October 2008 Archives

How exciting is this? Only 24 hours until Pete "the Poss" Postlethwaite steps out on the Everyman stage for the first night of King Lear.
Press night is next week and there's a real air of anticipation - not least from myself because despite going to the RSC at Stratford regularly as a schoolgirl and as a reviewer, I've never seen this particular Shakespearean tragedy before.
I've sat through Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. TWICE. And very good it was too. I've seen Ben Kingsley's Othello (David Suchet was the scheming Iago) and I've even watched Sean Bean wielding a sword in Romeo and Juliet.
But for some reason King Lear has never stepped my way.

You wait for a story about the Pier Head - and then two come along at the same time.
Yesterday morning I was down on the waterfront (well wrapped up compared to most of the others who had gathered in no more than suits and shirts. The fools!) for the official opening of the first phase of the redevelopment.
Then last night I popped back down to watch Ben Parry's film Terminus being beamed on to the side of the ventilation building.

Yes, before you ask, it was me singing the chorus to Does This Train Stop on Merseyside on the TV news last night.
I'll get Jane Barrett for that!
We were sitting on the newly-named John Peel Merseyrail train on a journey from Liverpool South Parkway to the city centre, alongside Peel's wife Sheila and three of their kids.
And why were we singing? Because the song, by Liverpool band Amsterdam, was one of the late DJ's favourites. In fact, apparently it used to make him cry.

I went to see Monkey, performed by the youth theatre, at the Everyman last night.
There was certainly plenty of monkeying around on stage.
But I hear it was more Lynx backstage where the air was apparently asthma-inducingly heavy with the teenage boys' favourite deoderant.......

You may not know the name, but it's likely you've seen the photos.
Philip Jones Griffiths' images of ordinary Vietnamese caught up in the Vietnam conflict changed public opinion on the war, and changed lives.
The Welshman was on of the greatest photographers of the 20th century.
And a new exhibition of his work opens tomorrow at the Conservation Centre in Whitechapel.
I was asked to officially help open the show at a launch reception last night.

It's interesting to see another city prepare to be Capital of Culture.
We've been so engrossed in our own build up and the year itself, it's easy to forget there are several other "Liverpools" out there all doing the same thing.
I went to one of them - Essen (technically they are RUHR:2010, covering 53 cities and towns in Germany) - on Monday to hear the creative team unveil the first tranche of their programme.
The press conference was held on the site of a former coal pit, now a World Heritage Site.