Louise Kershaw, Author at North West End UK

4Dec

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

The Good Enough Mums Club – The Lowry

When the local Council threatens to close a local community centre, five women who have been thrown together in a Mums and Babies group discover that they are stronger as a group than as individuals. Their story is told in the form of a musical which addresses the common issues that women with newborns face and takes us from the moment the pregnancy test announces the impending new arrival to the collective success of five women coming together to fight for a resource they need and value. In the opening number, a gentle parody of Chicago’s Cell Block Tango, we were presented with five women clutching positive pregnancy tests and taken on a three trimester journey of sickness, cravings, fatigue, discomfort, bladder pressure, Braxton Hicks and finally labour and birth. Confidently and cle...

Yerma: National Theatre Live – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

6Nov

By Louise KershawNo Comments

REVIEWS

Yerma: National Theatre Live – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

In 2017 Billie Piper’s much lauded performance in Simon Stone’s adaptation of Lorca’s Yerma resulted in her scooping several best actress awards. The opportunity to see this production and much Piper’s written of performance came in the form of an NT Live screening at Altrincham’s Garrick Theatre and I am genuinely thrilled I went. The play opens with Her (Piper) and her husband John (Brendan Cowell) celebrating the purchase of their first home together in London. Life is going well for them. She is in her early thirties and is a successful lifestyle blogger and he is in his early forties and enjoying growing success and significant worldwide travel for the business he has started with her support. Their plans for the future are taking shape and this large empty new home awaits the life...

21Oct

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

Toxic – HOME

Currently playing at HOME Manchester is Dibby Productions’ Toxic. Written and performed by Nathaniel J Hall as The Playwright and with Josh-Susan Enright as the Performer this is a sharp, quick witted, fast paced piece of theatre which tells the story of two thirty something men who meet, fall in love and f*ck it up. Set in Manchester in 2017, two damaged individuals meet in a hot and sweaty queer warehouse party, their hearts collide, and a bond is formed. What plays out is the powerful story of that love. They love hard, live hard, play hard and I’m not gonna beat around the bush here, they f*ck hard too. From the opening ‘4th wall’ smashing sequence where we were told what the play would not be the audience were gripped and that attention did not waiver as the 90-minute performanc...

By The Waters of Liverpool – Waterside Arts

25Sep

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

By The Waters of Liverpool – Waterside Arts

Helen Forrester’s much loved million-selling novels which depict her difficult childhood growing up in post-Depression Liverpool have been popular with readers for decades. Born into a wealthy family and the eldest of seven children, Helen enjoyed a privileged existence filled with private education, nannies and servants. When her father became bankrupt following the economic crash of 1929, the family, now destitute, moved from their comfortable existence in the South-West of England, to Liverpool. This is where we meet Helen and family. Living in serious poverty, struggling to get by, living on parish handouts and credit; her parents seemingly unable to face the reality of their situation and take responsibility for their poor decision making. The weight of the situation falls onto ...

A View From The Bridge – Octagon Theatre

14Sep

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

A View From The Bridge – Octagon Theatre

It isn’t often that one goes to see a production and as the final ‘curtain’ falls the audience appear to be engaged in a collective holding of breath, momentarily stunned to silence. This was the case tonight as the Octagon Theatre Bolton launched its Autumn/Winter season with the Arthur Miller masterpiece ‘A View From the Bridge’. Set in the Italian - American neighborhood of Red Hook in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s, this tragic play tells the story of Eddie Carbone, an ordinary working man who develops an improper and obsessional love for Catherine, his wife Beatrice’s orphaned niece, and to whom he has been a father figure since her childhood. This obsession is put under unbearable strain when Beatrice’s cousins, Marco and Rodolpho illegally enter the country from their work starv...

7Sep

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

Three – The King’s Arms, Salford

Currently on a national autumn tour, this intimate two hander, performed by Christie Peto and Hannah Harquart, explores one woman’s life experiences both inside and outside of her mind. We observe how she deals with her ordinary, even mundane life, whilst gripped by anxiety, low self-esteem and a manic depressive health problem. Not a barrel of laughs you may imagine, but actually, these charming comediennes, with both excellent timing and expression hold their audience from start to finish. One thing that is made very clear, having depression and anxiety is very exhausting. Every action, reaction, decision is overthought, challenged, rejected, investigated to microscopic detail and the battle between being positive and optimistic vs the doubtful and self loathing is constant. Harqua...

28Jul

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

Baggy Bra – The Squad House, Stockport

Meet Barb. Barb loves bras. Her daughter designs and makes them. Together they sell them to grateful women, keen to have something comfortable, stylish and well fitted to wear each day. From Barb’s little shop they welcome women in need of advice, support and a proper fitting. Starting in the bar of this great new venue, Barb (Sian Parry-Williams) welcomes the audience into the space where cabaret style seating awaits, glitter sparkles, Welsh flags proudly adorn, and we enter her world of all things mammary. Parry-Williams takes immediate control of the action and the audience takes to her instantly. A well-rounded character with sharp wit and enormous warmth, she shatters the fourth wall conspiratorially and instantly gains our loyalty, which remains throughout. The play itse...

Bright Lights City – Salford Arts Theatre

20Jul

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

Bright Lights City – Salford Arts Theatre

When two people meet in a seaside café at the end of a pier on a grueling wet afternoon it can go one of two ways; either sulkily sit out the storm in a sad soggy state or stop for a moment and absorb what is actually going on around you and even gain a new perspective on life, love and latte. Laura Gender’s play introduces us to Woman (Marchia Brogan)– middle-aged, successful, demanding, rude, disappointed, angry, entitled and caught out in a storm. In the empty café in which she takes refuge she meets Waitress (Blue Blackburn) – sixteen years old, unambitious, open, funny, patient, tolerant, smart and ready to shut up shop for the day. In the unfolding drama we see two women, seemingly from very different places, whose worlds collide and clash but who find a way to connection, reso...

Things I’d Like To Get Off My Chest – Hope Mill Theatre

14Jul

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

Things I’d Like To Get Off My Chest – Hope Mill Theatre

Turns out there are quite a few things that Eva Lily would like to get off her chest and having big boobs is just one of them. This highly entertaining one woman show currently playing at Hope Mill Theatre takes a very honest and open look at the long-term failings of female healthcare and the constant narrative, and subsequent judgement, that the mere existence of women’s bodies creates in our society. But firstly, the boobs. They are big. Really big. At a size 38K, (‘average’ UK woman is a 36DD) they are prohibitively big and the impact of them upon Eva’s life cannot be underestimated. The piece opens with a 13-year-old Eva in the dressing room at Rigby and Pellier, brassiere makers to the late Queen and the scene of the ritual humiliation of her first bra fitting. I don’t belie...

Four Weddings and a Breakdown – King’s Arms, Salford

9Jul

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

Four Weddings and a Breakdown – King’s Arms, Salford

Phil Green’s pre-Edinburgh stand up show, presented to a small audience who had made their way through the torrential rain of a humid summers evening, took us on a journey of his life over the past twenty years and the trials and torments that have brought him to where he is now. Relaxed, quick witted and very likeable, Green quickly got down to the business of pondering the life experiences and learnings of each generation from the Babyboomers who raised him to the current Generation Z cleverly highlighting the differences and similarities between them. Using the power of his beloved and adored Sugababes, who have accompanied him for the whole journey and assisted by observant and entertaining photographs, visual charts and graphs, Green highlights the features of each generation with ...