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Bottleneck
Liverpool, 1989. Greg is thirteen. He has just started secondary school. He earns pocket money sweeping up hair in a barbers. Girls are aliens. Liverpool FC are everything. Bottleneck is a vibrant coming-of-age story about a notorious city; Liverpool. How the outside worlds views it. And how it views the outside world.
- GenresPlays
96 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 5, 2019
I... hmm.
Okay. So I have decidedly mixed feelings. On the one hand, I appreciate this isn't a 'Hillsborough play,' and it's about how tragedy smashes into normality. I appreciate that Barnes is actually tackling this subject. There's flashes of subtlety in there, but I found the text itself a bit... meh. Greg is a weird character. He's typical of a particular kind of representation of working class people, with all the misogyny and violence that comes with it, but there's little attempt to humanise him, and if the fact he survived the crush at Hillsbrough is meant to humanise him... then I find that a bit icky. Also I found how the monologue was written to be a bit distracting, I just kept thinking BUT NO ONE WOULD SAY IT LIKE THAT. Unless I'm less familiar with the slang of Bootle than I thought I was.
Anyway. I appreciate it more than I like it.
Okay. So I have decidedly mixed feelings. On the one hand, I appreciate this isn't a 'Hillsborough play,' and it's about how tragedy smashes into normality. I appreciate that Barnes is actually tackling this subject. There's flashes of subtlety in there, but I found the text itself a bit... meh. Greg is a weird character. He's typical of a particular kind of representation of working class people, with all the misogyny and violence that comes with it, but there's little attempt to humanise him, and if the fact he survived the crush at Hillsbrough is meant to humanise him... then I find that a bit icky. Also I found how the monologue was written to be a bit distracting, I just kept thinking BUT NO ONE WOULD SAY IT LIKE THAT. Unless I'm less familiar with the slang of Bootle than I thought I was.
Anyway. I appreciate it more than I like it.
July 3, 2013
Saw this performed in Edinburgh last year and loved it. Highly recommended to young actors looking for a new and unique audition piece!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews