Liver Birds Flying Home, Royal Court, Liverpool, review: Musical version of The Liver Birds never quite takes flight
Judging by the audience reaction in the interval for Liver Birds Flying Home, revisiting Sandra and Beryl from the 1970s TV sitcom, this stage version of The Liver Birds is a sound commercial proposition.
The contrasts between the girls in 1973 and now was entertaining and the new jokes worked (“We had running water… down the walls”), but the story changed dramatically in the second half when Beryl’s son was potentially paralyzed in a road accident. The play returned to Carla Lane’s central leitmotif for The Liver Birds, namely the importance of friendship, but it is taking a risk by not following the ingredients on the can.
The other major change is that Liver Birds Flying Home is a musical with songs written by the cabaret singer Barb Jungr and Mike Lindup from Level 42. Jungr was born in Rochdale and has a good grounding in northern life, but Lindup’s melodies lacked the show-stopping power of his previous hits.
“Liverpool Standing Tall” praised the way Liverpool had regenerated itself in recent years, but Jungr, who is so particular about the lyrical content of her own act, could have written much sharper songs than “If Men Were Biscuits” (the title sadly says it all). The score was serviceable and entertaining but not much more and lacked a showstopper. If anything, the show, with a script by Jungr, George Seaton and Linda McDermott and directed by Benji Sperring, had a feel of being hand-me-down Blood Brothers.
Nicola Munns and Lucinda Lawrence are very good as the 24-year-olds Sandra and Beryl living in a run-down bed-sit in Toxteth and they are dressed convincingly in cheap and cheerful Seventies fashions, a source of humour in itself. Munns recreates Nerys Hughes’ role perfectly and if at times Lawrence was shrill, that was only being true to Polly James’ original. They talk about their dead-end jobs – mostly selling broken biscuits in a department store – and their relationships with their parents, whom, unlike the TV series, we do not see. They joke about Beryl’s hapless boyfriend, Billy, who accepts the role of road manager in his cousin’s band.
Billy, played by Mark Rice-Oxley, gets Beryl pregnant and leaves Liverpool, later meeting Sandra in London, marrying her and moving to Canada. When he dies in 2017, Sandra, now played by Joanna Monro, returns home and discovers that Beryl (Lesley Molony) runs the successful Beryl’s Biscuits with her son, Con, also played by Rice-Oxley. Beryl and Con are divided over whether to accept a takeover from a German company.
The play is divided into short scenes, going backwards and forwards in time, and the designer Mark Walters make this work convincingly with an outstanding set. The actresses are believable as older versions of themselves, but surely the positive and optimistic Sandra would have made more of her life – and that also applies to Liver Birds Flying Home. It provides a good night out with a positive message about friendships enduring but it has the potential to be more.
Until 12 May (royalcourtliverpool.com)
