Scrappers

Written by Daniel Matthew
Directed by Matthew Xia
Liverpool Playhouse Studio
24th October - 16th November 2013

Reviewed by Colin Serjent

Set in a ramshackle scrapyard in Fleetwood, which lies next door to mass unemployment-ridden Blackpool, the production, clearly representing the desolate times a lot of areas of Britain are experiencing under Cameron and his Coalition cronies, powerfully conveys the gloom and doom resulting from their policies.

The three men, all eking out a living from selling pieces of scrap metal, are the gaffer,anachronistic Ken (Ged McKenna), who has old fashioned principles, not in keeping with current times;stockily built Morse (John MCrellis) talks the talk but a coward at heart - and writes awful poetry - and pathetic Ryan (David Judge), forever with his head down with acute embarrassment and self doubt, and clueless about chatting up women.

But their spirits are lifted to a certain extent when brash and in-your-face Jodie (Molly Taylor) breezes into their workplace and tries to inject some much needed purpose into their humdrum lives.

Some of the ham-fisted dialogue she utters, in admonishing the three hapless guys, grates at times. You would never ever hear such highfalutin talk in a real life down-at-heel scrapyard.

Their livelihoods look set to be destroyed by the onset of a bulldozer- representative of the heavy handed capitalist system - which will crush the yard and, at the same time, crush their spirits to the ground.

The bleakness of the setting is embellished by the musical backdrop, all played on Ken's old cassette player, including old blues greats and Woody Guthrie, Van Morrison and the sublime One Too Many Mornings by Bobby Z.

The sound of seagulls is equally evocative.

The impressive set design, including rows and rows of rusted corrugated iron and an old barber's chair, which Ken constantly sleeps in, together with piles of rubbish strewn around the floor, was created by a design graduate from LIPA, Mari Lotherington.

Equally effective is the subdued lighting, symbolic of the gradual fading of the light in these men's lives.

Scrappers runs until 16 November. Put it on your list of must sees!

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