By The Waters Of Liverpool tells the life story of best-selling author Helen Forrester. The team behind the production have announced the new tour will be the last one telling the story of Helen's fascinating life.
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00:00 By the Waters of Liverpool tells the life story of best-selling author Helen Forrester.
00:06 The team behind the production have announced the new tour will be the last one telling the story of Helen's fascinating life.
00:13 It's an amazing story about an amazing lady. This book, when it was a novel, sold millions and millions of copies.
00:20 It's been brilliantly adapted to the stage by Rob Fenner.
00:24 It's a really great piece of drama that evokes a lot from our past, which really wasn't that long ago.
00:30 It's a great yarn, it's a great story. It's a story of people and dynamics of families.
00:35 And just to press, you know, there's so much light and shade. There's a lot of humour, a lot of comedy, a lot of lightness in there.
00:42 Visually it's great, it's great music, original music as well. So it's a real journey of a story.
00:47 Yeah, it's a beautiful story. It follows the struggles of a woman, I'm sure, if people come and watch it.
00:52 A lot of people, especially women, will be able to relate to Helen because there's stuff like that going on in the world now, unfortunately.
00:59 But I also think it really shows the city of Liverpool in great light at times.
01:06 There's some cracking comedic characters. And it's a story about the city and about the city during wartime as much as Helen the individual.
01:14 The new stage production is based on the book of the same name by the acclaimed author Helen Forrester.
01:19 It's set in the 1930s after Helen's father went bankrupt during the Depression.
01:24 The Forresters chose to move to Liverpool to rebuild their shattered lives.
01:28 It's just an honour, to be honest. As soon as I got the role, I was just doing so much research into her life and everything.
01:35 And like the other week, I went down to Hoye Lake to see her granny's house and her plaque and everything was down there.
01:42 So it's just been really informative. And the thing I've loved the most is just kind of doing the research into her actual life.
01:49 And then when you're acting through all the scenes, you just you see, you know, an actual woman lived this life.
01:55 It's iconic, really.
01:56 After its premiere run was cut short in March 2020 due to the pandemic, the production was struck with another blow when the theatre it was supposed to open in during this tour,
02:05 The Epstein, suddenly announced its closure in June.
02:09 So we're at a place called the Auditorium, which is right next to the arena, folks.
02:13 Now, you'll know where that is because that's where the Eurovision Song Contest was.
02:17 But we're next door in the Auditorium, a beautiful space, beautiful theatrical space.
02:22 Amongst a host of different characters, Daniel Taylor takes on for the production is a dance teacher.
02:27 We asked him if his partner, Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas, had been giving him any lessons.
02:33 During the lockdowns, we did, obviously, we were living together in London and we did a thing called Rise and Shine with Shirley B.
02:43 And we'd get up each morning, half seven, we'd teach people to dance, dance over Instagram.
02:49 I was obviously the guinea pig and I got to learn an awful lot, you know.
02:55 By the Waters of Liverpool will run for eight weeks, visiting 13 venues across the country, starting in Liverpool on Monday, 4th of September.