Review: An Incident at the Border

On a set that would work for Godot, a young couple, Olivia (Florence Hall) and Arthur (Tom Bennett) sit on a bench by the duck-pond in the park on a beautiful day. Olivia reads an item from the newspaper revealing that the country has become a republic. Arthur is not interested – he’s more into a fantasy of being a duck.

A typical lover’s discussion ensues, a bit political, a bit affectionate. Then an oaf in a black boiler suit and a helmet turns up and runs a tape down the middle of the bench, separating the lovers. This is the new border and it may not be breached.

In this tight three-hander, the couple tussle with the border guard, Reiver (Marc Pickering) with increasing desperation to bring Arthur back to the side of Olivia. Reiver is emotionally damaged and a fool, a perfect minion to a never-ending hierarchy of bosses, where no one is ever accountable (cf. contemporary bankers’ excuses). His goofiness can lead to a false sense of optimism– surely he will see sense? — but he has the stun-gun, and the radio, through which armies can be summoned to support his crazy rule.

Playwright Kieran Lynn triumphs here with a sharp, modern satire on a timeless topic. Olivia says “If we are kept apart from each other, by borders for instance, then we start to believe that we are different from each other.” This is excellent material for debate, and Lynn’s take on it is bracingly radical and coherently argued.

The acting is very strong — Tom Bennett’s Arthur is particularly recognisable as the kind of sweet, uncommitted chap who, reasonably, would rather try and keep his head down than get involved. Olivia’s greater political fire cannot win the war alone, however. As well as the big battle, Lynn creates an undercurrent of typical male/female flashpoints which generate many rueful laughs. Ultimately, Lynn throws the gauntlet down to the audience rather than offering solutions.

An Incident at the Border is directed with great wit and economy by Bruce Guthrie, who is masterly in building the frustration of people trapped in a hellish limbo, and yet has made all three characters seem fully human and not merely ciphers for an idea.

Review: Meat

Meat opens with a slaughterman, Vincent (Graham Turner), describing his job. In one day, scores of animals go under his knife on a conveyor belt. He is expert, but he’s not happy, and every day when he gets home, his wife has to smell the blood on him.

A 17 year-old lad in the neighbourhood has been killed. Vincent’s wife Joy (Tracy Brabin) and daughter (Charlotte Whitaker) become obsessed with the tragedy, contributing to the mob hysteria which venerates the dead boy and surrounds the bereaved mother in an orgy of mourning. Only Vincent points out that the kid was a bad ‘un, a habitual mugger and layabout who had previously threatened him.

It’s no surprise to discover who is responsible for the murder. After the grisly funeral, we discover Joy knows more than she’s letting on – her marriage, once harmonious and loving, has been on a downhill road since Vincent took the slaughtering job, and now he’s gone and stuck it to a human, she thinks she can blackmail her own husband.

Meat could be worse – it could use real carcasses like Dario d’Ambrosi’s repulsive Frustration (is butchery a trending topic in theatre? See also Davey in Jerusalem). Its failures lie in poor structure, a patronising attitude to the audience, a horrible set, and some really clunky dialogue. Every moment of overt theatricality – overlapping speech, characters coming out of cupboards – feels grafted on. The subject begs for a naturalistic style and would be better treated in a TV drama. Though playwright Jimmy Osborne clearly wants us to be deeply moved as well as fascinated in the moral issues, the actors work hard but cannot stimulate our hearts or minds. It’s difficult to work out why he wrote the play: is it some sort of plea for vegetarianism?

In summary, an evening full of gristle, undercooked and not very tasty. Avoid.

(This review first appeared on http://www.whatsonstage.com)

Review: Let’s Get Visceral

Old railway vaults have become favoured locations for performance spaces in London in the last few years. They have great atmosphere, and suggest other-worldliness and the possibility of deep psychological experimentation, but the Old Vic Tunnels’ version is certainly the dampest and smelliest I have yet visited. Luckily the fragrant whiff of creative endeavour in this programme is strong enough to take the mind off the venue’s pungency.

The new theatre company, Viscera, present five short plays inspired by London. This connection to the capital is tenuous in two of the plays, and in one, ‘Wedding This, Wedding That’, spurious. The best play, ‘Two’s Company’ by Lola Stephenson brilliantly captures many people’s experience of living in London in the character of one man played with subtle, agonised skill by Paul Westwood. He monologues to the audience in an increasingly manic piece which reveals under his professed enthusiasm for all the joys of the city, his terrible loneliness and dislocation. The horrors of flat-sharing, the mediocre wage-slave job, the long journey home to an affordable area: it’s all there, and rendered with witty black humour. The reveal at the end isn’t successful, but it’s otherwise excellent.

‘Oranges on the Brighton Line’ by Roxy Dunn gives us an estranged couple meeting on a railway platform. He is fortyish, she is twenty-one, they’ve had an affair but it’s over, and he is back with his wife. Their analysis of what went wrong is very absorbing material and the raw emotion expressed by the actors, particularly Alys Metcalf as Cleo, is deeply moving. Certain surreal elements are unnecessarily puzzling (foxes on the line?) but this is writing full of rich potential.

‘My City’ by Rachel De-Lahay is a series of vignettes of immigrants to London, before and after their arrivals in the city. The struggles to escape dysfunctional homelands and come to the imagined paradise of London are told in a fresh, informative way. The piece has an air of authenticity, and is acted with convincing naturalness throughout. Of all the plays tonight, it feels incomplete, and could definitely be expanded.

‘What People Do’ by Molly Naylor is about two young women becoming stuck in a bathroom. Strangers, in a series of short jump-cut scenes, they gradually become closer, and somehow wiser. Full of humour and poignancy, the play enables Catrin Aaron and Emily Aston to give strong performances in a lightly-Beckettian meditation on the impossibility of escape from real life. And the dance routine is a joy.

In ‘Wedding This, Wedding That’ Laura Elsworthy gives an accomplished performance as a Northern girl who misses her father, but the monologue is derivative, and it’s hard to see how this play meshes with the rest.

As a showcase of emerging talent, ‘Let’s Get Visceral’ is a very successful event and Alys Metcalf and Roxy Dunn, the company’s founders are to be applauded. If they continue to find writers, directors and performers of this standard, there will be plenty to chew on from Viscera.

Review: The Best of the Love Bites Plays, Southwark Playhouse

Love Bites is an excellent concept: five one-act plays produced for an evening’s entertainment, all on the subject of Love, with one linking motif e.g. every play is set at the same restaurant table, or in different hotel rooms. In this evening’s one-off show, five of the best plays from previous programmes are shown together.

‘Like It Never Happened’ takes place in a hotel room during a conference where two drunken delegates are attempting an erotic encounter. Both Tina and Rob are married to others, but lashings of corporate booze, topped up with mini-bar miniatures, has released their inner adulterers. It is a scene that has happened countless times in modern history, and writer Bea Appleby nails the self-pity, frustration and aching loneliness inside these slurring buffoons who could be any of us. Funny and wincingly sad.

‘Down in One’ by Ziella Bryars, who also produces Love Bites, gives us an anteroom to a party to which 30-something Elle, has retreated with Ollie, the 24 year old brother of a friend. She wants to take a breather from the competitive chatter which is making her, an underachiever, feel low; he has an ulterior motive. This is a substantial piece which hinges on Elle’s confidence as well as her sense of propriety: should she accept a date with young Ollie? She bats him away again and again until he makes one key declaration which turns everything on its head. ‘Down in One’ is an enjoyable and insightful journey, played with well-paced sensitivity by Hannah James and Matt Granados.

‘Sarah and Sarah’ gives us best friends, Bradford-girls, one of them working in a posh firm in London who has invited her mate to a works party. The North-South divide is at issue here, with pretentious London coming off worst (shades of John Godber). Perhaps it is the departure from the expected erotic theme, or the shouty acting, but I failed to engage with the characters.

‘Kentish Town’ by Daniel Frankenburg is a short, tightly written vignette of an adulterous couple, with a rich subtext heaving beneath the spoken words. Max has burnt his boats and told his wife about Sarah, but Sarah has reneged on her pledge to tell her husband about Max, and is going on holiday with hubby to Mexico instead of staying in Kentish Town with her lover. Sam Phillips captures beautifully Max’s poignant realisation that all is not well, and the play is charged and compelling throughout.

Finally, ‘Blind Date’, again by Ziella Bryars, is the most surreal of the bunch. Emma’s date is with an invisible other: we hear just her side of the conversation which gradually discloses what a thoroughly unstable prospect for a relationship she is. Helen Manders is a hugely likeable actress who plays scary Emma with a lovely ironic sunniness. Lots of laughs, but safe to leave this one at sketch-length, unlike ‘Down in One’ which would bear development.

On the strength of tonight, Love Bites looks a Very Good Thing. Keep your eyes peeled for future projects http://www.thelovebitesplays.com

Review: An Ideal Husband

First published in whatsonstage.com

An Ideal Husband is not noted as one of Oscar Wilde’s finest works but a strong production can offer plenty to enjoy and food for thought.

Over the course of 24 hours a marriage is imperilled, a political scandal unearthed and a small, closely-knit group of upper-crust Victorians is forced to examine issues of loyalty, principle and forgiveness. The agent of this turmoil is the glamorous Mrs Cheveley, visiting London from her Viennese exile in order to blackmail Robert Chiltern (Sunny Moodie), a prominent golden-boy in government who has actually built a glittering career on an appalling moral lapse.

When Robert’s wife Gertrude (Rose Robinson) learns the truth her faith in her ‘ideal husband’ is shattered, rocking her vision of herself as the perfect complement to Robert’s paragon of virtue and threatening their marriage and all the social and moral freight attached to it.

As a counterpoint to these darker themes the dandyish Lord Goring, played with delicious world-weariness by Kieran Simms, gives us the ‘Oscar’ role, spouting witty, apposite comments and showing us an alternative model of male-female relations through his banter with Robert’s sister, Mabel (Emily MacDonald).
Goring becomes instrumental to the action when Mrs Cheveley, in a stand-out performance by Sheridan Johnson, revives her old passion for him and it’s hard not to think that these two would make a sexier item than the other couplings. Ironically, in spite of Wilde’s own impending affront to his class when An Ideal Husband was first seen (he was arrested during its run), he prefers to plump for keeping the wheels of society oiled (although a weevil of mistrust is allowed to remain).

Muckle Roe’s production is admirably spare. The staging is lean and elegant, giving the costumes visual priority (accolades to designer Lucy Wilkinson) and the script has been scythed of extraneous characters. Charlie Ward directs with great pace and dexterity but there’s some work left undone: primarily, Robert Chiltern’s dilemma could be sharpened up.

The cast is largely too fresh-faced for the world of the play, but that’s a minor cavil – this fringe show is both entertaining and smart-looking.

Review: Mercury Fur

First published Whatsonstage.com 30/3/2012

In an abandoned and trashed flat, sometime not too far in the future, Elliot (Ciarán Owens) and Darren (Frank C Keogh) prepare for the party from hell. Elliot is tough but clever, still in possession of historical knowledge that can inform their present, but his traumatised younger brother’s mind is full of warped versions of the past, exacerbated by his need to ingest butterflies, beautiful creatures recalibrated in playwright Philip Ridley’s world as menacing drugs.

Pretty, skinny Naz (Olly Alexander) shows up, exemplifying corrupted innocence, and we learn more about this post-apocalyptic situation. These young people have witnessed the torture and killing of those they love by marauding gangs, and know that no-one is safe anymore. To survive, they have to adopt the morals of the bad guys. The ‘party’ is in aid of making a snuff-movie for a rich, perverted City suit who has information which could keep them alive.

As the horror mounts, and the stage fills with more tragic, brutalized characters, it seems extraordinary that we can still laugh at the pitch-black humour that leavens the piece, but we do. In the tiny Old Red Lion both the story’s savagery and tenderness touch us instantaneously, and there is not a weak dramatic moment over the course of two hours.

Ridley – who is currently enjoying something of a renaissance – invents a new but recognisable world with its own coarse, vivid language. Is this how humans behave when order breaks down? Incidents from modern civil wars and genocides provide plenty of testimony to corroborate Ridley’s vision.

The Greenhouse Theatre Company have hit the ground running with this, its debut production. The cast is uniformly superb, with Olly Alexander particularly affecting as Naz, a performance which is an object lesson in inhabiting a character. Ned Bennett directs with abundant skill, and the design elements are perfectly realised.

Mercury Fur’s original reception in 2005 was part-outrage and part-adulation. Greenhouse now gives audiences the opportunity to take a position on this work while it is still fresh and undimmed by time. A remarkable play in an excellent production.

Review: The Weir

(Review published on Remote Goat 14/3/2012)

Conor McPherson’s play has been widely performed and much loved by audiences and critics since its debut at The Royal Court in 1997. Its great reputation makes its simplicity surprising to the first-time spectator: The Weir is set in a humble environment with ordinary people and at first, there seems to be nothing very remarkable about it.

The venue, the tiny Barons Court Theatre, is most apt for The Weir: to sit in the audience is to feel as if you are sitting right in its Irish rural bar, accurately evoked as a scruffy, ramshackle den by designer Barrie Addenbroke. Five characters seek refuge here: Brendan, the quiet barman (Marcus McMahon); Jack, the ageing mechanic (David Anthony Green); Jim, a handyman who still lives with his mum and has a mild learning disability (Scott Williams); Finbar, the brash property developer (Andrew Barrett); and Valerie, the newcomer from Dublin, poised and brittle with a sad secret (Lara Wilks Sloan).

The night begins with banter about the weather (howling wind) and the draught stout (off), and moves into the telling of ghost stories. The men use Valerie as a new audience for some familiar tales, and yet are still able to chill themselves as they recount personal brushes with Death and Fairies. In between, they drink a vast amount of beer and whiskey, doing nothing to dispel the image of the Irish as capacious liquor consumers, even though tomorrow is a working day. The character of the stories changes when Valerie gets to her feet and tells the men the true story of why she has moved to the country – ghosts feature in her narrative too, but the substance of it is heartbreakingly real. Finally, perhaps emboldened by Valerie’s confession, Jack tells a tale about his lost love, a poignant and all too familiar slice of a life.

The Weir is wonderfully accurate in its representation of a night in a bar in Ireland (but also, Anywhere) with the fractured rhythms of real speech, the petty squabbling, the talking behind each other’s backs, the camaraderie and the gentle revelations of life in all its mystery and sadness. It is a very endearing piece, and hard not to like, in spite of a little roughness in CP Theatre’s production. I would love more rigorously authentic accents, and the casting is somewhat approximate in a couple of cases. Honours go to Marcus McMahon whose kind, understated Brendan feels absolutely real, and Scott Williams for doing some brave expressive work with Jim, a loveable childlike man. David Anthony Greene captures much of Jack’s warm, rueful old bachelor but is a bit too young for the role. That said, the script often transcends the flaws in the production.

The Weir is no blockbuster, but a window onto a world, a compassionate examination of what it is to be human, and a plea for the value of telling stories to deal with life’s challenges. Its atmosphere is catching, and it has a benevolently haunting quality that suggests the play will stay lingering in the mind. Much like a good night out with friends.