Sex & Docks & Rock 'n' Roll
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Red Ladder's Riotous Musical Winter Tour

As the season of good will fast approaches, former Chumbawamba guitarist, Boff Whalley and Red Ladder Theatre Company have teamed up to offer a very different kind of entertainment to the Christmas classics currently opening in theatres.

Their new musical comedy Sex & Docks & Rock ‘N’ Roll is set in 1960s Liverpool and follows the story of the McDermott family during the dock workers strike. Uncle Paddy, leader of the Seamen’s Reform Movement, is in jail and Cousin Ronnie sits about all day reading the Daily Worker as the strikes continue. Ronnie’s wife Jean sneaks glances at her banned copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a distraction from her struggle to keep everything in order during turbulent times. Meanwhile their teenage son Jack has the biggest gig of his life on the Saturday night! If only he could find a drummer…

Described by Whalley as ‘a riotous and no-holds-barred evening, where the line between the audience and the stage isn’t sacred’; Sex & Docks & Rock ‘N’ Roll promises a family comedy about love, music and the power of a good cup of tea including live music with a bath-tub bass and plenty of irreverent humour.

This is not the first time that Red Ladder and Chumbawamba have joined forces; Sex & Docks & Rock ‘N’ Roll follows in the foot steps of Red Ladder’s previous winter tour Riot, Rebellion and Bloody Insurection which was co-written by Boff Whalley and Dom Grace and described as an ‘adult pantomime’. Neither is this the first time that Red Ladder Theatre Company have chartered political territory; the company have a forty year history of making radical socialist theatre which contributes to social change.

The cast includes ex-Chumbawamba drummer Harry Hammer playing the hapless bobble-hatted Barry as well as Calum Clark, Kyla Goodey, Lisa Howard, Nigel Lister, Dean Nolan and Adam Smith. Rod Dixon, artistic director of the company will direct the show.

The national tour begins on 22nd November and stops off at various Yorkshire venues until December 22nd December when it concludes in Bradford. Venues are listed at www.redladder.co.uk.

- by Joanne Hartley

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