THE FLINT STREET NATIVITY. To 20 January.
Liverpool
THE FLINT STREET NATIVITY
by Tim Firth
Liverpool Playhouse To 20 January 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 28 Dec, 4 Jan 1.30pm, 30 Dec, 6, 13, 20 Jan 2pm no performance 1 Jan
Audio-described 9 Jan
BSL Signed 5 Jan
Runs 2hr One interval
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 December
A show at once serious and hilarious.
For a few minutes it seemed Liverpool was going to serve up an artistic, if not commercial, disaster. Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills gave the dubious legacy of adults playing children, and there was no evident equivalent of that play’s justification for the idea here, as another TV play transferred to stage. Its early humour appeared as elementary as Mrs Horrocks’ class of 7-year olds rehearsing and performing their nativity play.
It looks ungainly too, Robin Don’s set supersizing everything to the adult-child scale. Adult things, like the teacher’s chair, are gigantic, while the platform stage hastily erected in the classroom because of building problems, is the height it would seem to clambering children.
But once an opening version of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, words adapted to rather obvious child-thoughts, is over the fine cast (many familiar from recent Playhouse and Everyman shows) in Matthew Lloyd’s sympathetic, miss-nothing production show what a sizzler author Tim Firth’s created.
Here’s a play that says more about society, in Liverpool or other urban places, than a whole a series of more self-conscious social plays. At the Everyman, where they specialise in such things, only the multi-authored documentary Unprotected has equalled this play’s social perception and moving humanity. And Firth says it all with laughs.
As preparations move into performance of the nativity, childhood tensions, emotions and assumptions emerge. The various rivalries, jealousies, wishes and fears played out against the chart showing how many stars each class-member’s earned that term (a neat pun on the Bethlehem story), are both deeply human and extremely funny. They’re often intensified by Firth’s skill at casually dropping hints he explains later.
And, through these young people’s behaviour and feelings we seem to see their parents. So when, after Don’s visual coup the room belongs to the parents it’s both logical and a necessary rounding-out of what’s happened. It lowers the dramatic temperature; adults are less vivid behind their developed ego-shells and explanation is rarely as satisfying as suggestion. But it’s a small, and necessary, price to pay for the majority of this painfully truthful, sympathetic, hilarious piece.
Innkeeper: Andrew Schofield
Mary: Gillian Kearney
Wise Man Gold: Annabelle Dowler
Shepherd: Natalie Casey
Gabriel: Leanne Best
Star of Bethlehem/Ass: Nick Bagnall
The Angel: Rina Mahoney
Narrator: Paul Kemp
Herod/Joseph: Neil Caple
Wise Man Frankincense: John Marquez
Director: Matthew Lloyd
Designer: Robin Don
Lighting: Charles Balfour
Sound: John Leonard
Musical Director: Gavin Kaufman
AV Designer: Chris O’Neil
2006-12-27 00:12:33