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A night to remember

Posted by Mark Thomas on May 10, 2007 12:09 PM | 

It was quite an evening, packed with simmering, dark emotions - rage, bitterness, hate, and an unquenchable lust for revenge.
No, dear reader, I wasn't sitting at home tuned in to Jose Mourinho's tantrums as the reserve teams of Chelsea and Manchester United battled out their meaningless end of season dust-up at Stamford Bridge.

I had been invited to a performance of Liverpool writer Stephen Sharkey's new thriller, The May Queen, which is getting its World premiere at the Everyman Theatre at the moment.
It is bleak subject matter, a family murder mystery set at the height of the Liverpool blitz, but the story was quite compelling.
From the start, there is an awful sense of foreboding. You know something very bad is going to happen. The only question is who it will happen to. I'm not giving too much away if I say that this is not a play with a happy ending.
Star billing goes to the excellent Cathy Tyson, who turns in a fine performance as the mother whose love affair is the catalyst for the tragedy that unfolds, but the show-stopper is Leanne Best, who plays her daughter.
From her opening monologue, in which real tears sprang to her eyes as spontaneously as that spooky moment in the Sinead O'Connor video, Leanne gives a performance of incredible intensity. It was mesmerising stuff, and if there is any justice it ought to win her an award.
If you even vaguely like the theatre, do yourself a favour and get down to the Everyman to see this play. It's on until May 26.
But please don't take my word for it. Arts critic Peter Grant's review is on page six of today's Liverpool Daily Post.
It's a good newspaper all round today. We've led off on an interview with Albert Kirby, the brilliant detective who led the investigation into the James Bulger murder back in 1993. He is down in Portugal at the moment, and has been liaising with the Portuguese police in their hunt for missing toddler Madeleine McCann. His expertise can only help, as we all hope and pray that this case has a happy ending for Madeleine and her family.
The row over Uefa ticket allocations for Athens is still rumbling on, and Style City has a fantastic forties-style fashion shoot, in which our model posed on the set of the Liverpool Playhouse's recent forties-set production of Much Ado About Nothing.
And given that the forties and the Liverpool theatre is where I came in, that's enough from me...

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