Cameron McKendrick Archives - North West End UK

16Oct

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

The Maids – Unity Theatre

Inspired by the late Graeme Phillips, finessed by director Elinor Randle, and produced by Peter Ward, That Theatre Group CIC’s production of Jean Genet’s The Maids, translated by David Rudkin, is a masterly tour de force and a fitting tribute to a man who did so much for theatre in Liverpool. With their mistress (Jane Hogarth) away, two male maids, Solange (Samuel Perez Duran) and Claire (Cameron McKendrick) plunge into their darkest fantasies, in a twisted game, simmering with sexual tension, unravelling questions of modern slavery, gender identity, and power. The result is an absurd world where boundaries between reality and performance dissolve. Genet’s play was written in 1946 and, drawing upon a real-life murder case, critiqued the social and sexual hierarchies of the time t...

Canal Street Lonely Hearts Club – Hope Mill Theatre

With an inspired creative vision, the updating of a theatre piece can breathe new life into it, bringing entirely new meanings to the story and characters. The gender-swapped Company revival provided a female-centric look at the thirty-five-and-still-single life, questioning societal expectations, while &Juliet allows the queerness of Shakespeare to be a lot more overt. But when Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club writer Jonathan Harvey‘s motivation for a modern, Northern version of his 90s London-based play doesn’t go beyond ‘f*** it, why not?’, its purpose is thrown into question before the curtain has even lifted. In a Canal Street flat, two brothers (Shaun, straight and Marti, gay) contemplate their love lives as the former’s girlfriend is being unresponsive while on holiday in...

The Lieutenant of Inishmore – Liverpool Everyman

Martin McDonagh’s darkly satirical exploration of violence, extremism, and the cyclical nature of retribution resonates as much with today’s challenges of nationalism, radicalism, and unchecked ideology as it did to Ireland’s troubled past when, having been written in 1994, it eventually premiered in 2001. For all the talk of good luck when a black cat crosses your path, Donny (Alan Turkington), Davey (Taylor McClaine) and wayward Republicans Christy (Cameron McKendrick), Brendan (Michael Tient), and Joey (Jason Kelly) are about to discover what ensues when you cross a black cat belonging to Donny’s son, Padraic (Julian Moore-Cook) – a man so mad that much to his chagrin, most mainstream terrorist organisations won’t have him as a member. Throw in a wannabee rebel in Davey’s sister, Mai...