THEATRE REVIEW: Vernon's Girls - The Royal Court Theatre, LIverpool.

 

'Vernons Girls' is a nostalgic walk down memory lane for anyone with links, however tenuous, to the Vernons Pools organisation, a major employer of young Liverpudlian women in the 1950s, its main competitor being Littlewoods Pools, often referred to in the show as the “L word which we don’t mention”.

This production is a lively musical recollection as told by sixteen-year-old Peggy, one of the Vernons Girls who was plucked from the humdrum obscurity of checking football pools' coupons to be part of a pop group which led to appearances on popular TV music shows such as 'Oh Boy!', 'The Six-Five Special' and 'Boy Meets Girl', which were the forerunners of latter-day music programmes such as 'Top Of The Pops' and 'The Tube'.

Vernons Pools originally launched 'The Vernons Girls' as a singing choir in the 1950s as a 70-strong girl choir; the Vernons hierarchy thought they had enough commercial potential to promote the Vernons organisation so they sponsored them. The choir members were eventually whittled down from 70 to 30, to 16 and eventually from 5 to 3. The show depicts how the girls were exploited, underpaid and controlled whilst performing across the UK.  

Writer, Karen Brown enlisted the help of Merseyside women who had worked at Vernons Pools to tell this incredible story which brought fame to the three remaining singers and changed their lives due to meeting pop stars of the day, such as Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith, Billy Fury and Joe Brown. The show includes the love stories of how one of the members met and married Marty Wilde and another married Joe Brown.

This is an all-women cast show with females playing male roles as well as female; the multi-talented cast act, sing, dance and play a variety of instruments and the many featured hit songs of the era are performed with enthusiasm and warmth. The show chronicles the death of Buddy Holly in 1959 and Cliff Richard’s first TV appearance on 'Oh Boy!', and includes renditions of hits by Little Richard, Billy Fury, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Marty Wilde, Cliff Richard and Buddy Holly.

The stage set is constant throughout the production with a piano and a set of drums perched high up on the stage and other instruments interspersed at intervals throughout; videos and stills are projected onto the backdrop during the show with photographs of the pop stars, pictures of the popular music newspapers of the day such as 'New Musical Express' and 'Melody Maker', and videos of scenes of Liverpool, Blackpool and London taken from the 1950s era, setting the scene perfectly.

The talented cast includes Jamie Clarke, Jessica Dives, Tasha Dowd, Lynwen Haf Roberts, Caitlin Lavagna, Rebecca Levy, Abigail Middleton, Lydia Morales Scully, Emma Jane Moreton, Izzy Neish and Siobhan O’Driscoll, who deliver their parts professionally and enthusiastically bringing vigorous applause from the appreciative audience.

The show includes a non-stop catalogue of hits from the 1950s and early 1960s and the story is told with affection and nostalgic reminiscences culminating in an account on how the Vernons Girls experience shaped the lives of the girls and what they are doing to date.

This production has passion and energy and is successful in bringing the atmosphere and dynamics of the 1950s era to the stage. It is an exciting story about ordinary working-class girls who had their lives turned upside-down by being thrown into the glamourous world of rock and roll; but it is also the story of very young women appearing on TV shows every Saturday night who were manipulated by men for their own gain, whilst still being employed by Vernon Pools.

This Liverpool success story is brilliantly told and credit extents to Director Bob Eaton, Musical Director Jessica Dives and all Company members who have relayed the Vernons Girls story impeccably.

The show runs from 14 June - 08 July 2023 at Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool

Age recommendation: 14+

Reviewer - Anne Pritchard
on - 14.6.23