THE GUARDIAN June 10th, 2010
….an odyssey through 40 years of Liverpool life. Even for non-football fans, it's a punchy piece of good old-fashioned popular theatre that wears its passions and prejudices on its sleeve. A show with balls, in more ways than one.
THE TIMES June 11, 2010
You don’t have to be a Red to join in the glee ….wit, anger, pride, pity. Duckworth is terrific.
LIVERPOOL POST May 8, 2009
You don’t have to be a football fan to be swept into the tale of Kenny Noonan. Writer John Graham Davies can certainly hit a punch line…. This play isn’t just based on a true story. It’s based on thousands.
LIVERPOOL ECHO May 8th, 2009
Paul Duckworth, of Backbeat and Brookside fame, plays a welter of roles in mesmerising fashion, switching brilliantly from one character to the next in dizzy and often hilarious scattergun scenes. Duckworth is outstanding, with his often side-splitting voices, deadpan Scouse delivery, and ability to tell absorbing yarns to an audience like he was sitting in your front room.
The gags flowed all evening.
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“You don’t have to be a football fan to enjoy this spectacle - all you need is an open heart and a love for the human soul.”
THE STAGE March 8th, 2010
Director Matt Rutter lays it out as a great, celebratory, working class, bash the rich piece of theatre which plays firmly to a football crowd - but also does enough to make itself relevant beyond. Thoughtful stuff with plenty to laugh about.
NOTTINGHAM POST Feb 26th, 2010
…brilliantly conceived and executed…
ANNALS OF THE EDINBURGH STAGE
There’s a real celebratory vibe down at the Bongo Club just now. Football, working class politics, comedy, theatre and a great long shaggy dog story all combine to create a great night out.
Davies’ sparkling script is woven from the shared fabric of life in Liverpool over the last 30 odd years. It is one of those brilliant one-man shows, tour-de-force performances that you normally only see during the Fringe…. a brilliantly observed piece of audience-pleasing theatre that gets really emotional when it matters.
LIVERPOOL DAILY POST Apr 9th 2010
A must for anyone, theatre fan, LFC fan or otherwise. Any play that can genuinely bring out the laughter and tears in equal measure is worthy of any stage.
THE LIVERPOOL ECHO Apr 10 2010
You don’t have to love football to love this play. This story of one scouser’s journey to the Champions League final is a vehicle for him to recount his life and, through these memories, the wider history of the city.
Actor Paul Duckworth, of Brookside fame, plays 40 different characters from down-on-his-luck Kenny Noonan to a flustered air hostess struggling to demonstrate safety procedures aboard a flight of scousers bound for Istanbul.
Actual footage is projected onto a screen adding to the drama by wrenching events out of the fictional play and back into the real world.
The highlights of this frantic schizophrenia are conversations between pals Kenny, speed dealer Minty and Muslim soldier Moose. Duckworth zips around the stage somehow creating all three at once. During one silent, solemn scene Duckworth even manages to create a cafe full of people and their horrific confusion as the Hillsborough disaster unfolds on the television before them.
That's the magic of this production: it's not the story of one man, it's the story of many men. It's not a play about football, it's a play about the heart of a city and how and why it beats.
What the papers say...
