Saturday 12/01/08 Liverpool The Musical @ Echo Arena, Liverpool

In the four-years since Liverpool was declared European Capital of Culture 2008, the city has seen its centre undergo a process of unprecedented regeneration. The project is by no means complete, and the cost of this undertaking has been, in the main, covered by funds received from the EU. The long-term cost to the local inhabitants has yet to be fully realised, and debate rages as to whether more of the fund shouldn’t have been spent redeveloping some of the more rundown suburbs of the city. However, one thing all seem united upon is that 2008 is to be Liverpool’s year; an opportunity to show the world what it’s made of, and under the banner of European Capital of Culture 2008, the city will seek to sell itself, appropriately enough, in terms of its cultural significance. And although it has long punched above its weight in terms of notable artists, poets, novelists, playwrights and thinkers, there is one.phpect of culture that, above anything else, has come to represent Liverpool’s artistic output - Music.

And so, on a rainy night at its newest building, the 10,000-seater Echo Arena Liverpool, the city chooses to kick off its year-long celebration of itself with Liverpool – The Musical: a 700 cast strong affair, exploring the city’s developmental, social and cultural history; set against some of its best-known musical output.

After a bit of Carl Jung and the staged spectacle of one of the lighting technicians nearly falling to his death whilst attempting to fix some lighting ‘problems’, things get under way with the No Fakin’ DJs who, perched at the top of the 100ft high web of scaffolding covering the entire back wall of the stage, spin up an onslaught of hip hop which gradually builds into a twisted, ‘Hendrix-at-Woodstock’ take on ‘Rule Britannia’. It’s at this point that the impressive sight of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is revealed, innovatively arranged amongst the web of scaffolding. Led by Vasily Petrenko, they proceed to accompany the three DJs in a bombastic twenty-minute performance that careers from ‘Rule Britannia’ to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ to ‘Jerusalem’ and some other chest-beating, recognisably jingoistic stuff. It’s a superbly realised, exhilarating performance; worlds colliding, and all the more poignant for the backdrop imagery, which graphically depicts Liverpool’s infamously murky links with the slave trade. The music does seek to evoke a sense of the patriotic, but when juxtaposed with such imagery, the tone becomes equally questioning and subversive. It’s a characteristically Liverpool move, this: loud, disrespectful, brash, full of itself whilst equally critical of itself - it’s the kind of paradox that is at the heart of the city’s sense of identity.

The use of imagery, which is projected onto netting draped over the Orchestra scaffolding, depicting the city’s fortunes through the years is evident throughout the show. Echo and The Bunnymen’s performance of ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ is set against video footage of Liverpool being decimated during the Blitz; The La’s (who are criminally not present) ‘There She Goes’ accompanies some social realism style documentary audio and visual footage of Liverpool’s post-war regeneration, tenement housing giving way to high rise flats – you can picture the rest.