Topless Mum

Topical satire on tabloid journalism and visual fakery. £14.50-£23.50
Oxford Playhouse, Tue July 15th - Sat July 19th 2008

Location

Oxford Playhouse

11-12 Beaumont Street Oxford OX1 2LW

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Lita Doolan July 31, 2008
The extremes to which modern day Army warfare pushes recruits is examined in ‘Topless Mum’ to an understandably more profound depth than the story of media manipulation that is told in parallel. A fake photograph of a prisoner of war being abused by British Soldiers sold off a mobile phone to a reporter sparks one soldier (Mitch) to later lye about his involvement and the informer (Barry) to wilfully offer a paper trail to his own genuine misdemeanours. The wife of the guilty Barry (Alistair Wilkinson) cures her own low self esteem and deteriorating sex life by accepting a centre fold assignment by the newspaper running the story in return for her silence over the matter of the image being a fake. This ‘Topless Mum’ aka Tiffany (Louise Kempton) appears to have the scam all planned out to her best advantage.

However this does not solve the matter entirely for bold brash and brilliant newspaper editor Kyle (Giles Fagan) as the Army’s own khaki kicking lawyer Kennedy (Sylvestra Le Touzel) has access to superior forensics and bears an indomitable passion to set the record straight for the Army she loves. On stage, Jack Phelan’s video design efficiently allows the audience to detect the inconsistencies in the reconstructed prisoner-abuse photograph to hilarious effect: the alleged victim in the staged photo bears a Millwall tattoo. Conor Murphy’s simple set design includes a revolving section centre stage with a table and chairs so the various interviews that form the majority of the action can take place clearly.

This play could simply be about sloppy attitudes within the media but it savagely opens up debate about the damage war does to the minds of army personnel. Discharged Barry, now condemned to a life on crutches, admits to committing irrational abuse yet he seems to be the biggest victim of all. Being an abuser is a truth he struggles to live with in writer Ron Hutchinson’s bravely told story. The last 30 seconds of this show has me hooting with a belly laugh before inhaling a sharp intake of breath with closed eyes for a shocker ending. Caroline Hunt directs a stunning piece of theatre.
Lee Woodward July 15, 2008
Today’s news is riddled with murky issues ripe for satirical attack. When one plucks up the courage to discuss such issues, one does so with the acceptance that there can be no definitive conclusion. Topless Mum’s sights are clearly set on a variety of such issues, although its two primary themes are that of press manipulation and the mistreatment of prisoners of War, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a lover of hard hitting, politically relevant theatre, I found myself hoping that Topless Mum’s writer, Ron Hutchinson — also responsible for Topless Mum’s two previous incarnations, Dead/Lines, and Topless Mum in Dead Hero Shocker — could somehow achieve the impossible. Unfortunately, Ron has failed, and in an ironic parallel to the way Britain has attempted to tackle such World Issues over the past seven years, by setting out to deal with a number of huge problems all at once, he has managed to do no justice to any of them.

Though the play’s structure lacked the necessary cohesion to maintain any of the moods evoked by them, there were a few stand-out moments which not only showcased the talents of the actors involved but also the quality of Ron’s dialogue and the directorial flair of Caroline Hunt. All of the performances were decent too; though, Sylvestra Le Touzel was particularly excellent in her portrayal of Kennedy, a military lawyer struggling to unify her approach to War and Justice. Sylvestra’s scenes with Mitch – a character also conflicted between his conscience and his duty, played with quiet intensity by Jason Deer—buzzed with repressed emotion.

Sadly, by the time Barry, Topless Mum’s main protagonist, revealed his ‘Beretta’ handgun, all of the play’s previous attempts to deal with this incendiary compound of subject matters intelligently were lost in the misfired pursuit of a cathartic conclusion.
Marie The Minx July 15, 2008
Expecting a kind of laugh-out-loud satire on the media industry and something to do with a media scandal featuring a soldier returning from Afghanistan, I was not disappointed, although the play was much darker than I anticipated and despite some comedic moments, the story is not very funny at all – just tragically real and thought provoking.

Featuring just six actors, Topless Mum is an example of the fallout of war and its effects on soldiers – and their families – and their media portrayal when the so-called heroes' stories end up in the tabloids on civvy street. Our story tells of Barry, a soldier blown up in Afghanistan and back at home having suffered horrific injuries. Barry’s chavvy wife, Tiffany – surely modelled on Eastenders’ Bianca Jackson – has encouraged him to come up with a story of torture and exploitation based on a photo – which is run by a tabloid newspaper, but then exposed as a fake – or is it?

The play’s title Topless Mum is really a red herring of what is at the core of the story, and no doubt deliberately meant as a twist on the headlines the media use to scandalise and sex-up its exposés. The play explores the merry-go-round of a media scandal and the subsequent fallout of the participants – the journo, the editor, the soldier, the wife, the bystander, and the army lawyer – exposing damaged characters and flawed motivations, and real human tragedy, topped with the notion of ‘what comes around goes around’.

Performances were good and strong, with some great scenes between Mitch (the bystander) and Kennedy (the lawyer). An interesting play on words led to some clever re-enacting regarding the journalist’s taped story – as writer Ron Hutchinson says, ‘I do a play where what you see is what is happening about an event that may not quite be the event that you’re told it is…’

This play is thought provoking, well acted with a sharp and snappy script – leaving the audience with an uncomfortable aftertaste of the wars faced by our soldiers – both in service and back at home – and their exploitation by the media and their families. Enjoyable, but dark, and great fodder for deep after-show conversation.
Gabrielle Brown July 15, 2008
In this country ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers’ has become a cliché. It is a maxim we share with each other often without thought – we assume, and accept, that the press manipulates ‘fact’ to their suit their own objectives. Topless Mum, written by Ron Hutchinson, picks up on this concept and through a provocative layer cake of gripping dialogue and hurtling plot twists weaves it into such a form that the audience is ultimately led to question whether fact and truth exist at all.
Topless Mum begins with a young working-class couple, Barry and Tiffany, supplying a British newspaper journalist with a photograph appearing to show an ‘atrocity’ apparently witnessed by Barry while he was serving in Afghanistan. The journalist is eager to publish the story, seeing it as her chance to make a difference, instead of printing meaningless stories about soap stars and reality television programmes. However, as different accounts and revelations are made, the motives of all involved in the ‘story’ become conflicting, hypercritical, confused and often futile.
The opening scenes of Topless Mum are appropriately misleading. The play first appears to be concerned with revealing the British press to be dishonest and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to be ineffectual – to me important, though not original, concepts. However, as the plot progresses, much wider issues are explored and the subjects of war, crime and self-interested journalism sit merely as a platform to consider the purpose of truth and the power of storytelling, in all areas of human existence.
Each character is performed seamlessly, there was not one moment during the performance when I wasn’t gripped; with a minimal set, simplistic costumes and very little action, the dialogue was as exquisitely delivered as it was written. Mitch, played by Jason Deer, was perhaps the character who appears to make the most effort to convey the truth: he admits that in Afghanistan while his peers would mock the local populace, he looked upon the Afghans with admiration and longing as they eagerly united to attend mosque. He expressed a desire to have their freedom – they weren’t concerned with asking ‘why’, they simply ‘believed’.
The theory that establishments – religious, political, military – are as liberating as they are constricting is a recurrent theme throughout the play. Barry and Mitch are most comfortable following orders and not having to question what they are doing; outside of these confines they are lost, or even dangerous.
Perception versus reality is a theme often explored in art; however, in Topless Mum it’s not the art’s authenticity that is being questioned, it’s the very existence of authenticity in the first place. The play suggests that there are always many truths: at the time of an event there is one truth, at the time of reporting it there may be another. Considering Topless Mum centres on a pair of scheming journalists, a couple of con artists and a not entirely straight lawyer, the lack of any bona fide liars is perhaps its most interesting trait.
A powerful and satirical play exploring just how much the tabloid media (and sharp witted individuals) manipulate words and pictures to show multiple and often contrasting meanings. A quest for truth - examining what is real and what is fake, and whether life in reality is ever that straightforward.

Based around a photo sold to a tabloid newspaper depicting British soldiers committing atrocities in Afghanistan, the production cleverly highlights and exaggerates the perceptions and actions of the media when desperately trying to break a story. In a world where violence and sex sells, they quickly set upon the photo and later convince the soldier's wife, who sold it to them, to have her topless photograph included in the paper. The audience watches gleefully as the unscrupulous journalists find themselves in deeper and deeper trouble - the photo unearthed as a fake and then, a representation of something even more sinister.

No only does Topless Mum explore the perceptions of the media, but also the behaviour of soldiers during war time. Although a controversial subject, the production manages to explore a variety of views and attitudes - that of serving soldiers on the ground, senior army officials and the public - without causing offence and showing the individual and collective dilemmas faced by all concerned. Can one person be a soldier and a peace-keeper? Can another be a lawyer and a soldier?

The strong cast of six were extremely convincing, powerfully portraying the complicated plot. There were some truly intense moments, especially when soldiers explained their actions and emotions, holding the audience’s full attention. The moments of black humour and the exaggeration of stereotypes, such as the journalists, balanced the play with lightheated asides. The use of props was particularly compelling with the background from the photo - a shipping container - on stage throughout, with photos projected on to its wall. A very simple, yet effective stage.

Topless Mum is a deeply satirical and thought provoking play – really challenging our perception of the words and images we see everyday.
Topless Mum is a satire on war and journalism, but it’s one that lacks bite or life. The production at the Oxford Playhouse is slick, but couldn’t make up for a poor script which shouted rather than spoke its ideas and didn‘t rise above cliché.

The play tells the story of Barry, a British soldier recently returned from Afghanistan, and his wife Tiffany, who conspire to scam two tabloid journalists into publishing faked photos of prisoners being abused. This photo is repeatedly shown the background as the characters argue about the ins and outs of how the British tabloids present modern conflicts. The theme of the unreliability of visual images is hammered home a few times, with both the faked image of torture and Tiffany’s desire to be a topless model showing how easily images can lie.

As a commentary on modern British warfare - Topless Mum mentions both Iraq and Afghanistan as well as alluding back to the Falklands and World War II - the play never connects with the reality of any of those conflicts. The image of the foreign prisoner which should be central to the plot is strangely distant, with these prisoners always referred to as “them” by all characters. The soldiers represented are inarticulate and brutal, and the journalists shallow and self-interested.

The dialogue was clunky, and the characters never came to life through no fault of the actors. With flat, clichéd conversations none of them can really engage you. Topless Mum is genuinely patronising to everyone it tries to represent. As a piece of drama it is turgid, convoluted and predictable all at the same time. One to miss.

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