Liver Birds Flying Home – Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool

Nicola Munns and Lucinda Lawrence in Liver Birds Flying Home at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool. Picture: Geraint Lewis

Liver Birds Flying Home continues at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool until 12 May 2019.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Last May I reviewed a one-off concert performance of Barb Jungr and Mike Lindup’s Liver Birds Flying Home at the Epstein Theatre, whilst it was in development. On the basis of that preview I felt that this was a show with huge potential, provided it received the right treatment and staging.

Seeing it here fully staged at the Royal Court, with a four-piece band and under the direction of Benji Sperring, it gives much the same impression.

Rebooting the relationship between Beryl and Sandra as they meet again 40 years down the line at the same old Huskisson Street flat was a concept that received the blessing of the characters’ co-creator Carla Lane before she died, and the production has had the full backing of her family. The enduring popularity of the source material guarantees an audience, and the production knows it has to match the bittersweet character of the original TV series and revive memories of the period.

It’s in the alternating scenes of light and shade that the show takes on a patchwork feel, the transitions between episodes of comedy and pathos being uneven in places, and arresting the dramatic flow. What works much more effectively is the relationship between past and present. Lesley Molony and Joanna Monro are our present day Beryl and Sandra, with Lucinda Lawrence and Nicola Munns representing their 1970s selves. There are numerous scenes in which the younger and older versions of each character reflect on one another’s actions and even duet together.

The story requires frequent scene changes between a multiplicity of settings throughout the city, both indoors and out. Designer Mark Walters achieves this using a technically challenging and complex arrangement of moving flats and stage trucks on a two-level set, and there are times when the changing of scenes becomes wearisome.

While there are no big showstoppers among the work’s many songs, Mike Lindup’s music has a melodic warmth and familiarity to it, and some of the more heartfelt numbers, such as ‘The Day Before’ and ‘Another Love Like Ours’ really offer an opportunity for the singers to pull out the stops.

The costumes and hair for the flashback scenes are meticulous in their period detail, plummeting us straight back to the 1970s, although some of the wigs for Mark Rice Oxley are a little unfortunate. Oxley must have the greatest number of parts and quick changes in the cast. Although having him play a father and his own son works well, landing him with every other male role in the piece does stretch credulity a little far. Certainly one of his scenes, played for laughs, in which his costume consists mainly of a dozen or so biscuits, could happily be cut.

Naturally the show has its roots firmly embedded in the Liverpool earth, and the local references flow naturally from the text. However, if the show is to tour widely, the anthemic ‘Liverpool Standing Tall’ that gets Act II off to a rousing start might benefit from a trimming of some of its litany of place names.

Liver Birds Flying Home is a show that’s full of heart and has the capacity to appeal both to audiences nostalgic for the TV series that inspired it and to those meeting its characters for the first time. Some further work on the overall dramatic arc of the story and tightening up its flow could well turn this into a hit.

Nigel Smith