Unity Theatre

Liverpool does everything cultural well — music, art, museums, just stop it already so the rest of us can catch up! Well, don’t stop it just yet because I need to review Unity Theatre, one of like eleventy-​billion great theatres in Scouseland. You jammy dodgers.
Unity is an integral part in the city’s cultural makeup. It’s committed to ensuring that the quality of drama in Liverpool remains via the strong encouragement of innovation, active participation and diversity. It’s hugely eclectic and incorporates performing arts, art, music and comedy and happens to be exceptionally family friendly too, especially with its annual festival for children’s theatre called Splatterfest. Yes, it’s for kiddies, all you horror movie fans and bloodlusters need not apply.
It’s won countless awards including the Mersey Partnership Tourism Award twice and the Scouseology Award. Impressive, huh? Unity is indeed the operative word here with a company that has inclusiveness at its heart, particularly considering that it’s the most accessible venue in the city. It’s housed in an impressive venue, a former synagogue in Hope Place, and has been there for 26 years. It’s incredibly popular and certainly not one to miss if you’re looking to catch a good show!

The Unity Theatre is to be commeneded for its commtiment to new theatre productions, new writers and local talent but with this in mind much of what goes on here can be a bit rough around the edges or hit and miss.
With a scarcity of genuine artistic and experimental endeavour with regard some of the more obscure or alternative arts such as dance in Liverpool, The Unity is a vital outlet for such performances and nurturing a broader outlet for creativity in the city beyond music and playwriting especially when the prestigious Lippa institution is situated nearby.
The building itself has benefitted from funding and development is a very pleasant, bright and modern space with a nice, if slightly sterile bar area.

Unity is another one of Liverpool’s unique buildings that offer more in the way of culture through providing a range of drama, dance, comedy, music and art. This place has won loads of awards, one’s that have included: The Mersey Partnership Tourism Award for Best Venue, and The Scouseology Award.
This place always offers a wide range of shows to suit everyone from young children to the older viewer. In addition, every year there is a festival for children; this makes it great for family day out and in my opinion we need more places that get children involved with music, art and drama encouraging them off the streets.
Unity has been situated in Hope place for the last 26 years, and according to its website has attracted ‘over 26,500 individual customers to over 260 performances each year’.

The first thing to say about the Unity Theatre is that it is a smaller and more personal version of the Everyman Theatre which is situated nearby. This personal touch makes the experience of attending the theatre feel more intimate and authentic almost as though this is the way the theatre should be.
I attended the excellent Paul Hodson play ‘Meeting Joe Strummer’ which worked in perfect harmony with intimate settings as there were no props involved and quite simply two excellent performers with a passion for the subject they were portraying. The tickets for the show were very reasonably priced at £12 pounds, which seems to betray the common conception that a trip to the theatre is a costly one. The process of booking was a very simple one as we booked our tickets online and simply collected them before the show from the polite staff. Whilst waiting for the show myself and my girlfriend grabbed some drinks in the upstairs bar which was small but had an excellent atmosphere and also very reasonable prices with a bottle of Carlsberg beer being priced at £2.50. I was impressed that the music played within the bar area was that of The Clash which was relevant to the show we were about to see and was an excellent touch which really created a feeling of anticipation within the room. The staff were very polite and friendly and clearly had a passion for the field they were working in and this simply enhanced the whole experience even further.
Overall the Unity Theatre was small but personal and perfectly achieved the level of experience it had set out too. The Unity Theatre had a predominantly young set of staff and this added to the feeling that the Unity is the Everymans’ younger student sibling who provides an equal amount of entertainment and atmosphere.