Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
The mid-life crisis of a playwright? Simon Stephen's play was loud, racist, sexist and offensive at every opportunity, but for no discernable reason other than to shock its audience. One wonders if the playwright is attempting to try to reach out to a younger crowd by being as shocking as possible, however his attempts translate into a poorly strung together series of sketch like scenes, each more obtuse than the last.
Unfortunately this means that the main plot of the troubled central character is somewhat lost in the midst of paedophiles, swingers and a seemingly pointlessly incestuous, autistic brother. The crudeness of this theatre only led the audience to being much less connected with the characters, rendering the sections which were well written much less emphatic.
The play centres around Danny (John Askew), a soldier returning from Basra who is dissatisfied with his life in England and begins to break down. This lead to an unsettling torture scene climaxing in the death of Jade, a fourteen year old girl, who's precociously sexually lurid character was captured excellently by Georgia Bird.
One should not confuse this reviewer's disdain for the play as disdain for the production, which was a very able translation of the script to stage. The blank back wall of the stage - a row of black painted flats - stuck out, however the ragged flag and newspaper clippings around the rest of the barn complimented the strong messages that Stephens seems to want to impose on the audience. Whilst there were some moments of lighting that seemed sporadic, perhaps I am being slightly too finicky, as the lighting's stark nature fitted aptly with the play's bleak atmosphere.
The characters were very well cast; John Askew's portrayal of the returning soldier, Danny, was extremely confident and energetic. His sustained volume and elongated dramatic pauses unfortunately meant that some of the tension was displaced from the climatic scenes, however in those scenes he was chilling and dominating on stage. His stage presence commanded the audience's attention throughout the drawn out torture scene, as a man not only on the edge of sanity, but hurtling over the brink.
Bengee Gibson and Adam Alcock are also worthy of a mention, injecting humour with their absurd characters and, although the writing teetered on the edge of farcical, the actors made their parts welcome breaks to the serious intensity of the rest of the play. Ryan Gaydon also showed a strong understanding of his part, Lee; Danny's autistic brother, that lent unexpected tenderness and comedy to his awkward character.
As much as I enjoyed the production of the play, competently directed by Chaz Evans, and look forward to seeing the cast perform other material, I was left dissatisfied with the script. Its jolting nature, premature climax and sketch like nature of some of the scenes leads this reviewer to question whether Stephen's Bluebird was his peak.
Seeing as Nouse are so far behind I would rather publish the review I wrote for them here.
Motortown- Simon Stephens
Simon Stephens – 1 star
Motortown cast and crew - 4 stars
Simon Stephen’s Motortown is just the sort of ‘In Yer Face’ theatre that could remind people why seeing plays can be rewarding and provocative and yet as politically sharp as a Dispatches documentary. In this instance the work teeters on the verge of either being all these things or in fact being pointlessly shocking, trashy and for all its overtones of radicalism actually mediocre, banal and at times cringe worthy in its use of politics to disguise poor writing. However, this is just my opinion of Motortown as a play; pleasingly the production more than works because of the humour, skill and confidence of its cast and direction. This was a bad play performed by an excellent, fresh team who were perfectly rehearsed yet effortless in performance.
Our introduction to John Askew’s character, the returned British soldier who turns out to be more than a little disgruntled with the state of affairs in Blighty, takes place when the audience must awkwardly pass him at the Barn’s entrance. From here on in Danny resorts to violence and force to crudely re-enact the life he so desperately wants and the mistreatment of prisoners he missed out on whilst on tour in Basra. Askew consumes and makes an impact on the stage with his physical presence as well as with his psychotic portrayal of a desperate man, his skill went far beyond the limiting caricature the text of the play created. As the play wound on into its strange and messy conclusion Askew managed to hold his own as other characters came and went; a big problem with the restrictive text was that however hard the other cast members worked no character but the protagonist was given enough stage time to become fully realised. Adam Alcock was superb as the ranting and deluded gun modifier Paul and his was the only other character given enough lines to make a real impression. Even Lee, Danny’s brother, felt like a cartoonish portrayal of someone with learning difficulties that could only ever have the semblance of a relationship with his dichotomised squaddie sibling.
The understated, dark settings suited was in contrast to the overstated style of the play; the set was kept simple and focused but unfortunately took a mysteriously long time to move in the blackouts between scenes that I can only assume will improve with practice. The crescendo of Danny’s violence and misanthropy, when he abducts and murders a fourteen year old girl, was emotionally and convincingly acted; the sight of Georgia Bird held by fear to the floor was so uncomfortable and so drawn out the audience began looking for the re-emergence of the murderous Danny instead. Bird added a reality with her performance that made this violent and ridiculous scene work, were it not for her skill this would have been unbearable.
comment deleted by the author Maybe Nouse haven't put it up yet because they're having to spend so much time editing it. Or because they're rubbish.
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