logo
Red Or Dead: Peter Mullan makes a monumental Bill Shankly

Red Or Dead: Peter Mullan makes a monumental Bill Shankly

Telegraph03-04-2025

The red carpet was rolled out at Liverpool's Royal Court theatre for the press night of Red or Dead, Phillip Breen's stage adaptation of David Peace's novel about the legendary manager of Liverpool FC, Bill Shankly. Local heroes – including former England and Liverpool player John Barnes, and comedian John Bishop – were among those who came to see TV and film star Peter Mullan's return to the stage as the beloved Shankly.
Merseyside is renowned for its love of football, so it's no surprise that Liverpool's Royal Court – as a purveyor of popular theatre – taps into that passion. Forthcoming productions include a comic musical fantasia titled The Legend of Rooney's Ring (about Wayne Rooney, who played for Everton) and The Derby Days (a play made for supporters of both Liverpool FC and Everton).
Red or Dead is first-and-foremost for fans of Liverpool FC. From the midst of an excellent, 52-strong cast (including a community chorus of 40) Mullan is superb as Shankly, the sometimes gruff, often witty, always driven Scotsman who led the club from the second tier of English football to success in both domestic and European competition.
From his no-nonsense negotiations with club chairman Tom Smith (played with necessary composure and formality by Les Dennis) to his interactions with his friend and mentor, the great Manchester United manager Matt Busby (Gordon Kennedy on dignified form), Mullan impresses mightily. Indeed, he delighted the press night audience by recovering a slipped line, and bantering with the crowd, in character.
Breen has fashioned a play with numerous songs, and the fabulously voiced Jhanaica Van Mook leads the cast (and a considerable proportion of the audience) in singing the Liverpool FC anthem You'll Never Walk Alone. Allison McKenzie – who is tremendous in the role of Shankly's supportive and long-suffering wife Ness – is in similarly fine voice, both in song and the reciting of the poetry of Shankly's beloved Robert Burns.
The piece is peppered with moments of laugh-out-loud humour. Comic treats include the long, black wig that identifies Kevin Keegan and a scene involving the groin of the celebrated Liverpool player Ian St John, some boot polish and a camera.
Breen – who also directs the production – has addressed himself imaginatively to the thorny problem of transposing a detailed prose narrative into a play. His solution – having multiple narrative voices step out from within the huge cast – is a clever one.
However, whilst the various voices help to distract from the structural conundrum that is so often inherent in stage adaptations of novels, the play (which runs to two-and-a-half hours, including interval) struggles to find a theatrical rhythm. Still, this nicely-acted, unapologetically sentimental celebration of one of Liverpool FC's greatest ever heroes is sure to be a crowd-pleaser for its intended audience.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?
Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?

Spectator

time4 hours ago

  • Spectator

Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?

Be under no illusions: this is not a food memoir. Chopping Onions on My Heart is a linguistic exploration of belonging; a history of the Jewish community in Iraq; and an urgent endeavour to save an endangered language. Above all, it is a reckoning with generational trauma. The subjects of Samantha Ellis's previous books include the life of Anne Brontë, heroines of classic literature, feminism and romantic comedy. She is the daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, and the language she grew up around, the language of her people and culture, is dying. Judeo-Iraqi Arabic 'came out of the collisions of Hebrew-speaking Jews and Aramaic-speaking Babylonians, and then absorbed linguistic influences from all the other people who conquered Iraq'. Ellis is irrepressible in the way she talks about her mother tongue, calling it 'earthy, sinewy, witty, excessive, wry, noisy, vivid… Hot, where English often seems cold. Mouth-filling, where English seems empty. Patterned, when English seems plain.' Jewish people first came to Iraq in 586 BC. At the community's height in the 1940s there were 150,000 Jews living in the country. At best guess, by 2019 just five remained. Most left in the decade following Farhud, the pogrom carried out against the Jews of Baghdad over two days in 1941. More than 180 Jews were murdered and countless raped and injured. Ellis's father's family left for Israel, while her mother's stayed on for more than 20 years. But both her parents eventually ended up in London, where Ellis was born. She was raised speaking English, 'but all the gossip, all the stories, all the exciting, forbidden grown-up life happened in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic'. She quietly absorbed the language, but as she grew up, lost it. Now, as an adult and mother, she is acutely aware of the consequences for herself and her son. The mass exodus of Iraqi Jews in 1950-51, and their assimilation into adopted countries, meant that the language was marginalised, and speaker numbers dwindled fast. Ellis's early investigations are urgent, panicked, motivated by a combination of incredulity and guilt that a language that informs her heritage, but that she doesn't speak, isn't being preserved by someone else: 'I raced to my laptop to find out if anyone was saving my language. Someone had to be!' She begins language classes, visits museums and consults relatives. She attempts to trace the history of her people. She cannot accept that the reason languages become extinct is because second generation, non-native speakers 'didn't value or care for them, that we were recklessly letting them die'. She realises that 'there was always violence somewhere in the vanishing of languages. There certainly was in mine'. The mother tongue is 'earthy, sinewy, witty, excessive, wry, noisy, vivid…Hot, where English often seems cold' The psychological effect of being brought up by families who have experienced war, discrimination and displacement is what makes Ellis both neurotic and determined not to pass on that inherited fear to her son. When he garbles the history of how they came to Britain, Ellis decides: 'If I was going to unmuddle him, maybe I had to try to unmuddle myself first.' But how does one preserve the stories of a culture's past without also holding on to the pain that imbues them? In her search for home and belonging, she finds solace in cooking her country's traditional dishes. But this is not a tidy personal narrative that finds resolution in a comforting stew or finishes with a glorious homecoming wrapped neatly in bread dough. Ellis is wary of simplifying the past and making it more palatable through food. The problem is not Iraqi Jewish cuisine; that's the easy bit. It's the gnarly, traumatic parts that are harder to engage with. So, no, this is not a food memoir. And if at times it doesn't seem to know quite what it is, then isn't that sort of the point? Unpicking, extricating different facets of heritage is near impossible, compounded by the conflicting motivations of a second generation immigrant. What begins as a shapeless mass, a grey cloud of uncertainty, slowly morphs into a full-colour, defined picture of a more confident, peaceful acceptance of Ellis's duality – of being Judeo-Iraqi, but not in Iraq, of belonging to two places at once, even if one place cannot be visited. Like her identity, Ellis's book contains multitudes.

No escaping mother: Lili is Crying, bv Hélène Bessette, reviewed
No escaping mother: Lili is Crying, bv Hélène Bessette, reviewed

Spectator

time4 hours ago

  • Spectator

No escaping mother: Lili is Crying, bv Hélène Bessette, reviewed

'Everyone has a mother, but we don't all smash up our lives for her sake,' we hear in the first few pages of Lili is Crying. It's a sensible message, but one which seems suited to an entirely different book. Hélène Bessette's 1953 debut novel – translated into English for the first time – is a tale of bust-ups, mistakes and life-ruining decisions in a fiery, fickle relationship between a mother and daughter. Charlotte and her daughter Lili live in Provence, and the novel jumps between the 1930s and 1940s, from Lili's 'ribbons and Sunday dresses' to her first freighted dalliances with boys. Charlotte runs a boarding house from which Lili longs to escape – and nearly manages to, with the same young man who tries to convince her not to destroy her life for her mother. His honesty is his mistake, and Lili fails to leave for him – eventually 'going off' not with 'the man I do love' but instead 'with the man I don't'. Her flight ends in failure – there are disappointments and a backstreet abortion – and it isn't long before she is back with Charlotte. The two stay together while Lili's husband, a Slav, is interned in Dachau for the duration of the war. Bessette's prose is prickly and snappy, with short lines and speech introduced by dashes. On the page it looks more like verse than prose, an effect which matches Bessette's take on the 'poetic novel'. Yet the style is even less defined than this suggests. The action is narrated by everyone and no one. Even the house in Provence has a voice, resentful, complaining: 'Naturally, they slam my doors. What do they care if my doors are damaged?' There is also a mysterious, ever-present shepherd. The effect is one of a verse drama, with a mocking chorus in the wings. People's ages change and remain the same, defying chronology. This is a novel with no regard for anything as stuffy as the traditional passing of time. In 1953, Bessette – a 35-year-old divorcée and teacher at an école maternelle – was hailed as someone radical. Gallimard signed her up for a ten-book deal; Marguerite Duras called her the very definition of 'living literature'. Yet the early acclaim failed to sustain her career. When she died in 2000, all 13 of her novels were out of print. Perhaps Lili is Crying – a story of unachieved dreams and the pain of continuing to hope – will be the one to revive her reputation.

England footie ace Millie Bright misses OBE ceremony with Prince William as she's on crutches with knee injury
England footie ace Millie Bright misses OBE ceremony with Prince William as she's on crutches with knee injury

Scottish Sun

time7 hours ago

  • Scottish Sun

England footie ace Millie Bright misses OBE ceremony with Prince William as she's on crutches with knee injury

A source reveals how 'Millie and Dave's relationship has rocketed' MILLIE INJURY BLOW England footie ace Millie Bright misses OBE ceremony with Prince William as she's on crutches with knee injury Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) LIONESSES ace Millie Bright missed a date with Prince William yesterday — as she is on crutches. The England defender, 31, is recovering from surgery to fix a knee injury which forced her to pull out of the Euro 2025 squad. 3 Millie Bright is recovering from surgery to fix a knee injury Credit: Getty 3 Prince William with Everton manager David Moyes Credit: PA It also meant she missed her investiture at Windsor Castle, where she was due to receive an OBE. Instead, the Chelsea player hobbled along with her pet dog yesterday near her Surrey home. It comes after The Sun revealed she had split from her fiancé. An onlooker said: 'Millie's had a chaotic few weeks with news of her split and pulling out of the England squad. "But she's as tough in real life as she is on the pitch.' We revealed on Saturday how Millie had fallen for a personal trainer, and named him yesterday as married dad-of-seven Dave Zetolofsky, 39. England's World Cup captain last week made herself unavailable for this summer's Euros — stating she was unable to 'give 100 per cent mentally or physically'. She was said to be in turmoil after splitting from hubby-to-be Levi Crew and growing close to tattooed martial arts enthusiast Dave, who has been seen moving into her property. However, she has told friends her new romance has nothing to do with her squad withdrawal. There is also no suggestion that the pair cheated on their partners. Dave's wife Katie is said to be 'devastated'. A source said yesterday: 'Millie and Dave's relationship has rocketed. STAR'S NEW LOVE England footie ace Millie Bright's hunky new personal trainer lover revealed as kickboxer dad of SEVEN "They are smitten. It's tough on their former partners but they are trying to navigate through the turbulence as best they can and concentrate on a future together.' Millie was awarded her OBE after winning the 2022 Euros and captaining England to the 2023 World Cup final. Everton manager David Moyes was among those to receive the gong yesterday, and revealed he and Aston Villa fan Wills discussed football.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store