Reviews

The inaugural musical produced by new theatre group Theatre and Company of the hilarious show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was a well-received hit on opening night.

Performed in the intimate Lennox Theatre at Riverside, it made you feel like you were in the audience of a live Spelling Bee.

‘Grief’ is a very literary subject – something we will gladly allow to envelop us in a one-on-one with a book or in a dark cinema. It is not a topic we eagerly seek out in live entertainment. And so, it must be a challenge, when presenting a one-act two-hander about deep-seated grief – caused in this case by the loss of a child – to get the balance right and avoid dishing up a slice of soap.

‘Marriage is like the Middle East – there’s no solution!’ So says 42-year-old Shirley Bradshaw in her typical, straightforward Liverpool manner. Once she used to be Shirley Valentine, before marriage to Joe and before her two children, Brian and Millandra. Now she talks to the walls in her Liverpool semi-detached home, one among whole rows in the streets outside.

The play opens with a loud, long, resonant gunshot in complete darkness, so without warning that the chattering audience was jolted into silence. The lights rise so slowly that at first they are overpowered by the exit signs. Your eyes gradually adjust before being able to make out anything at all. Over a few minutes during the opening dialogue, three faces resolve out of the gloom: a mother and two daughters. A vicious man arrives home drunk, ready to abuse his family. There’s a confrontation, and just like that, he’s dead.