Review - Liverpool Nativity

The Liverpool Nativity was repeated on BBC1 earlier this evening following its live performance on BBC3 last weekend. Having watched it online at the end of last week and read a number of reviews for it, I thought I'd add a few comments of my own.

It's always hard to know exactly who productions such as this are intended to please. Is fans of the music? Is it professing Christians? Or perhaps those who generally avoid church, but still consider there to be something significant about Jesus? Or is it simply aimed at those seeking to celebrate their city's culture?

This, somewhat inevitably, often results in the kind of production which ends up pleasing no-one. It's interesting, then, to find that many people, including those from the groups mentioned above, have been pleased by what they witnessed. Those who attended the event in person had a great night out, the more progressive church groups seem pleased by the publicity and the BBC must be pleased with the ratings for the event's live transmission.Perhaps if it had been more poorly received, I would have found myself defending it against the naysayers. After all, I do appreciate the risks that the Liverpool Nativity took, and the way it sought to bring this part of the Christian story to a wider audience in fresh and original ways. Furthermore, it avoided twee piety and the temptation to revise the key points of the story. But, perhaps because of all the positive buzz it has received, I feel duty bound to point out some of the production's weakness.

Perhaps the largest of these was the way the first part of the programme sought to ram down a pro-immigration theme down its audience's throats. Don't get me wrong, I am firmly pro-immigration, indeed I'm genuinely pretty horrified by the rhetoric that screams through newspaper headlines on a regular basis. At the same time though, the programme's treatment of the issue was heavy-handed. It was forced, preachy and, worst of all, it talked down to its audience, as if simply saying "of course here in Liverpool we all love all the immigrants really" would boot bigotry and hatred out of the city for good. Whilst it's great to see a positive take on immigration emanating from the media for once, it felt far too like a sermon.Perhaps the biggest disappointment, however, was the weakness of the music. This was where the production should have been strongest, yet it failed in numerous areas. At least one of the leading characters, Herodia (Cathy Tyson), repeatedly failed to hit her notes. Likewise compère / the angel Gabriel (Geoffrey Hughes) seemed to be unaware that his mike was switched on, so that his accompaniment of the crowd would cut out intermittently as he just stopped singing. And it wasn't just the vocals that were a bit off, the musical accompaniment lacked inspiration, with the majority of songs being accompanied by a single acoustic guitar and very little else.

The other strange thing about the music was the selection of songs. No arguments with how they related with the nativity story. It was inevitably going to have to be a bit tenuous, and, given that, the songs seemed to relate pretty well. The problem, however, was that the selection of songs didn't really do justice to the range of acts who have come out of Merseyside in the last 40-50 years. Obviously there were always going to be a few songs by The Beatles, but in the end, 11 out of the 22 songs I counted were by at least one of John, Paul George and Ringo. As a result, there was nothing by Space, Frankie Goes Hollywood, Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Lightning Seeds, The Farm, The Boo Radley's or even the aptly named The Christians, despite there being several songs which would have been no more tenuous than the ones which made the final cut ("The Power of Love", "Ferry Cross the Mersey", "Pure and Simple", "Altogether Now" just from the top of my head!). As a result, The Liverpool Nativity paled by comparison with the Manchester PassionFinally, whilst the logistical challenges of staging such a large and complex event must have been enormous the whole thing was just a bit too much like a school panto. Tyson's acting as Herodia was way over the top; Mary and Joseph lacked any chemistry; and the renown Scouse wit worked only very rarely.

There was, as I said above, much to commend the production for. Singing aside, Hughes generally did a good job of compèreing, the crowd sung along with the kind of gusto usually reserved for the Kop on a Saturday afternoon, the scenarios and costumes were well put together, and the programme has done a great job of stimulating the public's attention. Too bad the finished product didn't do justice to such a good idea.Below is (what I hope is a complete list of songs for the production. Please contact me with any corrections.

Across the Universe - The Beatles
Love is a Wonderful Colour - The Icicle Works
Reward (All wrapped up) - The Teardrop Explodes
The Zutons - You Will, You Won't
My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
Seven Minutes to Midnight - Wah! Heat
There She Goes - The La's
Liverpool Girl - Ian McNabb
The Back Of Love - Echo And The Bunnymen
Instant Karma - John Lennon
Bouncing Babies - The Teardrop Explodes
Comedy - Shack
Get Back - The Beatles
All You Need is Love - The Beatles
Imagine - John Lennon
Guiding Star - Cast
All Things Must Pass - George Harrison
You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) - Dead or Alive
Let it Be - The Beatles
Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles
Lady Madonna - The Beatles
Beautiful Boy - John Lennon
All You Need is Love - The Beatles

Reviews for The Liverpool Nativity

I'm in the middle of moving house at the moment and so clean forgot to watch The Liverpool Nativity on BBC3 on Sunday. It's on iPlayer for a week so hopefully I'll be able to catch it at some point soon. Furthermore, as it snagged a fairly hefty 710,000 viewers (which is very high for a non-terrestrial programme) there is perhaps a very, very small chance it will show again over Christmas.

Anyway, a quick Google Blog Search reveals plenty of different reviews for it, ranging from those who thought the very idea was an offence, to those who loved it's bold re-telling. Three comments stuck out in particular from my admittedly limited survey. Firstly, I found Kester Brewin's take on it particularly interesting:

What is fantastic about these events is that they appear to tap into the rich Christian root in our heritage - a heritage that I think people are beginning to see is vital to our coherent future, rather than being consigned to our past. I think this could be interpreted as a move into clear post-Christian water, where people are happy to be part of events like this without it being tied to 'the church'.

Christmas has always been about joining in the re-telling of stories, whatever distant orbit we have around belief in them. And this city-wide celebration of Liverpudlian music and theatre was just that - a risky, live, choral, sacred, communal event. It's in these moments that we are submerged into some wider consciousness... and realize why we live in cities - these urban exoskeletons that allow us new forms of movement quite impossible in smaller communities.

Then there's Mark Goodacre at New Testament Gateway...

The narrative thread was fairly straightforward, a fairly even and traditional harmonizing of Matthew and Luke translated into a contemporary setting, often in interesting ways, but often without the necessary time to get properly developed, so that it raced along. The story was stronger in the first third of the piece, where we see Mary in a cheap diner, meeting her boyfriend Joseph, an asylum seeker, and finding out that she is pregnant by the holy spirit at the same time that Joseph finds out that he needs to register as an asylum seeker. They get the ferry across the Mersey, and work out their problems with further communications from Gabriel. All this was the strongest, most compelling part of the story, not least because we were allowed some insight into what Mary and Joseph were thinking, the music well chosen, and the performances very good.

I was also interested by this snippet from No Rock and Roll Fun:

Trouble was - like the host city - the Liverpool Nativity got too fixated on the Beatles. The idea was to set the scene for the Capital of Culture year, and on this evidence, Merseysiders can expect twelve months of not thinking much further than 'what would John Lennon do now'? So the hackneyed end is a singalong to All You Need Is Love, rather than the slightly more fitting Power Of Love...

However, perhaps not anticipating it's success, the major papers seem to have largely ignored it. Only The Guardian offers any kind of review, and that primarily because their correspondent was actually there. She seemed to enjoy the occasion, although seemingly only just. The papers' apparent lack of interest is probably not so much a reflection of the BBC's decision to tuck this away on BBC3, (and well over a week before Christmas) as the reality of how they deal with live TV. After all those "what I watched last night columns" are usually written well in advance thanks to screener discs and the like, which means that few live shows such as this get reviewed. Instead most of the papers' had a brief piece on it in advance (The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times and The Independent.

BBC to Broadcast Liverpool Nativity

Hot on the heels of Monday's Margate Exodus and 2006's Manchester Passion comes news from the BBC that they are to broadcast The Liverpool Nativity on Sunday 16 December.

Like the Manchester Passion, The Liverpool Nativity will put the story in a contemporary context and accompany it with songs from the city's pop legacy. The program will also use the story to examine issues of immigration and asylum. Over 300 actors and 150 technical crew will used and the hope is that the production will act as a springboard for Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture 2008.

Cast confirmed so far include Geoffrey Hughes (Gabriel), Cathy Tyson (Herodia), Paul Barber (a landlord), Andrew Schofield (a shepherd) and Jennifer Ellison (an angel). Mary and Joseph will be played by Jodie McNee and Kenny Thompson.

The Daily Telegraph are doing their utmost to stir up some controversy on it, wheeling out the vice-president of some obscure society to condemn it before it's even started, and listing the seedier previous roles that some of the cast have had. A more balanced report from a Christian angle can be read at Ekklesia, and both the recent press release,and an updated version of the original are also worth a read.

Liverpool Nativity will be broadcast at 8pm on BBC Three on Sunday 16th December 2007.