Poetry: 40 Love - Roger McGough and Brian Patten, Everyman Theatre

Oct 22 2007 by Peter Grant, Liverpool Daily Post

THREE chairs – but just two performers.

Yet an absent friend was there for all to hear.

It’s 40 years since The Mersey Sound Anthology was published and refreshingly it made poetry accessible to so many more people.

Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brian Patten wrote for all seasons. It is being reprinted even now in 2007. It will always have a great impact on anyone remotely inter-ested in the genre and as important to poetry as The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper was to music.

At the Everyman the show opened with Adrian’s fast-paced Batman soaring out of the speakers. And then dark-suited Brian took to the stage.

Innocence captured and imagination celeb- rated all in his wonder- ful verses. His witty Minister for Exams is as relevant now as when he wrote it.

Roger McGough is also a word magician: a juggler of puns and an artist of acute ob- servations. Let Me Die A Young Man’s Death is one of his greatest hits and here there were sighs from the audience on the first of two sell-out nights.

After the interval they slickly flash-backed and flash-forwarded to their resp- ective work. A couple of encores before they both shared the micro- phone on Adrian’s wistful Love Is. The wide-aged audience hung on their every word.

As they departed the stage the three empty chairs were left but still speaking volumes.

Two Mersey Poets – but the voice of the third very much alive.