The star of The Star is the theatre itself. Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward appeared here; so too did Richard Burton, Patricia Routledge and Anthony Hopkins, playing in the celebrated Liverpool Repertory Company, set up in 1911. Before it became the Playhouse, though, this was the Star music hall. For 150 years on this site, generations of Liverpudlians have laughed, cried and, rumour has it, chucked rotten fruit. For what makes a theatre a star is not just the stars who shine there, but the audiences who share their shows (for better and for worse).
Michael Wynne’s new play celebrates this relationship between performance space and people, in an onstage/backstage tale of music hall folk, woven around an Advent calendar’s worth of songs. We need no inducements to join in the choruses.
On one level, the story is simple. Two sets of lovers: will they, won’t they get together? A dastardly “swell”: will he, won’t he shut down the Star? The audience is encouraged to participate, give its opinion and to appreciate the (Arts Council-pleasing) educational content. Matthew Wright’s designs contrast bright and cheery front-stage show-offery with shadowy backstage fragility and intimacy.
Similarly satisfying contrasts give depth to a standard collection of types: Michael Starke’s Chairman, stolid, stentorian, secretly sentimental; Eithne Browne, fading star brightening in the limelight; Michelle Butterly, returning diva, haughty and desolate; Kevin Harvey’s villain, dastardly and drunken; Danny O’Brien, the flop who finds his shtick; Helen Carter and Jack Rigby, ingenues with stars in their eyes, hard work on their hands and love in their hearts. Philip Wilson’s direction adds the final sparkle that moves this from simple story to touching metaphor for the hopes and fears of all our lives.
By happy coincidence, Wynne’s new play opened in the same week that Gemma Bodinetz, artistic director of Liverpool’s Everyman and Playhouse theatres, announced the creation of the city’s next rep company. “It means we can do work we want to do for this city and for this time,” she tells me. Since the news broke last Monday, strangers have been stopping her in the street to offer congratulations and encouragement. The relationship between Liverpool’s theatres and communities continues singalong strong.
