The Cunard Building will be turned into a pop-up, Subterranean Theatre in June as part of the city’s One Magnificent City celebrations.

The Grade II-listed building, one of the city’s Three Graces, will host a new play called The Maurie, which focuses on The Mauretania, the sister ship of the sunken Lusitania.

The Cunard Building opened as a pop-up restaurant during the visit of Cunard’s Three Queens to the city and will now become a theatre with its basement transformed into an engine room. The audience will be able to tour the rooms as the play leads them through the lives of those who lived on the ships as it crossed the Atlantic.

The play is written by Mike Morris, co-director of Writing on the Wall and is adapted from a 1920s story of the same name.

Writer Mike Morris says: “It’s incredibly exciting to be dramatising George Garrett’s short story, The Maurie, based on his time as a Stoker on the Mauretania. Garrett described the scene in the engine rooms of the Mauretania as a Subterranean Theatre, and it’s a fitting tribute to Garrett, and the stokers who laboured below decks in almost inhumane conditions to keep these incredible liners running, that their contribution to Liverpool’s maritime history is recognised as part of the city’s One Magnificent City celebrations.”

Tickets are available at www.georgegarrettarchive.co.uk and from the Liverpool Philharmonic box office. It will run from Tuesday 2 June to Saturday 13 June.

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