Philip Key reviews the Liverpool Nativity played out on the city’s streets

Dec 17 2007 by Phil Key, Liverpool Daily Post

THE accent was as much on Liverpool as it was on the Nativity in The Liverpool Nativity, and it was a combination which worked superbly.

The script by Mark Davies Markham presented a Liverpool and its people that deserved this special treatment, warm, compassionate and, above all, witty.

The story of the Virgin Birth is not the easiest to translate into modern terms but with its soundtrack of great Liverpool music and the up-front performances we have come to expect of Liverpool actors, the production carried all before it.

The choice of Geoffrey Hughes as narrator was inspired – his bubbly and down-to-earth good humour just right for this enterprise. He could not have gone far wrong by telling his audience on one of the coldest nights of the year: “You are the centre of the universe.” The opening Eastham ferry terminal scenes between Liverpool girl Mary and asylum seeker Joseph set the right tone, a genuine love story portrayed by two sensitive actors, newcomers Jodie McNee and Kenny Thompson.

Meanwhile, Cathy Tyson in St George’s Hall was acting mean as the nasty Minister of the Interior who in a vote-catching move demanded all asylum-seekers reapply. Hughes was also the voice of the Angel Gabriel who gave Mary the surprising news that she was pregnant, even more surprising to Joseph: “Get your head round that nugget and a half,” Gabriel suggested.

By the time the pair had arrived in Liverpool on the ferry (with Gerry Marsden as captain), they seemed to have taken the news in their stride.

Some street characters (shepherds apparently) were called to witness the birth, and one of them – played by Andrew Schofield – delivered one of the evening’s many highlights with his version of Imagine.

The Three Wise Men (Joe McGann, David Yip and Louis Emerick) arrived in a Rolls and looked ultra-smooth in dark glasses while Jennifer Ellison popped up in a silver suit as one of the angels.