of the mobile phone pictures – they don’t allow photography during the show.

Maybe if I asked nicely they might invite me along to the dress rehearsals for future shows to get some decent shots.  Hint hint!

See also on the Daily Post and Liverpool Echo websites.

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