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Showing posts with label tristan bates theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tristan bates theatre. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
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Unrequited love is slow-burning torture. Whether because of circumstances, sexual preference or simply a lack of social awkwardness - a person can end up spending hours in the company of someone who could provide everything they want but never will. Beyond that, there's the quiet desperation of sitting on the sidelines as the object of your desire pairs up, settles down and begins a future without you. All the while you observe mournfully as a potential future recedes into the distance.
Before Morrissey turned into a fascist, he sang "I want the one I can't have / And it's driving me mad / It's written all over my face". He knew the score. And so does Want the Moon Theatre's Shadows.
Nat (Madeline Hatt) does too - painfully so. She's caught in a romantic no-man's land with her co-worker James (Ross White). The play follows their relationship as they work in a pub, with the majority of the action taking place in the cellar amidst kegs of beer and crates of bottles. It's not the most satisfying job, with Nat summarising it as something you do for a while and move on. James doesn't necessarily agree.
Playwright Dan Sareen then works through an intriguing split narrative. We see each scene twice; once in the imagination of Nat in which she and James gradually grow closer and form a romantic bond; and once in cold reality, in which two co-workers put together by circumstance realise they don't have as much in common as they thought they did.
On paper, showing each scene twice sounds pretty terrible - why do I want to see a variation on something I've just watched? In practice it works very well, with the direction, writing and performances doing more than enough to make the contrast between the two versions of each scene interesting.
This narrative structure feeds back into some of the plays other elements. Throughout Shadows the characters discuss music: Nat is a classically trained pianist and James prefers rock music - with moments where they attempt to connect with one another through pieces of music they love. This is echoed in the structure of the play, in which the repetition creates a narrative melody that's gradually iterated on as the relationship evolves.
It's clever stuff and exactly the kind of experimentation that I look for in fringe theatre. This sense of ambition extends to the direction and set design. Initially, things look rather plain, the selection of white props creating a sense of place rather than a simulation of it. But these props are also used as a background for digital projection mapping in which we see fantasies of Nat and James' imagined perfect lives play out between scenes. Throughout the play, these surfaces are continually reconfigured, with the actors having to put props in exactly the right place to show the projections. It looks complicated and time-consuming, but the effect is well worth it.
Cementing all this into place are two great performances from Hatt and White, who are directed very well by Jess Williams. They nail the change in tone between the two versions of scenes, and for the audience it's painfully easy to spot parts of yourselves in each of them. Though there's a profound sense of melancholy running throughout Shadows, Hatt and White nail the funnier parts, and have a genuine chemistry without which the play wouldn't work half as well.
Shadows is a fine bit of drama. It's got a clear dramatic objective that everyone involved understands, meaning that cast and crew are all pulling in the same direction. This purity of focus and narrative discipline is surprisingly rare on stage - making this a tight and effective show.
Shadows is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 6th July (tickets here), then at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 2nd - 26th (tickets here).
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Thursday, June 13, 2019
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She's there for me last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Throughout the day she's got my back, and ensures there's never a dull moment. She knows all my deepest secrets and darkest desires, has infinite patience to deal with the dull minutia of day-to-day life and knows the answer to every question. She even comes to the bathroom with me, where I can idly play Sonic the Hedgehog on her glistening glass face.
You've probably worked out by now that I don't have some creepy mechanical slave-woman tending to my every need: I'm talking about my phone. Much has been made of our increasing reliance to technology, and now Michael Ellis' To Drone In The Rain takes it to the creepy logical conclusion.
Set in a near future "where phones, laptops and all other technological services have become obsolete", we meet Tom (Michael Benbaruk). He's socially anxious to the point where the notion of human interaction makes him vomit into a bucket and appears to have some kind of psychosomatic condition that confines him to a wheelchair. He spends his days inside a Kubrickian monochrome studio apartment, delivering bespoke adventures to anonymous clients via a webcam.
He's taken care of by Drone Girl 9.1.13 (Nell Hardy), who is a combination of best friend, nurse, secretary, therapist and mother. We understand that this state of affairs is the norm, human beings retreating to isolation in favour of letting their android assistants interact with the world on their behalf. This extends as far as sending your Drone out to flirt with other Drones in the hope of finding love - presumably the understanding is that if two Drones get along then their owners will too.
Within this setup 9.1.13 realises that despite being programmed to care for Tom, her round-the-clock care is gradually infantilising him. He's increasingly childlike and demanding, relying on her for the simplest tasks and refusing to take responsibility for his actions. Plus there's the hunky and rebellious Drone Boy (Lino Facioli), who is offering 9.1.13 freedom from Tom and a new life where she calls the shots.
By far the most compelling part of the play is watching Tom slowly descend into helplessness as 9.1.13 struggles to work out what to do. We sense that Tom's social anxiety is a product of the insular society he lives in: he's perfectly capable of imagining detailed flights of fancy outside his apartment but utterly incapable of living them himself. And the more he's indulged by 9.1.13 the further he slides into helplessness. Michael Benbaruk plays this downward spiral very nicely, gradually minimising Tom's positive points and accentuating his flaws. This eventually leaves him as a pathetic caricature of a man - a mewling, diaper-shitting, alcoholic monster.
But the real heart of the play is Nell Hardy's 9.1.13. I've long been a fan of the laser-focused physical and psychological intensity Hardy brings to her roles and she doesn't disappoint here. The smartest decision the play makes is avoiding making this android character a sci-fi stereotype. The traditional way to write this type of character would be to focus on her grappling with strange human emotions and acting stiffly and awkwardly, like Data from Star Trek.
But, perhaps with the Tyrell Corporation slogan "More Human Than Human" in mind, 9.1.13 is totally emotionally literate and fully capable of philosophically comprehending her place in the world. Hardy plays this very nicely, threading the needle of her character realising her devotion might be poisonous. That's not to say that this character is indistinguishable from a human: Hardy moves with precision and power, striking stylised poses that reminded me of catwalk models.
But 9.1.13 being by far the interesting character in the play is the root of my problem with it. Beyond the science fiction trappings, you can understand this is the story of a man and a woman. As such, it's more than a bit regressive to see a story about a loser guy dragging down a woman concluding with the woman sacrificing herself for his benefit. By this point in the story our sympathy for Tom has evaporated - so seeing him shuffle off into the sunset wearing a cowboy hat leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
I guess the fact that I cared about these characters fates means that something is working here: though I suspect it's the strength of the performances rather than some woolly writing. To Drone In The Rain is a smart bit of science fiction and has a neat hook, but could use a bit of editing and tweaking to accentuate its positive qualities.
To Drone In The Rain is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 15th June. Tickets here.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
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Love Me Now reviewed by David James
Rating: 
Oscar Wilde said "Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." and while I know beginning a theatre review with an Oscar Wilde quote is unbelievably pretentious, it neatly sums up Michelle Barnette's Love Me Now. Billing itself as about "the grey area between love and sex, consent and compliance, yes and no", it attempts to map out the treacherous, windswept coastline of what we want and what we want.
Set in the bedroom of 'B' (Helena Wilson), this 75-minute long play chronicles her casual relationship with fuckbuddy 'A' (Alistair Toovey). The way it works is that confident gym-taut A arrives at B's place and the two get down to a bout of sweatily physical sex that scratches both their itches. Then he pops his jeans back on and heads out into the night. They're not monogamous, they're not in a relationship - it's a mutually pleasurable sex transaction.
That's the theory anyway. Inevitably emotions start to muddy the waters: A's determination to make this solely about sex causes him to define B purely in terms of her body and what it can do for him, which soon manifests in blunt misogyny and objectification. Meanwhile, B wants to play out the no-strings-attached, sex-positive archetype, but finds herself dismayed and alienated by the way A minimises her personhood.
And so things curdle. Before too long A is attempting to convince a clearly unhappy B to give him head, claiming they'll decide it on the flip of a coin "heads for head!", a puke-inducing situation that comes alongside frequent little nibbles at her self-esteem, behaviour and looks. These culminate in a shiver-inducingly intense scene around which the entire play revolves.
About two-thirds of the way through, 'C' (Gianbruno Spena) is introduced. At first, he appears to be the empathic, kind and sweet counterweight to A, though his obsequiousness manifests as yet another brand of condescension. Both men want B to be something she's not. B knows what she doesn't want. Trouble is, she's not sure what she does want either. What she does sense is that despite her sex-positive feminism, she's walking a path trodden by countless exploited women who've come before. Just where is the boundary between no-strings sex and being some prick's convenient sex receptacle?
It's one of those obtuse emotional knots that looks ridiculous written down - but it's safe to say that damn near everyone in the audience will be able to empathise with something here. Charting this psychological alphabet soup is a daunting proposition, which makes it all the more impressive that this is a debut play.
Aside from the way it intelligently dissects the politics 21st-century sex, Love Me Know is also extremely funny - achieving my gold standard of comedy of the audience laughing so long and hard that the actors have to wait to deliver their next line. Barnette consistently displays a dab hand with cutting, witty dialogue, reminding me of some of Patrick Marber's vicious dialogue That the play is so damn funny also makes the tonal shifts that much more effective. Laughing along with B makes you feel connected to her, which loads violent moments with the kind of gripping pain that lodges in your throat and makes your head spin.
It adds up to a remarkable bit of writing. There are flaws: the jumbled chronology is only partly successful and the narrative collapse finale could be trimmed back quite a bit without losing any oomph. But these cracks are more than papered over by the high standard of the script, striking stage/sound design, and three excellent performances. Quality-wise there's little between them, but Helena Wilson must be singled out for the way she layers complexities onto an already densely written lead character without ever getting ahead of the script.
Love Me Now is confident, smart and stylish. It feels like a show in which everyone understands what the goal is and everyone pulls in the same direction to achieve it. That this is Michelle Barnette's writing debut makes it even more of an accomplishment - I'll be there for whatever she does next. In the meantime, the show clearly has potential beyond this particular run, so if you miss out here I suspect it'll be transferred elsewhere before too long.
Love Me Now is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 14th April 2018. Tickets here.
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
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Bump! is a romantic comedy executed with clockwork precision. Scored by a predominantly Daft Punk soundtrack, the show consists of two extremely talented physical performers running rings around one another. Underneath is a cerebral thematic bedrock of quantum entanglement: the bizarre scientific phenomenon in which two linked particles influence each other despite being geographically separated.
Our star crossed lovers are spiky teacher Eliana (Oriana Charles) and gaming nerd Ian (Andrew Hollingworth, also the show's writer). They meet after the titular 'bump', when their cars crash into one another in traffic. While exchanging numbers their eyes meet and, after several glasses of rosé in a nearby Wetherspoons, they're between the sheets. Eliana thinks the experience was alright - Ian rates it as MINDBLOWING.
We quickly realise that the Ian is a little bit more into Eliana than she is into him - especially after multiple texts to her phone go unanswered. Despite their immediate physical attraction and some obvious chemistry, are they really a match? Eliana is materialistic, judging Ian by the BMW he drives (secretly on loan from his brother) and Ian is a deeply romantically unrealistic. Like entangled particles, they spend much of the show in different locations yet still occupying the same space. But will they ever actually couple up?
Bump! is very easy to like. Oriana Charles and Andrew Hollingworth positively bristle with charisma: able to cartoonishly stretch their characters without ever sacrificing emotional plausibility. Leaving aside all the thematic/narrative elements, they're just dead fun to watch. Much of the show relies on precise timings with the soundtrack - books snapping shut, the swatting of a fly or the synchronised slamming down of smartphones. This is all executed with a casual finesse obviously borne of countless hours of blood, sweat and tears in rehearsals - all the effort definitely worth it.
Highlights are the pair getting ready for sex. Him in her en suite bathroom having a last minute swill of mouthwash, before passing the bottle 'through' the wall to her, where it becomes a bottle of Smirnoff, or the delightful introduction where their getting ready for work routines crisscross over each other. It makes the particle entanglement stuff genuinely relevant, impressive given that the moment most shows begin talking about quantum physics coincides with the moment they shove their head up their own arse.
The only real sour note is a late narrative twist. Spoiler alert: Eliana realises she's gotten pregnant after their first encounter. On one hand, this nicely contextualises her standoffishness to Ian, making it perfectly understandable why she's standoffish, as she works out how (or if) to tell him. On the other, Ian's reaction to the news is a bit weird, wittering on about quantum physics and planning out a family life to the (understandably) freaked out Eliana.
It's difficult to get over her observation that they barely know one another and that starting a family under these circumstances is unlikely to work out well. But Bump! is perhaps a little too optimistic, resulting in a cliched scene where Eliana has a last minute change of heart just before her abortion. I like a happy ending as much as the next person, but the way the show ends just didn't feel entirely plausible.
Fortunately, it's all too easy to forgive Bump! for not quite sticking the landing. It's undeniably entertaining theatre by two insanely talented individuals that had me smiling throughout. The show even gave me the giggles with an incredibly silly gag where Ian mistook Eliana's bra for his tie. For that alone, it goes in my good books.
Bump! is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 5 August. Details here.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Thursday, December 8, 2016
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A great operatic voice cuts right you down to the bone. Héloïse Werner does just that in this touching, gripping and understandably morose study of death. Over the three acts of this one woman opera, Werner and composer Jonathan Woolgar get to grips with subjects as cosmic as the heat death of the universe, inevitable as the eventual extinction of the human race and the lonely death of every individual human being.
To a backdrop of quotes from poets, scientists and philosophers ("This is the way the world ends / not with a bang but a whimper" - T.S. Eliot / "The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." - Carl Sagan), Werner delivers a striking vocal performance that oscillates between pure, perfect musical notation, guttural cries of misery and mantra-like chanting ("oblivion.. oblivion..."). All that takes place on a pitch black stage, the only live musical accompaniment two black sticks she rhythmically bashes together and a tiny cymbal that produces a shiver inducingly piercing note.
At her most miserable Werner makes us feel like voyeurs, peering in on sadness usually screamed into pillows in 2am black hole lonelinesses. But, though Werner is the emotional fulcrum on which Scenes from the End turns, the coolly minimalist staging creates a detachment that lets us analyse rather than be overwhelmed.
Werner and Woolgar's gradual zooming in from the death of the universe to the death of the individual creates a secular spiritual continuity between us and the cosmos. Realistically, it's impossible for us to truly grapple with the universe dying: every atomic, chemical and molecular process gradually coming to a halt, the stars releasing the last of their energy, leaving behind nothing but an empty, lifeless void (a process scientists have evocatively named 'The Big Yawn'). The human race won't be around to experience it - yet it's all too easy to map this infinite blank emptiness onto personal experiences of depression and mourning.
But the next section, about the extinction of the human race is sadly somewhat less difficult to imagine than it was a year ago. You try and tell yourself that though history ebbs and flows, decency, intelligence and justice eventually prevail over stupidity and hate. Well, maybe they don't. Woolgar and Werner's elegy for a human species voraciously consuming its natural resources and destroying our planetary life support system is reproachful: "We have done well, but we forgot to survive".
Watching this sets off all kinds of philosophical sparkings. Perhaps too-late pushes towards ecological, sustainable living run counter to every animal instinct we possess? After all humanity has spent 10,000 years successfully tapping into its lust to build, reproduce, conquer, refine and expand. Can we truly stop now - is trying as futile as a colony of ants collectively choosing not to construct an anthill, or a spider making the decision not to spin a web?
This all sharpens the idea of personal loss - highlighting the individual amongst the masses. As Stalin memorably said: "one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic". Werner explores the reactions to loss, from the intense physical pain of grieving to the platitudes offered by onlookers. The programme explains that Werner is channelling her own pain into this performance, and the naked honesty of the thing is palpable.
Scenes From the End isn't liable to send you skipping out into London's Christmas lights with a glint in your eye and a song in your heart. It is, however, a smart and moving dip into dark waters we all have to navigate at one point or another. What it definitely isn't is an unalloyed miserybomb, Scenes from the End might stare down darknesss, but it does so meditatively. I really enjoyed myself.
★★★★
Scenes from the End is at the Tristan Bates Theatre until 10th December. Tickets here.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
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"I'm a trained killer", she cheekily explains. For once it's true. The vast majority of theatre I see is conceived, produced and performed by art school bohos whose life problems probably only extend as far as a flat white and a smoothly running Macbook Air. So, I always welcome fresh perspectives on stage.
Rebecca Crookshank offers this in spades. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a dramatic recounting of her time in the Royal Air Force, following her entry as a teenager, through training and a later assignment to the Falkland Islands, where she suffered bullying and extreme sexual harassment. Now she's a writer and actor, the show coming pre-garlanded with accolades and about to set out on a national tour.
It's a personably told, detail orientated evening and Crookshank quickly proves herself a talented, charismatic storyteller. She's also a damn fine theatrical mixologist: a dab of pathos; a shot of the scatological; a sprinkling of goofy theatricality; all combined to create a show whose tone is difficult to pin down. It's too serious to be comedy and too silly to be drama, landing in a pleasantly fuzzy theatrical hinterland that keeps the audience off balance.
Performatively I can't fault it. But I do have a bit of a hurdle to clear: I think people who voluntarily join the military are scum.
What kind of depraved human being would parcel up their soul to organisations that, at least these days, appear to exist primarily to incinerate civilians in distant lands? For all the patriotic pageantry, pretensions of honour and self-improvement 'be the best' bullshit, choosing a military career is ethically on par with choosing to be a contract killer. The only real difference in the military is that the person telling you who you're going to be murdering today has a silly hat and a bunch of glittery metal pinned to their chest.
What kind of depraved human being would parcel up their soul to organisations that, at least these days, appear to exist primarily to incinerate civilians in distant lands? For all the patriotic pageantry, pretensions of honour and self-improvement 'be the best' bullshit, choosing a military career is ethically on par with choosing to be a contract killer. The only real difference in the military is that the person telling you who you're going to be murdering today has a silly hat and a bunch of glittery metal pinned to their chest.
It's not the most popular opinion to hold. It's no doubt riddled with hypocrisies and there's probably a thousand emotive, vaguely threatening arguments revolving around hazy ideas of me sleeping well in my bed at night or the sporadic instances where the military death-machine is repurposed for humanitarian causes. But my anti-militarism is the bedrock of my ethics - I am opposed to killing and the military is a tool for killing.
But Whiskey Tango Foxtrot sidesteps these issues in a couple of ways. Crookshank was not a combat soldier; working as an RAF technician and radar operator. In her role monitoring the 'UK Air Defence Region' she can reasonably claim to be guarding lives rather than taking them. In the Falklands things get a little fuzzier; defending a distant imperial appendix. Either way she's not exactly dropping cluster bombs on hospitals: she's a cog in the death-machine rather than its bloodstained claws.
More notably, Crookshank is deeply critical of the misogyny inherent to military organisations. Women have as much right as men to throw their lives away in pursuit of perverse nationalist glory, but for the vast majority of human history, a military life has been intrinsically tied up idealised masculinity. So, perhaps it's not surprising to hear Crookshank explain that a young woman's life in the RAF is, at best, a barrage of tiny patronising jabs (for example, being repeatedly instructed to do women's push-ups) and, at worst, gross sexual assault.
Your average shit and wank obsessed squaddie does not come out of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot smelling of roses. Crookshank emotively paints them as childish dickheads on a perpetual lad's night out. In doing so, she raises a rare compelling argument for the military - maybe confining these apes to an isolated wind-blasted mountain top in the middle of the Atlantic is best for all of us.
As the show progresses, Crookshank's romantic idea of military service steadily crumbles. The edifice shatters altogether when, following a sexually sadistic assault, the best the RAF can do is offer her a thrilling flight in a Tornado fighter plane as compensation. She realises that the organisation triumphs at the expense of the individual, no matter how shittily they've been treated. This should be a sobering thought for anyone tempted to sign up - Crookshank's story just another stitch in a tapestry that includes everything from the much-publicised cover-ups at Deep Cut, to the less reported suicide of Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement and, more broadly, the way in which the military tosses aside those maimed in its service.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot eventually underlines that, though the military publicly deifies the individual soldier, privately it really couldn't give a toss. Instead, they're devoted to the continuation of their own existence - desperate to puff up the existential-threat-of-the-week in order to keep the vastly profitable global murder industry rumbling onward.
What the show can't quite get over is its respect for the ideal of service. It understands it's a facade for brutality, but still fetishises the objects and discipline of warfare. When Crookshank lovingly fondles an SA-80 and explains its killing efficiency, thrills to the sonic boom of a fighter plane or happily recalls some camaraderie between soldiers we see the same teenager seduced by recruitment lies.
Crookshank ultimately sees the military as an organisation in need of reform rather than dissolution, and that's where we differ. For my money, the only way to solve the problems Whiskey Tango Foxtrot raises is for society to eliminate the soldier inside itself.
★★★
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is touring the country now. Tickets here.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
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Last night I looked a woman in the eyes and told her she was going to die. She looked right back at me and told me the same. It was disconcerting: you compartmentalise mortality and death deep down inside - sure, at that at some day you're going to die, but dwelling on it isn't particularly healthy. But My World Has Exploded A Little Bit thumps death down on an autopsy table and spills its guts, picking through bereavement, loss and grief.
The tone varies from sentimental miserablism to blunt honesty with stop offs on the way at anger and joy. This is the brainchild of Bella Heesom, who previously impressed in last September's The Woman in the Moon. Beginning as a practical guide to bereavement, she gradually switches gears and ends up at painful self-appraisal. Throughout she's assisted by Esh Alladi, who plays a piano accompaniment and provides comic relief.
The underlying narrative chronicles two deaths. The first is a daughter struggling to cope with her father's fatal illness. Having been diagnosed with an aggressively malignant brain tumour things are gradually winding down, and the daughter explains the stages by which you cope with care, planning and emotional reinforcement. Next up her mother dies, and we repeat the stages, now shot through with a faint anger and guilt.
First impressions are worrying. The prose used to describe the daughter's reactions is syrupy and laden with clunking similes. This, in combination with a manipulative 'okay, cry now' piano score left me primed for a sickly dose of grief porn. Fortunately, the show quickly demonstrates a nimble self-awareness that allows the tone to vary wildly while maintaining a narrative and thematic throughline. Contrasting emotions clash up against one another: moments of deeply felt misery pricked by a comic flourish or upbeat bit of narration.
This gives My World Has Exploded A Little Bit a powerful core, especially as we quickly realise that the 'case studies' we're exploring are obviously derived from Heesom's own experience. Ordinarily I'm deeply suspicious of performers using their shows as a form of therapy. This brand of drama tends towards the narcissistic, treating the audience as distractions along for the ride on someone's personal growth. But though the show is obviously therapeutic for Heesom, it's also a worthwhile piece of drama in its own right.
This is almost entirely down to Heesom's performance - it hits like a freight train. To devise a piece of theatre around your parent's deaths is either bold or foolish - transforming moments of intense pain into something to entertain a bunch of anonymous strangers. But Heesom gradually peels back all the layers of artifice, arriving at a white hot ball of confusion, anger and self-loathing, which explodes in a climax that's spinetingling in its raw honesty.
That said, there's a few flies in the ointment. Esh Alladi grates as the comic relief, his performance a man-childish set of ingratiating grins and clownish waves. I get that for this to work you've got to have a little sugar mixed in with the salt, but his mugging quickly becomes an annoying distraction. He's not exactly helped by the task of tunelessly thumping a keyboard to mark scene changes. I don't know if it's a volume issue, or something to do with the mixing desk, but the sound ran through me like nails down a blackboard.
This aside, My World Has Exploded A Little Bit is an undeniably powerful piece of theatre. Death is an incredibly weightier subjects to tackle, but Heesom approaches it with a perceptive, clear-eyed intelligence. All around me audience members were sniffling and dabbing their eyes - their reaction not caused by sentimental manipulation, but by hard-earned, keenly felt pathos.
Not exactly a cheery night out, but nonetheless an extremely rewarding one.
★★★★
My World Has Exploded A Little Bit is at Tristan Bates Theatre until 15 August. Tickets here.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
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They say to write what you know. Disappearing Wonderful, a new work by an MA Musical Theatre student, sticks to this maxim like glue. This is a musical exploring the frustrations and lack of direction of recent arts graduates. It's a familiar tale: students blinking in the harsh light of day as they emerge like baby birds from the cosy nest of university. Spread ing their little wings they hurl themselves into the unknown. A few lucky ones catch an updraft and vanish over the horizon. The rest smack into the ground in an unemployed tangle of bones and feathers, easy prey for Starbucks, call centres and questionable medical trials.
Disappearing Wonderful is about the latter crowd. We open to a reunion that marks ten years since college. Egos jostle against each other in a sea of mutual paranoia and competitiveness. Amidst braying arseholes and the smug familied, our leads Steve, Freddie and Lizzie are black holes of disappointment. They shrink together for security, feeling stuck on pause while their former classmates race ahead in fast-forward.
In the depths of their misery we flash back to just after their graduation. Determined to give being an artist one last stab they decide to pool their talents. Steve, wrestling with an incomplete novel resolves to finish it, Freddie will try to rediscover a love of painting and Lizzie will manage both of them. Thing is, we already know they're doomed to fail, cloaking events in a gloomy atmosphere.
This makes for a bitter little pill of a musical. Traditionally musical theatre presents audiences with an escape from reality - to a world of epic romance, cartoonish humour or feelgood triumphalism. Here, James Long, the Goldsmiths masters student responsible for the book, music and lyrics, drags the medium down to the kitchen sink (probably piled high with dirty dishes), externalising worries no doubt at the forefront of the minds of many in the audience.
At just an hour long, character development is compressed down to the bare essentials. We learn just enough about Steve, Freddie and Lizzie to sympathise with their situation, but the limited run-time results in them being sketched out in broad strokes. This means that while it's easy to sympathise with them and you recognise your own fears, it's difficult to become properly involved in their individual dramatic arcs. The upshot is that while there's a few dramabombs launched in the last scenes, these fizzle out rather than explode.
But it's easy to forgive the occasional misstep, fumble or bar of off-key singing. Disappearing Wonderful is undoubtedly rough around the edges, but it's this handspun quality that makes it difficult to criticise too harshly. Musically it's consistently entertaining, the book peppered with lyrical flourishes deployed with gusto by the cast. A common pitfall that Long avoids is the temptation to pause the drama to make way for the songs.
With that in mind, my personal highlight was Dannie Payne's performance towards the end of the show. Beans have been spilled all over the place, leaving her she's distraught and vulnerable. Up to this point most of the show has been low-key stuff, but here Payne sings in loud, cathartic lungfuls - giving the show a crucial injection of passion. It's in this performance that the frustrations that have been building up finally dramatically blossom.
Similarly impressive is a sharply written rant on the psychology of CV construction. In a stream of machine-gunned consonants, Patrick McHugh takes us through the game of who you're writing for. You know that what's on your CV is bullshit, the prospective employer knows it's bullshit and yet you both engage in a complicated dance around the truth. Having to pimp yourself out to employers is a dispiriting, soul-crushing experience - outlined perfectly in this mini-monologue which gets an impressed and much deserved round of applause.
Moments like these go a long way towards making Disappearing Wonderful a worthwhile experience. You get the impression that this is the creative team exploring what they can do with the medium. It's musically promising, works well within the confines of its staging and budgetary limitations and wraps up at just the right time. Promising work from all, I look forward to seeing what this team accomplishes on a larger scale.
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