Wirral singers wanted for Wilfred Owen film (From Wirral Globe)
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Wirral singers wanted for Wilfred Owen film
12:00pm Thursday 28th June 2012 in News By Craig Manning
Wilfred Owen
SINGERS are needed for a new film about wartime poet Wilfred Owen's time as a choirboy at a Wirral church.
Christ Church-Remembered is a celebration in words and music, of his time at Christ Church in Oxton.
It features his best known poems, set against music that was written whilst Wilfred attended Sunday School there over 100 years ago.
Coronation Street director Gordon 'Illy' Hill, who has worked closely with Liverpool writer Jimmy McGovern, wants strong singers to appear in the congregation at the film's climax performing a rousing version of the well-known hymn Jerusalem.
The production is the work of Oxton-based songwriter Dean Johnson and organist Paul Broadhurst, and stars Port Sunlight actor Christopher Lee Power.
Dean told the Globe: "Christ Church was a very popular place of worship, with 1,000 people attending every Sunday.
"We want to recreate the atmosphere of when Wilfred was here, and hope as many people can come along to be part of a piece of history."
The filming will take place at the church in Bessborough Road, Oxton on Saturday, July 14 at 7pm.
Born in Oswestry in 1893, Wilfred was brought up in Birkenhead and is recognised as one of the greatest voices of the First World War.
He also has a road named after him, on the former site of Birkenhead Institute, which is now a housing estate.
In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army and was killed, aged 25, on November 4, 1918, during the battle to cross the Sambre-Oise canal at Ors in Northern France.
A musical about his life heads to London's West End later next month.
Written by Dean Johnson, Bullets and Daffodils deals with his life before and during the conflict.
It will be staged at the Jermyn Street Theatre near Covent Garden.
Comments(5)
Ben Beaconsfield
says...
7:52am Fri 29 Jun 12
When grammar schools were scrapped in 1970, the Institute was moved to the Grange Secondary School site in Tollemache Road and became a comprehensive school.
Wilfred Owen's family lived at various times in houses in Elm Grove, Wilmer Road and Milton Road, pretty well equidistant between his school and Christchurch Church.
Lurkinhead
says...
1:02pm Sat 30 Jun 12
I am happy to stand corrected if this is inaccurate, but I am told that the family only moved to Birkenhead from Oswestry due to tough economic circumstances after his grandfather died, and never properly settled, or grew to like, the town, and left again as soon as they were financially able.
Does anyone have information to refute this, and confirm for how long Wilfred Owen & his family actually lived in Birkenhead?
On one level, it seems a little desperate to "big-up" his Birkenhead credentials, and I just wonder if some people with a commercial self-interest are possibly over-emphasizing the local connection to further their own aspirations of success in the world of musical theatre?
Dantealighieri
says...
1:52pm Sat 30 Jun 12
Ben Beaconsfield
says...
3:55pm Sat 30 Jun 12
Dantealighieri wrote:Birkenhead County Borough Council ran education throughout the town up until 1974. It was that body which scrapped the grammar schools in Birkenhead in 1970 and introduced comprehensive schools instead.
Ben Beaconsfield- Grammar schools were not 'scrapped' in 1970. Over 160 survive, and thrive throughout England, including Wirral.
sandals_wearer says...
1:35pm Thu 28 Jun 12
Though that was a later site occupied by BI. In Owen's day it was off Borough Road.