This production simply explodes out the top of a teenage bottle of pent up pop, going everywhere and covering everyone - not just those in the front row - with raw, untutored energy and emotion. A coming of age story about a fifteen year old lad from the Bootle called Greg, James Cooney’s solo performance fizzes with delight, daring, and deft touches that recreate the people, places, and problems of this Liverpudlian working class suburb.
A red in every sense of the word, Greg’s veins flow more urgently with the red of Liverpool FC running through them. For him football is everything, and his naive understanding of the world around him - and especially girls - is not only ferociously funny but somehow refreshing, when today children seem far too determined to grow up before their time. His birthday coincides with a football match against Sheffield on Wednesday,15th April 1989, which - as all English football fans will know - is the most tragic day the sport has ever born witness too. The audience is privy to Greg’s innermost thoughts throughout the trials and tribulations of this desperate Liverpool supporter, as he tries to raise the funds to see the 14:50 game.
Steven Atkinson’s direction is at times sublime, nurturing with incredible care and diligence the power and exuberance of James Cooney’s virtuoso performance. A heightened naturalism combines with exquisite comic timing to really enthrall the audience and sustain their unflinching concentration throughout. One criticism, however, is with regards to the angry bedroom scene that preempts and therefore undermines Greg’s subsequent rage. It seemed a little prolonged, unnecessary, and overdone and detracted from the later and more significant scene. Luke Barnes’ writing thrives in the earlier scenes, but like the horror of the Hillsborough disaster itself, struggles to put into words the thoughts and feelings that this tragedy had on a community. Perhaps that’s the point though: from a teenage perspective all the anger, regret and frustration is Bottlenecked.
