January 23, 2008
Cathy Thomas' sharp new writing premiered to a rather sparse audience at the BT last night. Three anonymous actors wove together the story of Boy, Girl and Writer in a beautifully fluid performance. They have the difficult job of pausing in their performance to make asides, of turning from characters in Writer's imagination to real people with problems in real relationships, and this was done smoothly and with poise.
The wry observations in the script elicited chuckles from the audience. A chat-up scene is particularly slick, and most of the lines sounded like they'd just been thought up rather than learnt, with real freshness. The scene where Sylvia antagonises her boyfriend is comically excrutiating! And the leitmotifs of buttons and philately are neatly set up and then casually referred to, creating a tidiness in the piece.
It's probably not strong lines that stick in your head after this performance, but the ideas behind the them. The style is very much casual and naturalistic rather than declamatory but the theme of the impossibility of expressing what you mean and the ideas and illustrations are powerful: that in stories love is fictional while dinosaurs are real, that relationships are littered with annoyances and regrets, that being any girl in any city is both lonely and powerful, that Girl meets Boy over and over again, and it doesn't always turn out all right.
In addition the actors create in the bare BT a real sense of atmosphere. Most of the action is set in Paris, and the feeling of young people adrift in a world of lost buttons, regrets and a place they don't really belong is conjured up disturbingly well. This must have been particularly hard in front of the undeservedly small audience!
There were the inevitable rushed lines, particularly at the beginning before the nerves calmed down! A couple of Writer's lines coincided with chairs moving, and with so many pauses / interruptions between Boy and Girl there was a bit too much milling about, though this is a personal bugbear, and not something that damaged the performance significantly!
All in all this brief piece leaves a pleasantly unsettled feeling. Well worth tasting.
The wry observations in the script elicited chuckles from the audience. A chat-up scene is particularly slick, and most of the lines sounded like they'd just been thought up rather than learnt, with real freshness. The scene where Sylvia antagonises her boyfriend is comically excrutiating! And the leitmotifs of buttons and philately are neatly set up and then casually referred to, creating a tidiness in the piece.
It's probably not strong lines that stick in your head after this performance, but the ideas behind the them. The style is very much casual and naturalistic rather than declamatory but the theme of the impossibility of expressing what you mean and the ideas and illustrations are powerful: that in stories love is fictional while dinosaurs are real, that relationships are littered with annoyances and regrets, that being any girl in any city is both lonely and powerful, that Girl meets Boy over and over again, and it doesn't always turn out all right.
In addition the actors create in the bare BT a real sense of atmosphere. Most of the action is set in Paris, and the feeling of young people adrift in a world of lost buttons, regrets and a place they don't really belong is conjured up disturbingly well. This must have been particularly hard in front of the undeservedly small audience!
There were the inevitable rushed lines, particularly at the beginning before the nerves calmed down! A couple of Writer's lines coincided with chairs moving, and with so many pauses / interruptions between Boy and Girl there was a bit too much milling about, though this is a personal bugbear, and not something that damaged the performance significantly!
All in all this brief piece leaves a pleasantly unsettled feeling. Well worth tasting.