UNPROTECTED. To 1 April.
Liverpool
UNPROTECTED
by Esther Wilson, John Fay, Tony Green, Lizzie Nunnery
Everyman Theatre To 1 April 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 1 April 2pm
Audio-described 28 March
BSL Signed 29 March
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 March
Outstanding production, examining society and humanity: gripping and unmissable.
Within a fortnight of Hugh Whitemore’s Best of Friends, scripted from the correspondence of 3 confident, comfortable people fully in control of their lives, comes Liverpool’s Unprotected. Also verbatim, it shows a different world, where no-one represented on stage seems in control.
Built over a year, the play focuses on 2 murders. 19-year old Hanane Parry and Pauline Stephen, 25, were killed and dismembered in the city in 2003. Both were prostitutes, but while there is a lot here about the dangers of selling sex on city streets, the roots of what’s described lie in addictive drugs. The play’s spine consists of the murdered women’s mothers recounting the process of undetected dependency, realisation of how relationships led back to heroin and crack, and the news of body parts being found in a Liverpool park.
Around these are comments from police, politicians and workers with addicts and some of the men whose money makes prostitution a way to raise drug-money. Despite evidence of courage and insight among all this, there’s still an ultimate lack of control.
The Everyman company provide excellent performances, with Leanne Best’s compilation street-woman Ali devastating. Pale-faced, tired-eyed, wasted in body but mentally keen, she’s never more focused than sitting alone giving an account of a violent man terrifying a young woman. Elsewhere, she’s seen trudging mid-scene across the back of the stage; while people talk the dangerous liaisons continue.
Unprotected will be devastating for anyone new to verbatim theatre. Familiarity with the method inevitably reveals how emotional intensity comes from a mix of two kinds of truth: raw words and refined acting. Yet Nina Raine’s superb direction increasingly incorporates unavoidable realities: projected Liverpool landscapes show a vast night-time city. Or localised urban dereliction, eventually morphing into the beautiful heroin-creating poppy, apparent escape from the streets, while taped voices from the writers’ research sound with women’s voices screaming for escape from addiction.
Pitifully, there’s Hanane as a child on video and smiling in a photo. And the voice of Anne Marie Foy, an interviewee for the production, since found dead on the street. This is tragic, devastating theatre.
Ali: Leanne Best
Colin/John/Brian/Lee/Government Official: Neil Caple
Pat/Jill: Pauline Daniels
Andy/Billy/Stephen/Kevin: Paul Duckworth
Trina/Catherine/Lucy/Marcia: Tricia Kelly
Diane/Jenni: Joan Kempson
Director/Dramaturg: Nina Raine
Designer: Miriam Buether
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Sound: Jason Barnes
Video/Projection: The Gray Circle
Dramaturg: Suzanne Bell
Video/Projection assistant: Mandeep Ahira
2006-03-30 14:04:13