Theatre Review: King Cotton, Liverpool Empire Theatre

Sep 26 2007 by Peter Grant, Liverpool Daily Post

JIMMY McGOVERN should be called Jimmy P. McGovern – the initial P standing for Passion. Everything this writer touches is compelling once he casts his script-writing eyes over it.

He believes passionately in what he puts his name to and this, his first stage work for nearly two decades, now has T stamped all over it.

T for Triumph.

Granted, it wasn’t going to be plain-sailing, and when someone like McGovern agrees to an idea you know he has his reasons.

The theme here being it was simply "a cracking true story."

This co-production between Liverpool Culture Company and The Lowry is a fine piece of visual theatre: a dark, brooding musical that is a real mould-breaker.

McGovern, a man who now spends a lot of his time nurturing new writers, took on board a tale and just like his takes on Guy Fawkes, Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday he doesn’t take prisoners.

His characters are emotional wrecks all locked up until justice (if it ever comes) prevails.

This is a tale of slavery: a parallel story of America’s cotton workers and Lancashire mill workers.

Using Gospel music and the melancholy beautiful sound of a brass band, accompanied by the plaintive cries of metaphorical ghosts and shadows on stage, you have one of the most innovative, thought-provoking pieces of theatre seen at the Empire in a long time.

McGovern is a master of dialogue and with fellow Liverpudlian Jude Kelly at the director’s helm they have fleshed out Ian Brownbill’s original idea into a production that makes the audience work just as hard as every member of the cast.

Ti Green’s set designs are splendid, notably the scaffolded ship battle.

When it comes to black comedy McGovern is at his best.

Here God, played by John Henshaw, tries to justify his actions.

Paul Anderson as Tom and Israel Oyelumade as Sokoto both shine with soaring vocals, from Lancashire to the Deep South. Wendy Mae Brown as Jessie was also faultless.

It’s taken McGovern 20 years to return to the stage.

Let’s hope that this success will open the floodgates to more of the same.

In our city’s 800th year, a theatre and a writer brave enough to take on such an ambitious project sums up why we won Capital of Culture.