When an ambitious Junior Education Minister visits a Liverpool Primary School, he sees a career opportunity and decides make his mark by placing the school into ‘Special Measures’. For the hard working staff however, this is the last straw in a long list of external pressures and stresses they face in doing their best for their school and pupils. In a moment of anarchy they decide to hold the Minister hostage in the school Assembly Hall  – time to make him to listen to some of the effects of Westminster interference and neglect. Set against a soundtrack of Northern Soul classics, this new dark comedy was commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Cast: Eithne Browne, Paul Broughton, Stephen Fletcher, Jessica Guise, Colin Hoult, Adam Search, Angela Simms, Michael Starke

Director: Ken Alexander

Designer: Richard Foxton

Lighting Designer: Ian Scott

Sound Designer: Kate Harvey

Production Photographer: TBC

“A real ‘Us vs Them’ story which could only have been made and put on here in Liverpool, Special Measures is sure to be one of the successes of 2014” Joe Carroll Writes

“Special Measures is one of those plays that gets to you on all levels. The audience rightly enjoying the humour that Mark Davies Markham brings to any script and the fury of realising, if they already didn’t, that perhaps the agenda, so well employed in the writing, is one in which people still expect each child to be exactly the same… A superbly written play by Mark Davies Markham... A lesson for us all.” Ian D Hall, Liverpool sound and Vision