Art of darkness… The Dark Room, Theatre 503, The Latchmere, Battersea

The last time I was at the Latchmere was to see a one man show of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, switch forward a few decades and I have just seen something altogether more shaded.

Angela Betzien’s play is Australian Gothic, six characters, three separate stories all intertwining like vines choking a colonial mansion house. We’re out in the Northern Territories, there’s no civilisation for days and we’re jammed into a motel with ghosts, hysteria, drunken discord and the still beating bloodied heart of  a secret that will change these sad, desperate people for ever.

It’s cleverly staged by director Audrey Sheffield, with all six players being in the same space at varying points and, occasionally, saying the same lines in over-lapping sections of dialogue. It’s no wonder Betzien won Best New Australian Work at the Sydney Theatre Awards, her writing is so emphatically on point with a jaw-dropping narrative discipline that leaves you surprised when all the strands are finally tied together… even then she has a couple of body blows to deliver. You think you’re second-guessing the storyline but it’s too well wilfully elusive for that.

There’s also something of the style of Betzien’s fierce compatriot Nick Cave in a tale dealing in so much horror and that obstinately refuses to compromise. This is about an abuse so ordinary it simply does not deserve to be sugared.

Katy Brittain

In the close confines of the Latchmere, up those stairs that make you feel locked off from the reality of Batersea outside, this is a potent mix indeed.

The first couple arrive in the Motel. A youth worker, Anni (Katy Brittain) who brings with her a dirt-encrusted teen Grace (Annabel Smith) who is wearing a sack over her head and is clearly disturbed. It’s an unsettling start and clearly there’s not only any way that Grace will calm down… she is very intelligent but cannot rationalise her way out of her suffering. Anni is experienced but she struggles to keep pace with her charge’s speed of thought as her mind slithers around the burning scar of her brutalised experience. She has ADHD, PTSD, ODD and “oppositional defiance disorder…” she’s heard all the attempts to box her neuroses.

As Anni and Grace dance or rather box their way around each other another couple enter who are also at odds… a local policeman, Stephen (Tamlyn Henderson) and his pregnant wife Emma (Fiona Skinner) a teacher. They are staying in the motel rather than drive all the way home after a wedding in which Stephen was best man and, having been drinking all day, he’s not exactly picking up on the subtler tones of his wife’s conversation.

Fiona Skinner and Tamlyn Henderson

Stephen’s colleague, Craig was the man getting married and Emma resents the way he fawns over his boss… the alpha male in this law enforcement backwater. Emma has not enjoyed herself and views the nuptuals more like a rally than a wedding. Something has happened, the police are closing ranks and Craig is at the heart of it. Emma and Stephen left Sydney after he turned whistle-blower and now his bravery has deserted him. Staggeringly drunk he only wants to catch the bus to re-join Craig and the boys for more drinking…

Enter Craig (Alasdair Craig) – same space, different time and room – who is pensive and nursing a full tumbler of brown gin… he’s got thinks on his mind… It’s only when he and Stephen interact – these cross-character moments are so well worked – that we understand that a boy died in custardy and that Stephen is expected to cover-up by omitting certain facts and over-emphasising others. It’s the old code and yet having broken it once at some cost, it is sad to see him out of options and his integrity under threat.

There are stories, first from Grace then from Emma about a young aboriginal boy who was disturbed and also sexually confused. He was often seen wearing a dress and otherwise confusing the locals but Grace knew him and Emma believed she could help him. At one point, Grace pulls a lamp out of the wall and in the flash of darkness we glimpse a young black man in a dress… Is he real or haunting the young woman.

Alasdair Craig

The mystery deepens and Joseph (Paul Adeyefa) will eventually make an appearance in revelatory flashback. Everyone is connected and everything is caused by abuse and neglect with people denying their own instincts in an attempt to maintain what passes for normality in this far away place.

This is the kind of play that will linger in your mind for days. The cast all give incredibly committed performances and there must be a fight for the throat sweets after every show, especially from Annabel Smith: Grace is so far fallen… she roars in anger and fear. Her character is terrified and, gradually every one else joins her.

The play was produced by Paperbark Theatre and sponsored by the NSPCC in recognition of its message about the enduring hell of abuse.

The Dark Room runs until Saturday 2nd December 2017… it’s visceral, unflinching, and brutally soulful … please don’t miss it! Tickets available from the Theatre 503 website.

IThankYou Theatre Rating: ****

All photographs courtesy of Alex Brenner. 

Many Perries make merry… The Very Perry Show, Hen and Chickens

If you dream of waking with a waxwork model of Ken Barlow, swimming free with the Amish and making a documentary of your mother on drugs… this is the show for you’ve been waiting for! Kate Perry (no, not that one… although I’m sure she could be...) has a rare form of theatrical multiple personality order and so thoroughly does she inhabit her vivid characters, she all but disappears from the start of her show to the end.

In the stark set of the Hen and Chickens, Kate introduced herself and then, grey wig on and handbag slung over she instantly became Carmel, a pensioner so enmeshed with Coronation Street that she even has her hair done before watching the mighty Kenneth Barlow on screen.

Perry doesn’t just do voice and characterisation though, she has imagined lives of intricate detail for all of her characters. For Carmel, from Derry, the Salford soap has an almost mystical relevance with the first episode aired just as her daughter was born. After staring at Ena Sharples hair net she glanced upon the youthful form of the Street’s angry young man, Kenneth Barlow and thus began a half-century and more of dedication. But Perry doesn’t overplay her characters, she is comically restrained and that makes them endearing as well as believable and funny

Bridget the menace

Slightly more malevolent is Suzie Headley-Simmons, a 12-year old Home Counties misfit suspended from public school and intent on making a documentary on her drug-addled mother called Mummy on the Brink. Mother, a “Zimovane Zombie” is generally whacked on some prescription drug or other and naturally her daughter can only view this as YouTube gold… Throughout Suzie plays “herself” reading her diary which is a deceptively complex narrative sleight of hand… almost as if we’re the social worker listening to her confessions.

Next up is a grow-up, Marie a short-sighted butcher, who gets the call when her father suffers a heart attack, and she goes to see him in hospital. Marie reads an emotional diary as she relives her childhood on her Dad’s farm… again it’s confessional and ultimately shocking as her real feelings are gradually revealed. There’s a twist in the tale and it’s funny.

Now we were in the air being entertained by Bridget, a six-year old, who has observed far too much about her fellow passengers on an all too long-haul flight. Wearing a lion’s head hat and goggles, Bridget sips on a bottle of coke as she reveals her love of “Poley Bears” and money making plans for her Holy Communion. She also delights in pointing out how much the grown-ups have been drinking and asking just why some have spent so long in the toilets. A charming child…

Jimmy

Changing sex and multiplying the age by 7-8 times we get Jimmy a pigeon fancier from Bolton extolling the values of his return-flight heroes, covered in droppings and with the wayward, un-self-conscious demeanour of someone lost in their obsession. Jimmy is philosophically devoted to his pigeons and can barely discuss them without the far-away look of someone who’s heart flies up with them on every journey. Then again he may just be mad.

Talking of which, the last cameo is the most surreal and surprising as Perry emerges with white head dress and shawl as Mary Peachy-Bender an Amish woman with issues. M P-B has six “childrens” with her husband Ishmael and longs to be free with “Samuel”… This character was so subtle, Perry changed the narrative from slap-stick to romance and then something more as Mary swam free in the lake… a genuinely moving mime. It’s a dream of freedom for many but a far less commodified escape than most of us can imagine… We liked Mary and wanted her to break free.

Around the World in six characters, it felt like we’d travelled far in just about 69 minutes. This is all testament to Perry’s skills as a writer as well as performer. She smuggles in some poignant meanings into these short character studies and there’s a universal concern with emotional honesty that brings the audience in close with each character.

Funny, heart-warming and totally engaging, it’s no wonder this show is off to Broadway as part of the prestigious United Theatre Solo Festival! Catch it if you can before it flies off like a pigeon!

The Very Perry Show plays until 11^th so be quick! Details and tickets on the Hen & Chicken  Unrestricted View sitehere.

IThankYou Rating: **** Clever character comedy!

Photos from Annette Flynn.

Only a game? The Red Lion, Trafalgar Studios

It was fitting to see former QPR, Spurs and England player Gerry Francis taking his seat for this examination of the primal appeal of football - he is one of the greats and, indeed, a legend. The Red Lion is split between despair and eternal hope and there are times the language is poetic as Patrick Maber’s fluid prose took us deeper into our collective love of the game and sometimes the actors almost sang the words, just as we sing from the terraces.

You might have figured Mr Marber as an Arsenal fan, part of the well-educated Islington elite favouring the continental sophistication of these elegant under-achievers but for a number of years he forsook the former "Invincibles" to not only support but co-own Lewes AFC, a lower-league outfit whose existence he helped to ensure. As a former board member, he knows full well the tortured soul of the game even in the Isthmian League’s lower reaches.

Football rarely comes across well in performance arts – although for various reasons I never saw Fever Pitch (what Liverpool fan would...) – but Marber hits the target blasting the ball into the top of the net with unstoppable accuracy.

John Bowler and Stephen Tompkinson

He is aided by the quite exceptional performances of the three players, sorry, performers with Stephen Tompkinson, John Bowler and Dean Bone (if you’re good enough, you’re old enough!) who form a powerhouse midfield trio who not only fully express themselves, they simply leave everything on the pitch…

Marber re-cut the play for its performance at Newcastle’s Live Theatre company and re-located it to the North East and the Northern League, the second oldest league in the World. This is one of the hotbeds of football, with deep roots intertwined with the local industries of ship building and coal mining. Here as much as Glasgow and Lancashire the passions run as deep as local culture and industrial rivalries. Bill Shankly may have had his tongue in cheek but we all know the truth in his suggestion that football was not a matter of life and death, it was more important than that. Yet, in the decades after that statement, football has lost its way as TV revenues dwarfed gate receipts and the game became business as sport.

This is reflected even in the lower leagues and Tomkinson’s Jim Kidd is a manager with Mourinho ideals, someone who thinks success is all that counts and that loyalty means just doing what he says. It’s a quite superb performance with the lad turning on an emotional sixpence, likeable to loath-able in equal measure, he has all of the best lines – this is a very funny play – and also reduces you to the verge of tears with a back story of loss and desertion. He can’t really love the club or even the game as he doesn’t really know how to care for himself and he’s not alone.

C'mon you irons! John Bowler

John Bowler plays Johnny Yates also known as “Ledg”, the man who once scored the winning goal in the second round of the FA Cup thereby ensuring the big payday that enabled the club to build its main stand. He later managed the club but his life fell apart when they were relegated and his home life collapsed along with his health. He eventually returned to become the club’s kit man still feted for past glories.

The play attacks at pace and for a while it’s the jokes that turn your head with Jim lambasting the club’s groundsman, who never forks the pitch, and  after Yates points out it’s laid on a former plague pit, the manager responds “I wonder how it drains so well?” Tompkison’s comic timing is absolutely spot on and it’s a joy to watch him run with Marber’s elaborate lines as if he’s just thought of them.

Bowler's Yates is the emotional heart of the play though, representing that era when loyalty was to the club, the fans and the community. He was a wholehearted player who threw is body on the line, passionate enough to make his lack of flair irrelevant and good enough to play a couple of seasons in the old Division Three. Now he has an almost religious faith in football to go with his life-long association with a club his father also played for.

Dean Bone as Jordan - a footballing rose between two thorns

He says he “found” Jordan (Dean Bone) when the youngster arrives at the club looking for a game almost like finding Jesus, the need for a saviour is so strong. Jordan has that supernatural edge rarely seen in non-league: he can play. Yet he also has a past and is hiding something from both manager and mentor… His arrival presents both with a chance to see their dreams realised as he guides the team to the top of the league. For Jim it’s the promise of a title and a better club, not to mention a transfer and a “bonus” whilst for John it’s the chance to see genuine talent thrive for its own sake.

The two men represent outlooks from a more collectively-conscious Britain to one soured by greed and self-delusion. Jordan comes from the chaos forged by the latter… it’s a very Brexit play, not in terms of subject but in mood. Where do we go now?

Max Roberts directs with a high pressing game which maintains narrative shape and impact throughout. He turns the Trafalgar studios into a cauldron of passion which pulls the compact audience in. At the end we let rip with cheers on top of applause – it's a great play for the neutral but we’d all recognised the need to take sides long before the end.

Don’t miss this one, superlative performances, high emotion and the determination that, even with 90 minutes fast approaching, it’s still all to play for: Total Theatre!!

The Red Lion plays until 2nd December and tickets are available from the Trafalgar Studios website. It is so strong I would be very surprised if it doesn't get promotion very soon!

IThankYouRating (has to be) *****

All photos courtesy of Mark Douet.