JR was at the Mercury last week for The Late Edwina Black ...

definitely a period piece and not that easy to bring to believable life. The poster is emblazoned with photos of Stephen McCann (Emmerdale) and Stephen Beckett (Coronation Street) .. the very mention of the 'soaps' should have warned me in the first place. I detest this sort of 'publicity' and even though it does seem to get bums on seats I react badly to it ! Mind you, the two 'named actors' did respectable jobs but I felt they were let down on the technical front. Sound was 'muffled' with too obviously 'recorded everything' .. the doorbell sounded totally false as did the door slams. Now how difficult is it to have a door slam and a front door bell ? Then lighting was barely OK .. when it's supposed to be raining outside you shouldn't have a sunshiny effect on the 'backdrop' - this stayed the same most of the way through ! And from where I was sitting it looked as if there was a coffee pot on the garden wall - I tried desperately to see if this was a reflection of something on stage, but nope, it wasn't ! Highly puzzled by that ! Then I could see light through a join in the scsnery ! How bad is that ? On the sound effect aspect it was supposed to be raining outside and yet the sound effect was 'wind' .. there are SO MANY sound effect cds that this is an unforgivable 'error' What was really disappointing was that there were more in the audience than for the BRILLIANT 'Brief Lives' last week .. all because someone has heard of 'Emmerdale' and 'Coronation Street' and Roy Dotrice has been out of the public eye for a while !