'The Star' and 150 years of the Liverpool Playhouse


The germ of the idea for ‘The Star’ came from the audience reaction to a small music hall section in my play ‘Hope Place’ at the Liverpool Everyman in 2014, the first new play at the newly rebuilt theatre. I had wanted to do something historical and tap into the different incarnations of the Everyman over time. The play opens in a scene set before Hope Street was built, when it was all just bogs and fields in 1699. We also see it was a church, temperance hall, cinema and a music hall. The second act opens with a music hall act, as I thought some music and song would be a lively way to get people back in after the interval. Michelle Butterly played Lily Lloyd and sang 'Has anybody here seen Kelly?', 'She’s a Lassie from Lancashire', 'Don’t have any more Mrs Moore' and 'Waiting at the Church'. I loved it and thought it might be a bit unusual, but the audience lapped it up, sang along and seemed to know the words. I thought, ‘there’s something in this’ and mentioned it to the artistic director, Gemma Bodinetz. I then discovered that the Playhouse used to be the Star Music Hall and it was the 150th anniversary on 26th December 2016 – and the Christmas slot at the Playhouse at that point was empty … so the planets seemed to be aligning! I started researching music hall and the history of the Star. I discovered that there were a great number of music halls all over Liverpool and Merseyside. The Tivoli, Dingle Park Palace, Prince of Wales, Empire – which is still there today – and The Argyle in Birkenhead, where Charlie Chaplin performed and Vesta Tilley first sang 'Burlington Bertie from Bow'.
