LIVERPOOL’S Royal Court theatre is helping locals to fight the credit crunch tonight by taking a trip back to 1960s prices.
Its latest innovative production Eight Miles High is set at an open air hippy music festival in 1968, a time when people could spend a weekend in the grass for just £3/10 shillings in old British currency.
So tonight, and for one night only, the theatre has set prices for the performance at just three pound 10 pence in decimal currency.
Kevin Fearon, chief executive of Royal Court Liverpool, said: “We want to get the whole building into that spirit and this sixties pricing will help that along. The show is an amazing event with a sprawling set, great music and some really funny lines so we want as many people as possible to enjoy it with lots of love and peace.”
Another innovation, in place throughout the play’s run, which began last Friday and continues until August 16, is that a section of the auditorium has been converted into a grassy knoll where people can sit on blankets and eat picnics provided by the theatre’s award winning chef Simon Collard.
The play is the work of Jim Cartwright who also wrote Two, and the Rise and Fall of Little Voice and is set in a field just outside of Liverpool. The cast includes popular Liverpool comedian Keith Carter as the festival MC and other local actors who have become a staple of the Royal Court’s continuing home grown policy including Drew Schofield and Eithne Brown.
The cast double as the festival band and play hits from the era of peace and love such as: California Dreaming, Whiter Shade of Pale, Here Comes The Sun, Urban Spaceman and Black Magic Woman. The audience is also encouraged to dress in fashions of the time.
The latest production comes on the back of the adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery which had a top class local cast and which once again was a huge success.
“For the past two seasons we’ve stayed open through the summer first with Brick Up The Mersey Tunnels and then Lost Soul and proved that the audience is still out there: it doesn’t go away once the sun comes out and this latest production is proving to be no exception,” said marketing manager Iain Christie. “Other theatres around the country are now looking to us as their model and thinking why aren’t we doing the same.
“Liverpool is once again laying down the benchmark for everywhere else to follow.”
READ LAURA DAVIS’S REVIEW OF EIGHT MILES HIGH IN THE CULTURE DIARY: PAGE 17
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