15th April 1989. 50,000 people gathered at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield for the FA Cup Semi-Final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. In order to relieve a crowd of Liverpool fans trying to enter the venue before kick-off, police opened an exit gate and people rushed to get inside. More than 3000 fans were pushed like a bottleneck into a standing-room-only area with a safe capacity of just 1600.
Greg, played by actor David Cassidy, is a 14 year old scouser who's obsessed with LFC, freaked out by girls and dreaming of one day having "a muzzie" (moustache) of his own. Greg's best friend is Tom, they do everything together including running from "the bizzies" (the police) around their home, 'The Boot'. Tom’s brother has managed to get tickets to a football game for Greg's 15th birthday, but Greg’s dad finds out he stole them so makes Greg work to buy his. Chaos ensues as the boys come up with crazy ways to raise the £14.50.
It takes an actor with incredible talent to hold an audience's attention for a full hour and Daniel Cassidy has exactly that. His flawless ability to mimic his friends and family throughout the story is both humorous and impressive.
Bottleneck was perormed this evening in the intimate studio at Oldham Coliseum. The set was very minimalistic, made to look like Greg's bedroom, covered in LFC posters. I feel more could've been done with this as although I can see they're trying to add to the intimacy of the story it does also come across perhaps as thinking too much about the budget. The props, lighting and sound were also kept to a minimum with a few sound mistakes here and there causing Cassidy to come out of character for a split second at one point; however he managed to recover this well.
Playwright Luke Barnes has created a powerful piece reminding us what it's like to be back in a hormone-fuelled awkward world of a teenager creating a very relatable character. I feel this is when the writing is at its strongest and unfortunately is at its weakest at the most crucial part, the end. It came across as Barnes not quite knowing where to end the show with an unnecessary scene in the school thrown in which, in my opinion, took away from the intensity of what we had witnessed in the scene before.
Overall, it's a hard hitting gritty show full of laugh-out-loud moments scattered with a few dark elements held together with Cassidy's raw talent.
Reviewer - Bethany Suthers
on - 6/3/19
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