Mark Davoren, Author at North West End UK

Blackstock Market & Hot Water Comedy Club, Liverpool

27Jul

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Blackstock Market & Hot Water Comedy Club, Liverpool

There’s a new destination for entertainment, culture, and connection in the heart of Liverpool: welcome to Blackstock Market. Many people will be familiar with the story of Hot Water Comedy Club which, following its creation in a nightclub almost fourteen years ago, grew into one of the most followed comedy clubs in the world, and it is from the seeds of that success story that Blackstock Market has evolved as a community-built venture bringing together entertainment, culture, and culinary excellence in one dynamic space. With an emphasis on community and a commitment to local employment, the goal is to nurture and showcase local talent and business through partnership and serve up culinary delights and comedic brilliance whilst celebrating the city’s strong musical heritage in paral...

The Importance of Being Earnest – Speke Hall

25Jul

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

The Importance of Being Earnest – Speke Hall

The challenge of Oscar Wilde is not in the words but ensuring the performance does them justice. There were no such fears with director and founding member Mark Hayward’s laugh-out loud production which delights from the off. As butler Lane (Hannah Pryal) prepares tea at the London home of dandy Algernon Moncrief (James Alston) there is a hint of the fun and frolics to follow when his friend John Worthing (Harry Drummond) arrives, explaining that when he tires of life in the country looking after his teenage ward, he escapes to enjoy the high life of the city under the guise of seeing his wayward brother, ‘Ernest’. Algernon, in turn, regales him with his exploits of escaping the city in reverse fashion. Algernon’s aunt, Lady Bracknell (Madeline Hatt), arrives with her daughter, Gwendole...

Present Laughter – National Theatre Live: The Old Vic

19Jul

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

REVIEWS

Present Laughter – National Theatre Live: The Old Vic

Filmed live during its sell-out run at The Old Vic in 2018, director Matthew Warchus’ multi-award winning production of Noël Coward‘s provocative 1943 comedy delightfully returns to the big screen, as it depicts a few days in the life of the successful and self-obsessed light comedy actor Garry Essendine (Andrew Scott) as he prepares to travel for a touring commitment in Africa. Amid a series of events bordering on farce and with the support of a knowing valet Fred (Joshua Hill) and a housekeeper Miss Erikson (Liza Sadovy), he has to placate both his long-suffering secretary Monica (Sophie Thompson) and his wife Liz (Indira Varma) who form part of his inner circle along with Morris (Abdul Salis) and Helen (Suzie Toase), whilst in this updated gender swap version, also fighting off the a...

12Jul

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Rumours – Thingwall Community Centre

Under the capable direction of Paul Arends, Thingwall Players excel in their Anglified delivery of one of Neil Simon’s most farcical of plays where the humour comes thick and fast and the only risk of missing a gag is that you’re still in fits of laughter from the previous one. This 1980’s tale reset to London involves a 10th wedding anniversary party to which the first couple, the Bevans (Charlotte Holguin; Zoran Blackie) arrive only to find the wife and servants missing and the husband doped up on painkillers with a gunshot wound through one of his earlobes. Desperate to avoid any scandal for the wounded man, who happens to be the assistant deputy minister of finance, the first couple, both lawyers, try to cover up the incident from the second couple, the Cummings (Kate Mulvi...

Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience – Exhibition Centre Liverpool

27Jun

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience – Exhibition Centre Liverpool

Billed as the UK premiere, Annerin Productions’ Beyond Van Gogh arrives in Liverpool as an immersive experience of over 300 masterpieces including three more renowned images – The Starry Night; Sunflowers; and Café Terrace at Night. As much as I enjoy art, Liverpool’s Exhibition Centre isn’t a curated gallery – nor does it claim to be – and equally the event itself is clear that this is very much about artwork freed from its frames rather than any original pieces, so any assessment is based two-fold on the experience itself and the extent to which it enlightens its audience, serving as an introduction to art. There is a winding route from entrance which sets out a simplified backstory to Van Gogh with a hint of his work in the background, designed as an appetiser to the main event wh...

Sunshine on Leith – Rainhill Village Hall

21Jun

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Sunshine on Leith – Rainhill Village Hall

If the question was, do you want to make this work, then director Claire Heaton, a late step-in to get this production on the stage, has delivered a resounding yes with this enjoyable, foot-tapping, and emotional extravaganza featuring songs from The Proclaimers and celebrating all things Scottish – well, England did only manage a draw tonight in the Euros! Recently discharged from the army, Davy (Bryan Dargie) and Alistair (Simon Burgess) return to their families and homes in Edinburgh. Alistair is going out with Davy’s sister, Liz (Charlotte Payne), a nurse, and on the first night back, she sets her brother up on a blind date with one of her colleagues, Yvonne (Dawn Louise). Against this backdrop of youthful love, Davy and Liz’s parents, Rab (Paul Henshaw) and Jean (Julie Gould) are a...

The Marriage of Figaro – Waterside Arts, Sale

15Jun

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

The Marriage of Figaro – Waterside Arts, Sale

Mozart’s satirical and deeply human four-act comic opera, an adaptation with Da Ponte of Beaumarchais’ banned 1778 play about warring masters and servants, is delightfully brought to life with Chris Gill’s English libretto translation entertainingly directed by Sarah Helsby-Hughes. As the day of Figaro (David Cane) and Susanna’s (Heather Buckmaster) wedding arrives, it becomes clear that the Count (Mike Dewis), is keen to exercise his ‘droit du seigneur’ – his right to bed a servant girl on her wedding night – and they conspire with the forsaken Countess (Helsby-Hughes), to outwit her husband and teach him a lesson in fidelity. Plans however are thrown awry when Bartolo (Matthew Baldwin), seeking revenge against Figaro for thwarting his own earlier plans to marry the Countess, tries to ...

14Jun

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

London

Andréa Chenier – Royal Opera House

David McVicar’s spectacular staging of Umberto Giordano’s epic verismo opera of revolution and forbidden love from 2015 is brought back to life by Revival Director Thomas Guthrie with the orchestra under the baton of Antonio Pappano in his last production as Music Director of The Royal Opera. At a glittering party in 18th-century Paris there are distinctly two tiers of society on display from the lowly footman Gérard (Amartuvshin Enkhbat) who follows in the footsteps of his father who has been in service for sixty years, to the sumptuous host, Contessa di Coigny (Rosalind Plowright), whose daughter Maddalena (Sondra Radvanovsky) straddles both as she eschews the fancy dress and faux manners in favour of intellectual discussion, so when the poet Andréa Chenier (Jonas Kaufmann) delivers a...

7Jun

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

The Dumb Waiter – Hope Street Theatre

Moxie on Fire are certainly that with their production of Harold Pinter’s classic one-act play, considered to be one of his best, and certainly one open to much interpretation depending on who you talk to, with director Kaitlin Howard successfully navigating the potential pitfalls whilst still leaving us with plenty to reflect on at its conclusion. Gus (Gareth Llewelyn) and Ben (Richard Cottier) are hit men who are holed-up in a dingy basement kitchen, waiting to be sent out on their next job. Even from before the start of the play it is clear that Ben is the more senior of the two as they lie on their respective beds – Ben reading the newspaper, Gus seemingly asleep. The unravelling scene captures the uneasy frustration between them as they wait for instruction on their next victim ...

Beckett and the Wake by John Minihan – The Yoko Ono Lennon Centre, University of Liverpool

4Jun

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Beckett and the Wake by John Minihan – The Yoko Ono Lennon Centre, University of Liverpool

The world needs characters and Irish photographer John Minihan showed he is certainly that with this delightful anecdotal and humorous talk that explored his relationship over many years with the great playwright Samuel Beckett, renowned for being nigh on impossible to interview as well as camera-shy. Minihan first expressed a desire to photograph Beckett in 1969, following Beckett's winning of the Nobel Prize for literature, having noticed that all the available photos of Beckett were of such a poor quality it was if Beckett didn’t exist, although his first encounter was not to be until 1980 in London when Beckett was working on a production of one of his plays, Endgame. They met in the Hyde Park Hotel where Minihan’s acclaimed photographic series, The Wake of Katy Tyrell, piquing Beck...