The Opening Nights podcast will next focus its attention on Naughty Corner Production’s ninth show – Sheep written by Oliver Back and directed by Mikee Dickinson.

This production was all ‘set to go’ back in April 2020 (with the actors waiting patiently in their pen) but then the pandemic slaughtered so many of theatres young, frolicking lambs at that time. So the show has now been nineteen months in the making and waiting.

Mike Dickinson - Director

Oliver Back - Writer

Oliver Back, is an exciting, cutting-edge writer on a mission to swerve from the familiar to the fantastical. He has been leaving audiences baffled, disturbed and amazed with his work with Silent Gutter (Playtime, 12x8). His writing is a guarantee that things will be pushed to surreal boundaries of metaphor and imagery and, clearly, he is in a productive purple patch.

He told the Likeminded Podcast that he wants to create pieces which really blind-side audiences and catch them off-guard. Like lambs to the slaughter the audience won’t know what to expect from the promotional material and this is true from what we have seen about Sheep so far.

 A brief extract from the script teases us with this:

 "He taught me how to tie a miller's knot.
So the rope wouldn't slack under the water.
And then I dropped him in the lake.
Me oul fella turns to me and says boys cry. Men don't"

Damien Hughes, Michael Hawkins, Al Donohoe, Daryl Holden, Charlie Staunton.

Similarly, the play’s synopsis tells us that five friends take a trip to the Lake District to relive their booze and drug-fuelled university days and escape from their banal and disappointing lives. When they wake up to a sheep with its throat cut open and a used condom dumped on top of it, with no recollection of what’s happened, they are forced to confront the reality of who they are.

All of this sounds somewhat woolly, but the production will be shepherded by Mikee Dickinson (RavesRUs, Bob the Russian) who is one of the most hard working and effective directors in the city.

Opening Nights will capture their preparations in the lead up to the production and we will catch-up with the cast during rehearsals. Fortunately, all five original cast members will shear the limelight (geddit?).

Sheep - Friday 14th - 16th October, The Hope Street Theatre, Liverpool.

Words by Bob Towers