After Liverpool

James Saunders writes of the play: 'After Liverpool is not a play but a suite of pieces, to be performed by one or more actors and one or more actresses. The order in which the pieces are played is not specified. Using a musical analogy, the script gives some themes, within and between which any number of variations are possible.'

Or to put it simply, the play-script consists of lots of little chunks of dialogue simply shared between M and W (man and woman). With six actors, the first thing to do was to establish three couples, which we did through improvisation. After the couples were established, we set about organising the chunks of dialogue into three distinct narratives, with some overlaps. 

We established three locations, and ended up with a couple who spent most of their time in bed, with a dysfunctional, primarily sexual, relationship, a couple who spent their time arguing in their living room, and finally a couple who kept on meeting in a bar but never quite made it happen. Oh and the girl from the bed ends up going to the bar and taking bar-man back to her bedroom, so there was a crossover and a bit of infidelity thrown in for good measure. And all of it was put together and rehearsed in two weeks!

We did two performances to packed houses on both nights, and everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy it, to the extent that they weren't distracted by the noise from the footie downstairs in the pub. Or at least that's what they told us.

Cast:

Terry Doe

Paloma Oakenfold

Patrick Osborne

Nikesh Patel

Marene Vanholk

Eleanor Wyld

Director: Bryony Hope

Producer: Ellie King

Video footage of After Liverpool coming soon!