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Showing posts with label monologue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monologue. Show all posts
Friday, March 9, 2018
Friday, March 9, 2018
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A Hundred Words For Snow reviewed by David James
Rating:
My advice is to bring a hanky. Tatty Hennessey's A Hundred Words For Snow is one hell of a monologue, transporting us from suburban London to the frozen Arctic and guiding us through the depths of grief. I'm generally suspicious of sentimental shows - I get annoyed when someones waving an onion at me in an attempt to coax out a tear. But this does things honestly, exploring misery, loss and adolescent uncertainty with sincerity and wit. It's brill.
Our heroine is 15-year-old Rory (Gemma Barnett), who is attempting to process the sudden death of her father. In the wake of his death, everything feels muted: she's alienated by the thoughtless platitudes at his funeral and the jarring return to humdrum domesticity. It's only when she ventures into her Dad's study and sees his never-fulfilled holiday plans that she realises what she must do: steal her Mum's credit card, stuff her Dad's urn into a backpack and head to the North Pole to scatter his ashes.
It's a pretty bonkers ambition, but Hennessey goes out of her way to make Rory's attempt plausible. It sets the stage for a journey that takes her via Tromsø in Norway to the island of Svalbard and to the frozen infinity of the Arctic. Along the way we really get to know Rory, delving deep into her insecurities, mindset and awe at the epic polar scenery. She's one of the more complex and likeable characters I've seen in a long time, and though the show is just an hour long, we understand her.
Laying on top of all this is that the majestic and stark Arctic is a deeply satisfying metaphor for Rory's unresolved grief. Hennessey doesn't treat grief as something unpleasant to be conquered, but something starkly beautiful in its own right: profound sadness shouldn't be swept under the rug, it should be explored and understood. Rory's fearless journey into the ice accomplishes this, it's only when she's stared down the blizzard that she can process her father's death.
All this is making the show sound a bit morose. It is, but the tears are leavened with a tonne of laughs. Hennessey's writing is peppered with very funny insights, borne of Rory's idiosyncratic viewpoint on the world. Though we never completely forget the weight of her Dad's ashes, the load is lightened by some very funny facts about the history of Arctic exploration and some well-observed asides about human behaviour. A particular highlight is a beautifully written segment about a sexual encounter, which manages to be both hilarious and movingly poetic.
Writing this good demands a great performance to do it justice, and Gemma Barnett delivers in spades. She gives Rory a gawky physicality and energy that goes a long way to making her a believable teenager, frequently locking eyes with people in the audience to make the show, for one brief moment, a two-person dialogue. Barnett has charisma to spare, her delivery seamlessly transitioning from light-hearted sarcasm all to shiver-inducing emotional nakedness.
What else is left to say? A Hundred Words For Snow is a brilliant bit of writing performed to perfection. As I left I passed people dabbing away tears and sniffling into tissues - tears that the show absolutely earns. This is a true highlight of Vault 2018 and shouldn't be missed.
A Hundred Words For Snow is at Vault Festival until March 11th. Tickets here.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
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Rating: 
Apocalypse is in vogue at the moment. From Mad Max: Fury Road to The Walking Dead to Fallout 4, there's a huge audience out there who want to immerse themselves in a ruined world in which desperate survivors struggle to carve out a life after society has collapsed. What does this preoccupation say about the general state of mind? We're buffeted by reports on climate change too scary to process, told with authority that our economy is a wobbly mess and (if you hoover up the garbage that the right wing press put out) you might believe we're under siege from barbarous dark-skinned men from the south.
All of that informs The Fallen Institute's Mister Mushroom. Once upon a time, Little Spewling was the epitome of a picturesque English village, speckled with pubs, community halls, schools and farmlands. That all changed when the nearby nuclear power plant melted down, transforming Little Spewling into toxic, radioactive anarchy.
It seems that there's only one sane man in this anarchy. Holed up in a bunker and subsisting on canned food, he struggles to maintain decorum and civility in a world gone mad. But as the radiation seeps into his home, can he complete his mission of finding 'Bunny' or will he succumb to the madness that's seized the town?
Written by Reece Connolly and performed by Christopher Keegan (also directing), Mister Mushroom is a scuzzy, claustrophobic monologue that revels in making the audience uncomfortable. As it opens on a rather gory piece of self-surgery, and includes to a genuinely wince-inducing dental mishap, I'd say it achieves that particular goal. These shivery moments mean we never get too comfortable in our hero's company, our suspicions about him gradually building as the monologue develops.
Keegan fits the role beautifully: looking creepily ogrish as he squats in his cave picking over the bones of the past and silently hearing the chaos rumbling away above his head. He also builds up a fine head of mania, practically frothing at the mouth in later scenes as his true feelings are revealed.
Unfortunately, much of the potential impact of the piece is torpedoed by the fact that Keegan hasn't memorised his lines. Part of the conceit of the piece is that we're reading this man's manifesto/autobiography, so the character having typed documents around him is appropriate. But the knock-on effects of him constantly referring to the script are numerous. Most obviously, Keegan pretty much has to remain seated at a desk, which severely limits his physical performance. It also makes for occasionally stilted delivery and the constant gazes down at the papers mid-sentence break the character's engagement with the audience.
I'm sure there's a good reason why Keegan doesn't know this by heart - perhaps he stepped in to play the character at late notice or something, but whatever the excuse it genuinely harms the show's flow and overall effectiveness. Maybe this is why a late plunge into complete mad (and a stab at political relevance) isn't half as engaging as it probably should be.
Mister Mushroom is a nice idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Perhaps if it was staged and performed with a little more panache it could hit the heights it wants to but right now it feels incomplete.
Mister Mushroom is at the Old Red Lion as part of the London Horror Festival until November 2nd. Tickets here.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Thursday, August 10, 2017
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Saturday, November 19, 2016
Saturday, November 19, 2016
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Poor little Donny Stixx. Born with a club foot to a mother that despises imperfection, socially maladjusted and trapped in a delusion that stardom is just around the corner. Life has dealt him the worst possible cards yet Donny is certain he's holding a winning hand.
Philip Ridley's Tonight with Donny Stixx is an autopsy of a shattered person desperately trying to reassemble himself. He's played by Sean Michael Verey delivering an 80 minute monologue on a flat, empty expanse of grey.
We first meet Donny as a warped entertainer, struggling through banter audience banter and emitting periodic barks of forced, machine-gun laughter. Donny cargo cults his way through how he thinks a light entertainer should behave, but his obvious lack of charisma and faint desperation quickly unnerves. That awkwardness only amplifies as he responds to a silent question from the audience and explodes into spittle-flecked, red-faced rage and yowls that he will not talk about the massacre he committed.
Wait, what?
Slowly the pieces begin to fall into place. The jeans, sneakers and plain blue t-shirt outfit suddenly clicks into place and we realise we're locked in prison with Donny. This awkward, scary and volatile kid has done something awful.
Gradually we learn more about Donny. Driven by Oedipal desires, he hates his Dad and is devoted to impressing his monster of a mother. She applauds his amateur magic act - and so he becomes "Donny Stixx, the boy with tricks". Having gained his mother's approval, he sets his sights on magical stardom, beginning to put on little shows for friends and family. But are they laughing with him, or at him?
Sean Michael Verey fully inhabits Donny, lurching the poles between obsequiousness and raving psychopathy. Being sat in close proximity to him feels genuinely dangerous, especially given his tendency to approach the front row, eyes rolling around in his head like snooker balls, teeth bared, face red and sweat rolling down his face. Verey also makes fantastic use of the space, sometimes shrinking at the back corner of the stage before charging forward and looming over us, lost in confused rage.
Ridley has always had a great handle on showing broken minds trying to paper over the cracks, and Donny is up there with hus best. Without ever slipping into exposition, he paints a realistic psychological profile of a boy desperate to entertain and please people, but pathologically unable to. There's a painful ratcheting up of the tension as we gradually deduce the chasm between Donny's perception of reality and how it actually is. Towards the end, one of the central pillars of Donny's sense of self is demolished, sending him freewheeling towards atrocity.
Tonight with Donny Stixx is a determinedly focussed production, shearing away every distraction to rub our nose in burning human wreckage. It's one of those productions that lodges firmly in the mind; Verey's contorted face and sad/vicious eyes sure to turn up in a nightmare one day.
★★★★
Tonight with Donny Stixx is at the Bunker Theatre until 3rd December. Tickets here.
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Thursday, August 11, 2016
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The Cockpit Theatre seats 420 people. Last night's production had an attendance of 9. But, curiously, Burning Coal's production of Philip Ridley's Dark Vanilla Jungle is only amplified by the vast empty space that greets actor Lexie Braverman as she enters.
Philip Ridley is a playwright notorious for grappling with subjects most would rather sweep under the rug. His work covers the gamut of extreme violence, sexual perversion and psychological oppressiveness, all slathered with pitch black humour and an obsessive attention to detail. But, even amongst his atrocity-studded bibliography, Vanilla Dark Jungle has a certain notoriety.
Part confessional/part autobiography, Ridley introduces us to Andrea, a young girl. All she wants is to love, and to be loved in return. Yet life can't stop kicking her in the teeth: her father disappeared soon after she was born, leaving her to be raised by her couldn't-give-a-shit Mum, who callously and suddenly disappears upon his return. Abandoned in a grotty flat, she tiptoes along the borders of mental illness until she's 'rescued' by her never before seen grandmother, referred to only as 'Mrs V'.
The proceeding 75 minutes are a symphony of horribleness: neglect, delusion, paedophilia, gang-rape, manipulation, paranoia, self-loathing, fear, abuse, miscarriage and complete and abject humiliation. But hey, that's Ridley for 'ya.
All that's conveyed through a jumbled up narrative through. Andrea talks as if we're interviewing her on her life to date, guiding us through a roughly chronological story with constant detours into apparently trivial minutia. Tiny anecdotes and observations pile up on top of the core narrative, forcing the audience to play detective as they sift through the story and work out what's driving this mysterious, enigmatic, disturbing girl.
The monologue is filled with typical Ridleyian down-at-heel motifs, for example, an early profession of love for the soft pastry in a McDonalds' Apple Pie later echoes in the description of an amputee's sutured stump, or the way her father takes a big scoop of ice-cream repeats in an uneasily fetishistic description of a scoop taken out of man's skull by a landmine. Things eventually come full circle in a wonderfully ambiguous ending that marks the point where the subtle tendrils of fantasy that've nibbled at the corners Dark Vanilla Jungle finally envelope it.
It all adds up to a vivid and bleak snapshot of modern femininity. Girls grow up in a society that teaches them that they're there to provide. Andrea constantly delineates the sexes: "women suggest, men decide" and "women suck, men spit" taking an increasingly warped pleasure in being submissive and accommodating to men. Ridley being Ridley, Andrea's submissiveness goes to some really fucked up places.
Dark Vanilla Jungle is not an easy piece to perform. Andrea is all over the emotional spectrum and constantly toys with audience sympathies. That said, Lexie Braverman knocks it out of the goddamn park from minute one. Making lemonade from lemons, she seizes on the diminished audience as an opportunity to interrogate individuals during the monologue - shooting accusatory gazes and questions into the audience that make you shrink back in your seat when you're targeted
During one emotional high-point, two hooray-Henrys loudly blunder into the theatre by mistake, not having realised there's a play on. One of them (called Rupert, natch) loudly chats behind the curtain, throwing it open and recoiling in shock when he realises there's a show on. Braverman doesn't flinch, instantly (and quite brilliantly) incorporating this intrusion into her performance.
That's just one example of the many micro-moments that combine to make a gripping performative tapestry. Braverman's Andrea is somehow girlish/mature, sexy/ugly, manipulative/manipulated etc all at once. Being able to tease out a crystal clear character through this is partly down to Ridley's evocative writing, but also down to Braverman's viscerally palpable, real Andrea.
My only slight criticisms land with the writing. There's a change in plot midway through that feels suspiciously like two separate but similar monologues have been awkwardly welded together and the rough edges smoothed out as best as possible. Plot elements from the first are suddenly abandoned, to be replaced with a whole new set of characters and situations. Still, the themes, symbols and character remain consistent throughout, so it's not too jarring.
Though poorly attended, Burning Coal's Dark Vanilla Jungle knocked my socks off. It's an ambitious, beautifully performed and smartly directed gem of a production that deserves much more of an audience than it had last night. Make a beeline for the Cockpit!
★★★★
Dark Vanilla Jungle is at the Cockpit until 13th August. Tickets here.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
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Lowri Amies has had a hard couple of years, losing her mother, grandfather and (as the programme informs us) recently her grandmother. Words Words Words is a one woman show that doesn't so much explore as rugby tackle grief. Faced with being a "half orphan", Amies explains how she "lost her voice and the old words failed to fit the new story". Now we watch her attempting to rediscover it, via her dramatic training and more specifically through Shakespeare.
Half biography and half confessional, Words Words Words begins with Amies explaining her grandfather's slide into dementia, before moving onto the guilt, misery and self-hatred she experienced after her Mum died. Right now you're probably thinking that this doesn't exactly sound like a fun night out in the West End. You'd be right, but trust me, it's an emotionally and intellectually rewarding one.
In emotional terms you really get to see an intense personal self-autopsy. Doing a show like this has got to be tough - having to dredge up the most painful moments in your life over and over again before an ever shifting crowd of strangers. You'd fear that this repetition might dull the edge of the show, but every fragment of misery is keenly felt. It's genuinely heartbreaking to hear Amies' self-loathing at blaming her mother for keeping her in the dark as to the seriousness of her condition, or the way she was able to keep from crying when her beloved grandfather died.
Intellectually there's real meat about the meaning and power of words. The show brought to mind a favourite quote from Aldous Huxley:
“In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement.”
I think Huxley's on the ball here, Words Words Words is an attempt to communicate something so immensely powerful that it runs into the limits of language. Amies' workaround is to delve deep into Shakespeare - after all, if the greatest playwright ever can't convey loss, guilt and depression who can? Incidentally, Amies' delivery is pitch-perfect, effortlessly conjuring up everyone from big hitters like Hamlet to minor characters like the Nurse from Romeo + Juliet.
Shakespeare's lines meld with Amies poetry, blurring the lines between where the bard ends and she begins. The combination serves to elevate both - the raw personal nature of Amies story accentuating the universal humanity in Shakespeare, and providing gravity to her own writing. This also makes the moments of levity more effective - at one point she says she feels "cut in two like..", you expect to her to follow up with some flowery Elizabethan metaphor, but you get "like that guy was in Kingsman".
The idea of the power of words keeps simmering in the background, Amies explaining feels them caught in throat like a billiard ball stuck in a pocket. Gradually a mosaic is constructed from her grandfather's delusions that his hospital room was filling with water, to the ominous "DNR" commandment issued by her mother, to a syllabic dissection of the word "metastasised". She also has a powerful grasp of imagery, my favourite being a description of her family as a pyramid with her at the pinnacle, only it's upended and all the pressure is on her.
Can words ever truly encompass the misery that Amies felt (and continues to feel)? Perhaps the only appropriate vocalisation is a ragged howl into the abyss. As someone who's never experienced loss like this I can only sympathise deeply with Amies and fear the day something like this happens to me (as it will everyone).
I hope Words Words Words provides the catharsis, but either way it's one of the more memorable nights I've had at the theatre in some time and has given me a hell of a lot to think about.
★★★★
Words Words Words is at the Leicester Square Theatre until 21 May. Tickets Here.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
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Death row is an alien concept in Britain. We're familiar with its rhythms and rituals from cinema and television: the last meal, the visit from the priest, the long walk to the execution chamber and finally that big final moment. It's so monstrous that it's almost surreal, that their government has the right to put a human being down like an animal.
The State vs. John Hayes takes us inside this process, inside a cell and inside the mind of a corpse-to-be. She is Elyese Dukie (Lucy Roslyn): double murderer, media monster, seductress and apparent sociopath. We're privy to her final confession and thoughts - her last chance to say who she really is.
This is the epitome of a performance-centred character piece. With no need for complex staging or razzle-dazzle, all eyes are locked on to writer/performer Roslyn. From minute one you're drawn into Dukie's magnetic grip via her precise language and calculated physicality.
Elyese's clipped Southern tones display her tight personal control and fierce intelligence: lapsing into clever little word games almost out of habit, playing up the sensationalism of her situation and taking a distinctly sadistic pleasure in toying with audience expectations. Throughout the piece Roslyn scans the audience for eye contact, occasionally seeking emotional support but more often picking someone to haughtily bombard with accusations - taking offence at the idea that we could ever truly 'know' her.
Complementing this is a rock-solid grip on the character's physicality. Completely androgynous, Roslyn never lets us rest on firm ground when trying to pin her down to one gender or the other. Often she's a scary social chameleon; especially when she lapses into 'playing' another woman during her monologue. As if shuffling a deck of cards she slides into stereotyped femininity; voice, mannerisms and personality all turning on a dime to eerie effect.
We're never completely comfortable in Elyese's presence; just as we think we've worked her out she throws out something new that changes everything. As we reach the end of the play this process intensifies, her cool exterior finally cracking with frustration. Underneath all the mind-games, the tortured past and playful eroticism lies someone that, simply, is scared to die.
Throughout, the piece maintains a firm control of emotional tone; knowing precisely where and when to ramp things up and down, ensuring that we know what Elyese is feeling. Where there's less control is in the actual narrative. To some extent we must play detective with her statements, silently piecing together the jigsaw of her social network, history and relationships.
Doing is proves to be quite tricky. Elyese is one hell of a complicated character: an androgynous bisexual, (possibly) split-personality sociopath with a knotted past that involves at least one child. This dips a little bit into sensationalistic Jerry Springer territory and thus requires the audience to suspend their disbelief a tiny bit. And that's if you can keep up: the fractured narrative and delivery - you've got to be attentive and alert to piece this together.
I think I got everything, though on leaving I was still a tiny bit unsure of the precise ins and outs of Elyese's tale. But if I have to choose between narrative clarity with emotional resonance I'll pick the latter every time.
Watching this is like spending an hour in a lion's cage, at times you can almost smell the disinfectant and feel the dread of death row...
★★★★
The State vs John Hayes is at the King's Head Theatre until 22 November. Tickets here.
★★★★
The State vs John Hayes is at the King's Head Theatre until 22 November. Tickets here.
Friday, June 19, 2015
Friday, June 19, 2015
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Food is a fantastic dramatic metaphor. The best food and the best art both get under your skin, both bear the fingerprints of its creator and both communicate complex emotions without words. Not to mention the sheer visual dynamism of preparation and presentation, or simply describing it in strings of luscious, saliva-inducing adjectives. Sabrina Mahfouz's Chef uses food as a reflection of its subject's soul: no matter how much shit is heaped on an individual they are still capable of wonderful things.
Chef comes pre-garlanded with praise, nabbing the Fringe Fest Award at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival. It's a scanty 50 minute monologue, presented with minimal stagecraft and little theatrical frippery. There's a sense that the dead wood of theatre has been pared away - allowing us untrammelled access to an interesting person: almost theatre as confessional rather than narrative.
Said interesting person is 'Chef' (Jade Anouka). Going in we know that she was a haute-cuisine head chef and is now a convicted inmate running a prison kitchen. Salacious questions immediately pop to mind - what could have precipitated such a fall from grace? How could someone used to expressing themselves through food work in such a restrictive environment? What on earth did this woman even do?
All these answers are revealed in a chronologically jumbled story that gives us insights into family, victimhood, self expression, guilt, denial and joy. It'd be remiss of me to spoil the revelations in Chef, but I can say that by the time we're applauding we've seen a three-dimensional portrait of a genuine human being, one obviously informed by personal experience.
There's a ragged honesty to Mahfouz's writing style. Her broad technique here is to build to an emotional peak (recounting some grim act of abuse) then undercut that with subversive humour. In less capable hands these opposite forces would undermine one another, spoiling the mood. Yet Mafouz deploys comedy and tragedy with precision timing, playing us like a fiddle.
Aside from these clever rhythms, there's some straight-up beautiful descriptive writing on display. My favourite was a description of an uneaten Chinese takeaway: "noodles gloomily looking through foggy containers / at a scene of all too common domestic distress / chunks of sweet and sour chicken solidifying / under the soundwaves of unextraordinary anger". The text is studded with these wonderful turns of phrase, viscerally constructed, full of satisfying alliteration and harmonic phrasing.
This is all beautifully played by Jade Anouka. The confined upstairs room of the Soho Theatre allows a performer to engage with their audience, something that Anouka instinctively grasps. Throughout she makes eye contact with her audience, peppering us with rhetorical questions and the occasional accusatory glance. The effect is that, as we swerve towards darker themes, we're right there with her - almost implicated in her situation. Similarly, shifts in body language, from confident gesticulations to an inverted stillness, go a long way in accentuating the rhythms of the text.
Throughout we keep returning to food; Chef breathlessly describing a perfect peach, coconut tofu curry or hibiscus sorbet. It sounds delicious, the enthusiasm of the performance and the knowledge in the writing conveying an infectious passion. What I took away is that there are some incorruptible passions in life, and food is one of them. The misery inflicted upon the character cannot damp her enthusiasm and pride in her art; though her life is a shambles her soul remains intact.
I've always held that brevity doesn't indicate a lack of depth. In just 50 minutes this manages to pack in more sincerity, truth and humanity than some pieces manage in a couple of hours. I've always enjoyed seeing monologues performed, and this marks one of the best I've seen this year. It's a complex, troubling piece of work that doesn't offer up any easy answers. It's also warm-hearted, funny and approachable. A definite win all round.
★★★★
Chef is at the Soho Theatre until 4th July. Tickets here.
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