Brick Up The Mersey Tunnels

Shakespeare it isn’t, but who cares? Following a highly successful three week run in 2006, Liverpool’s own Brick Up The Mersey Tunnels is still defying the odds and packing in audiences that many of the so-called “big productions” would die for. Why? Well, because it’s damn funny and brilliantly performed.

Fed up with how the so called “Posh” people of Merseyside – those from The Wirral – are continuously putting down honest Scousers, Dickie Lewis (Schofield), Nick Walton (Chase) and Gerard Gardner (Edge) form The Kingsway Three and, simply, brick up the major traffic arteries that join the peninsular to Metropolis. This of course means the self-righteous, over-bearing, stuck up Anne Twacky (Browne) – a Liverpool born, bred and desperate-to-forget-it JP now living in suburbia – can’t get to work in a city she despises, but is nonetheless happy to work in.

Dave Kirby and Nicky Alt’s script is something special, delivered by an astonishingly tallented cast. Andrew Schofield, the name-dropping conservatory builder, Dickie Lewis, is superb. Roy Brandon’s hen-pecked, line dancing Dennis Twacky, is utterly hilarious and Carl Chase’s narrator and eventual rebel, Nick Walton, is wonderful. However, whilst the gorgeous Suzanne Collins, playing café owning dreamer, Maggie,  delivered one of the night’s many highlights by singing Somewhere Over The Mersey, it was the delightful Eithne Browne who stole the show and made it her own.Who, having seen it, is ever likely to foget the Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia being turned into The Blue Rinse Mansions Of The Wirral. Shakespeare it might not be but, honestly, who cares? This is still a superb night out.
Chris High