Liverpool, Capital Of Culture for 2008

Liverpool The Musical

Posted by Stephen

Liverpool The Musical was directed by Nigel Jamieson and Jayne Casey and took place at the newly built 10,600 seater Echo Arena, which sits on the bank of the River Mersey near the Albert Dock and featured, amongst others, Ringo Starr, Pete Wylie, Echo and The Bunnymen, The Farm, Shack, Ian Broudie and Dave Stewart.Here is a snippet of what some reviewers had to say about the event.

Source : The Guardian

Ten thousand people were on their feet singing along with All Together Now by the Farm, the perfect rallying cry for the second leg of the weekend’s launch of Liverpool’s year as European capital of culture. Even national newspaper cultural elitists who have never knowingly heard the song before were seen to be humming while admiring two blond aerialists in topaz catsuits hanging upside down from stout ropes.

After the singsong, it was easy for Phil Redmond, the laconic soap man who has taken the culture year by the scruff of its sometimes troublesome neck and put it back on track over the last six months. “Well, we did it,” he said. “Tonight’s the start. We’ve got the whole year. It’ll be bigger, it’ll be better. It’ll be deeper, it’ll be wider.”

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Author : David Ward

Source : TimesOnline

What saved the show from turning into an all-singing dog’s dinner was its high-tech slickness. From the surreal, Pythonesque cartoons of the 19th-century segment (a monstrous Queen Victoria swallowing cargo ships whole) and the rope-dancers twisting 30ft in the air, to the spectacular deployment of the excellent Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in dozens of little boxes stacked six storeys high (the conductor, Vasily Petrenko, keeping time from a crow’s nest high above the stage), the visual element was brazen and breathtaking.

But it was the music that gave the show heart and soul. Hundreds of amateur singers and brass players came and went. Connie Lush belted out I Put a Spell on You with a voice like a 3am whisky and enough electricity to power the national grid.

Errors and omissions? The absence of You’ll Never Walk Alone — anthem of the Anfield Kop — seemed odd. One disturbingly weird film sequence showed people appearing to throw themselves off buildings. And, as in Friday’s opening ceremony, everything stopped for a sentimental procession of schoolkids carrying illuminated boxes — I know not why.

But these are quibbles. If the other 360 events planned by the Capital of Culture have a fraction of this show’s infectious exuberance, Liverpool will have a year to remember.

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Author : Richard Morrison

Source : Music.Guardian

The launch event for Liverpool’s tenure as the Capital of Culture begins with a giant video screen declaring the city “the centre of the creative universe”. The audience respond not with thunderous applause, but a ripple of unmistakeably sardonic laughter. It is an early sign that the evening is not going to go entirely according to plan.

There are some areas of rock and pop that Liverpool has never mastered, including hip-hop - midway through the show, a Scouse rapper is brought on stage for the specific purpose of proving this - but, even leaving its most famous export aside, has plenty to celebrate musically.

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Author : Alexis Petridis

Source : Liverpool Echo

THE challenge, spectacularly realised, was to encapsulate the story of Liverpool past, present and future in 100 minutes of high- energy music-led performance with a Beatle thrown in.

Though nothing much happened for the first six centuries after the granting of the royal charter in 1208 it was still a gargantuan task.

If the purpose of turning the image of Queen Victoria into a Monty Python-style animation was meant to be the start of a guilt trip about the city’s imperialist past, it failed.

The kickstart singing of Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory had a place beyond the realms of cynicism and political correctness.

If it had not been for the merchant princes – silk-hatted ghosts today – there would be no wider city stage on which to enact Capital of Culture.

And certainly no St George’s Hall to provide a backdrop for Friday’s more succinct People’s Opening.

The rich have a deserved place in the progress of things.

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Author : Joe Riley

Source : New Statseman

The best views at the People’s Opening of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year were had by some of my students, who occupy the housing association flats opposite St George’s Hall, the roof and steps of which formed a makeshift stage for the event. I heard later that some of the more enterprising among them hired out their rooms to TV companies for sums that would make a useful dent in any undergraduate overdraft. If I had got my act together, I could have blagged the best seat in the house.

Instead, I viewed the People’s Opening with the rest of the people - stuck down a side street with a restricted view of the big screen and thirty-odd thousand bodies blocking my way to the stage. At times I felt like one of those onlookers at the Sermon on the Mount in Life of Brian, mishearing the PA system and exchanging baffled looks with the strangers pressed against me.

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Author : Joe Moran

Source : BBC

Above the stage hung a large banner lit with the words “Liverpool 08”, the first letter of which began to flicker as showtime approached so that one of the ‘construction workers’ crawled out along the top of it and with a bang fell pulling down the ‘08’ section to start the show.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vasily Petrenko, were innovatively arranged vertically in boxes on top of one another silhouetted behind a backdrop on to which images of Liverpool’s history were projected throughout the show.

The performance began like the Last Night of the Proms with fanfares, Rule Britannia and Jersualem.

Carl Jung’s vision of Liverpool as the “pool of life” was quoted as the city was declared ‘Centre of the Creative Universe’.

The show took a musical journey through Liverpool’s history with images of the past shown alongside live and recorded music.

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Author : Paul Coslett

Source : Manchester Evening News

MORE than 48,000 people were out in the Liverpool at the weekend to celebrate the city’s year as the European Capital of Culture.

There were 38,000 in the street for the People’s Opening on Friday and another 10,000 in the new Echo Arena on Saturday, joyously celebrating the past, present and future of Liverpudlian culture at Liverpool - The Musical.

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Author : Unknown

Source : The Independent

Despite a reprise of “Liverpool 8″ with Eurythmics’ Zelig-like Dave Stewart – from Sunderland, but an honorary Liverpudlian for the occasion – Saturday’s Liverpool the Musical worked better to remind the world how much it has been shaped by the Mersey. It started with a corny gag involving a loose plug fusing the dangling Liverpool 08 sign – a nod to the event’s troubled gestation, and to the fact that half the city remains a building site.

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Author : Pierre Perrone

We Did Look For Videos…

We had a look on YouTube for some high quality videos to showcase the event, but I am afraid we couldn’t find any. We would have opted for some average videos without distorted sound and okay picture quality if we could have found them, but I am afraid we didn’t find them either. The only video we could find that is worthy of reproduction is the official video to Ringo Starr’s single Liverpool 8. Unfortunatley EMI America Records have disabled the embed feature, but here is the link if you would like to see it.