Review: Hovering On the Edge

Write Now Festival at the Unity Theatre reveals Brian Brown’s new play

liverpool Unity Theatre Write Now Festival

If you read the short description on the Write Now Festival page, this one-act play sounds terrible.

To summarise, it describes how two young men decide to do something charitable for their own personal gain and get changed by the experience. Bleh.

But although this does truthfully sum up the play in a nutshell, it does not do the play any justice whatsoever. It doesn’t reveal that it is real, heartwarming and funny, which it most certainly is.

The two main characters, young men who live on a ‘rough’ estate are at first cringe-worthy, with their bad language and dubious motives. Their journey begins with wanting to take the money that should rightfully belong to an air ambulance charity and ends with the completion of a physically exhausting cycle ride that raises £5000.

This could not have been conveyed so clearly without the talent of the two main actors, Jamie Vere and Paul Holliday. They make the connection with the audience personal and in some places extremely humorous: audience laughter is a regular occurrence within the 50 minutes.

Roger Phillips from BBC Radio Merseyside does a surprising voice over which certainly adds to the authenticity; the other voice over meant to resemble a large, intimidating presence in the estate is less convincing however, with the person behind the voice resembling a lead balloon.

Although the music is at times rather random and occasionally the audience were sat looking at just the curtain whilst the crew battled with the cumbersome bikes in the wings, this play is local theatre at its best.

Hovering On the Edge unashamedly reminds you that you are in Liverpool, and it brings some home truths – including even those that are not generally easy to confront – to life in all the right places.

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