Month: January 2016

Botallack O’Clock, Old Red Lion Theatre

Roger Hilton was an abstract artist working in Cornwall until his death in 1975. As alcoholism and ill health took hold, he confined himself to a basement bedroom and studio, prolifically churning out work in the middle of the night. Modelling Hilton’s experimental work, playwright Eddie Elks (of Mugs Arrows acclaim) has crafted an unconventional dialogue between an ageing, ill man finding late-night solace in his art, and his radio. Elks begins in naturalism, then surreal expressionism sets in like a lucid dream. The mind of an artist is an unusual, hard to pin down thing inventively captured and well performed in Botallack O’Clock, accompanied by the sadness of approaching death and the need to leave a legacy.

Ken McClymont’s set recreates Hilton’s studio/bedroom with excellent accuracy and detail, and a bit of theatre trickery further enhances the surrealism and absurdity. Photographic projections reinforce the authenticity of the set, complete with drying paintings strung around the periphery and paintbrushes everywhere. A 1960’s radio benignly sits centre stage next to a desk with paper and paints. With Dan Frost as an angular Roger folded on the corner of a mattress and the radio next to him, they become equals. The wardrobe on the back wall is also more than it appears, as are the walls themselves. Particularly bizarre but wonderful moments include the old man struggling to be reborn through the wall and Roger’s energetic bogey with a surprise visitor.

The power in this script is the juxtaposition of the profundity and truth in Roger’s dialogue with his radio, and the veering away from reality that happens soon after insomnia slowly wakes him. It surprises and disarms; Roger’s negotiation of this alteration is charming and confessional, provoking reflection on one’s own mortality. But it’s also deliciously funny and sweet, though begins to feel too long about fifteen minutes before the end.

Dan Frost is not an old man, but endows his physicality with the creaky weight of age. This is simply cast off, like his glasses, when he gleefully reflects on his art school days in Paris. Frost’s vocal rhythm is quick and short, forcing the audience to really listen to and process Elks’ script. Frost is complimented by the dulcet tones of George Haynes as the Radio. 

Botallack O’Clock is, in essence, a simple conversation between a man and his subconscious but Elks’ creativity and skill makes it seem like more than that.  There are some delightful surprises along the way and a range of styles are used to examine our intimate relationships with our work, our possessions and our inevitable deaths – a thoughtful, reflective piece is thinly veiled under the humour and Frost’s abrupt delivery. Though we empathise with Roger throughout, all of us are alone in our twilight years, and we are the sole leading players in our own narratives.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

Give Me Your Love, Battersea Arts Centre

I’ve grown up always having pet cats and it’s absolutely true that cats love being in cardboard boxes. I stumbled on a Buzzfeed or similar article recently that says cats seek out boxes or other encloses spaces when they’re stressed or in need of comfort. Humans have similar instincts, really. Think about the last time you were upset or stressed: did you want to hide under a duvet, make a pillow fort or crawl into a small, dark space? Or at least curl up into as small of a ball as you could? Observations and life experience indicate we’re pretty similar to our felines in that way. So it would make sense that someone suffering from grief or trauma might hide in a box and never come out.

Zach (David Woods) does just that with feline stubbornness and rejection of direct human contact. An Iraq veteran suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) living with an unsympathetic wife (convincingly voiced offstage by Jon Haynes), we never see Zach’s face, or anyone else’s, in Give Me Your Love. This quiet, tiny show looks empty but brims with feeling in a sophisticated script, discusses cutting edge medical research without boring the audience and shares the horrors of PTSD that many of our vets are left to contend with, unsupported. A talking cardboard box and a patient drug dealer behind a chained door captivate for about an hour with flawless, sensitive performances and detailed dialogue that delicately balances humour and pathos.

Though it’s easy to focus on Woods as the central character, Haynes wonderfully supports and opposes him as wife Carol and friend/drug dealer Ieuan. Carol opposes Zach’s desire to explore MDMA’s potential to cure his PTSD, Ieuan, not unfamiliar with trauma himself, encourages Zach whilst displaying genuine, moving care for him. There’s a brotherly intimacy here that’s lovely to watch, and is perfectly captured by the pair of actors.

Jacob Williams’ set is super-realistic: there are no metaphors here, just the sparse filth that Zach lives in. The detail is in the tiniest things: the way masking tape curls at the edges, the holes in the box for Zach’s arms, the stains on the walls. The lack of people on stage calls for other means of  visual stimulation, and Williams’ work exceeds this tall order very well. Give Me Your Love is never boring, visually or otherwise.  Sound and light by March Cher-Gibard and Richard Vabre match the set’s naturalism, then toy with the audience’s perception of reality through abstract and expressionistic approaches. It’s a jarring transition, but manages to compliment Zach’s turmoil and experimental recovery instead of feeling stuck on and questions what is objective reality and what is in Zach’s head. 

The inclusion of using Ecstasy in PTSD therapy is fascinating research that doesn’t go too much in depth, but can feel extraneous to Zach’s struggle. It’s not about the recovery, but the day-to-day existence and paralysis that can result from action solders experience on the front line. The dialogue still flows, but the research informs the play rather than being the centre of it. This certainly isn’t a bad thing at all because the script could easily end up a lecture; the focus is very much on Zach’s mental and emotional health. The clever use of humour prevents it from becoming a drag, and exquisitely balances the brutality and debilitation of mental health conditions. This is a vital theatrical contribution to the mental health dialogue and de-stigmatisation, and one executed with delicate, detailed skill and a moving emotional journey. A fantastic watch.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

Auld Acquaintance, Bread & Roses Theatre

Imogen and Jake are a trendy, young couple with a new born daughter. It’s nearly Christmas and they are at their mother’s house with Jake’s brother Rob and his wife, Natasha. Everything should be perfect, but it’s far from it: Jake and Rob’s mum is dying in a hospice, Imogen has fallen out of love with Jake whilst struggling with post-natal depression, Rob and Imogen hate each other but Imogen and Natasha are old school friends with an intimate secret.

This one act play by Natalie Audley, newly re-worked for London after a 2014 run at Brighton Fringe, still needs some refining. There are some killer one-liners and painfully spot-on insight on fertility and relationships, but an abrupt ending and wordy lines that uncomfortably stumble from the actors’ mouths give the script a weight that goes against it comedic instincts. The pace varies, but feels slower than it ought to. Audley clearly leans towards poetry and language-driven plays, but some trimming here and there would go a long way.

Performances are mixed and take some time to find their rhythm. Charlie Lees-Massey is by far the best of the cast of four as Natasha. Her moment of surrender to Imogen (Emily Ambler) is sexy as hell, and she maintains a consistent energy and believability throughout. Ambler’s best moments are with Lees-Massey, as are Tom Everatt’s at Rob. Matthew Corbett as Jake seems awkward throughout, though this could be a character choice. Director Courtney Larkin deftly moves her actors around the tiny stage without it feeling crowded or blocking sight lines.

There’s still a clunkiness to the script but further expansion and chiselling will refine the dialogue and turn this into a polished piece of contemporary naturalism. The issues presented are crucial ones to examine on stage, especially as they are told from a female perspective and with a 50/50 gender split cast, but more development is crucial to give them the power they deserve.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern

Banned at Ipswich School for Girls last year for ‘inappropriate language’, Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s new play, Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern is certainly not the profanity-ridden, immoral cesspool the school made it out to be. Quite the opposite, really. With a cast of characters who are  predominately female, this new play reads more like a GCSE English set text that’s a British version of The Crucible. This is a properly well-made play that fully embraces naturalism and touches on a host of issues: religious zealotry, lesbianism, rejection of The Other, Sisterhood, patriarchal domination of society, race, age and probably a handful of others. Consequently, there are numerous parallels we can make between this play set in the 1700s and modern day, though no singular one dominates. The production was competently performed, well-designed and overall, well done. That’s the problem, though. Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern doesn’t have anything wrong with it, but apart from a pair of breasts exposed during a torture scene, the play is, well, fine. It lacks the power and contemporary focus on a singular topic that The Crucible has, though it tells a good story and has some excellent moments.

Lighting designer Richard Howell’s work is the most innovative of the production elements. An ever-present but passive gallows takes on a startlingly different shape at the end of the first act, and nighttime woodland meetings are ringed in a glowing, inclusive circle. The set is minimalist but smart, drawing attention to James Button’s detailed costumes. A puppet is similarly detailed and lifelike, but Matt Hutchinson’s cockerel is underused. 

The performances are generally good, though the ensemble cast is evenly distributed so even the title role has an equal share of the stage time. This works well to create the feel of a small village with nosy neighbours relentlessly up in others’ business. Rachel Sanders shows great range by doubling as prolific breeder Bridget Hurst and pub landlady Widow Higgins; she has some wonderful intimacy with Andrew Macklin, a married Irish man with an infertile wife and desperate for children. Her hysteria is an excellent foil to Samuel Crane (Tim Dunlap), the new reverend dedicated to ridding the town of witches. Crane and the older Bishop Francis Hutchinson (a fantastic David Acton), who has learnt his lessons from historical witch hunts and sees the good in everyone, also have some sparky exchanges. The slightly old fashioned language interferes with character commitment at times, and some of the performances tend towards generalised due to a lack of development of the individual characters in favour of ensemble. 

Still, it’s not a bad play at all. It has a good story, some interesting history and stylistically harks back to American post-Stanislavskian plays from the 1920s – 1950s: Odets, Miller, Rice, and that lot. A clear metaphor would certainly enhance this show’s potency but it has some great elements that make it an enjoyable night at the theatre. Just not one that packs much of a punch.

An Invitation to D&D 11

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If you are a dreamer, come in
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by the fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

Improbable Theatre’s Devoted and Disgruntled (D&D) events bring to mind this poem, Invitation, by American poet Shel Silverstein. They’re open to absolutely anyone with an interest in theatre or the performing arts, whether you are devoted to and/or disgruntled by them or not. Are you a theatre maker? A teacher? An am dram enthusiast? A theatregoer? A student? It doesn’t matter whether you work in the performing arts or not, there is a place for you at D&D and you will be welcomed with open arms.

Though I’d known about D&Ds for a while and they’ve been happening for over a decade, I finally plucked up the courage to attend my first D&D last year. I felt uncertain and vulnerable, like a fraud sneaking in somewhere she’s not supposed to be. I was about to return to theatre after a career break working solely in education, but was worried that because I hadn’t been a practitioner for several years, I wouldn’t have anything to contribute or gain at the event.

I was about as wrong as I could possibly be. I left D&D 10 feeling confident, motivated and welcomed back into the industry. Despite being a person who can feel extremely uncomfortable in new situations and around people I don’t know, the open space format of D&Ds gives participants the freedom to participate as much or as little as they please. D&Ds are warm, inclusive, and empowering to the individual. It’s not a networking event. It’s not a conference. It’s a space to meet other passionate people to discuss issues in theatre and the performing arts. It’s a place to think and reflect. It’s a time to plan. Or, you can just be in the room and listen.

So, come along. D&D 11 is at Birmingham Rep next weekend and there are still tickets available. If you’re not sure about how it works, have a rummage through Improbable’s website dedicated to D&D. Ask questions in advance on twitter or facebook or email, and if you’re still feeling nervous on the day, look for the lovely people with heart badges who can give you the support you need.

You see, there’s a lot to that needs doing in theatre and the performing arts, and the best way to cultivate change is to facilitate a bunch of passionate people coming together. There’s no predetermined agenda, but a question: What are we going to do about theatre & the performing arts?

It’s up to us to find the answers together.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.