July 5, 2009
No, everyone is not OK. Everyone is heading into their thirties. Everyone is working in hateful, confusing jobs that they're too scared to leave. Everyone is drinking, getting high and having sex with strangers just to feel something. Joel Horwood's finely written trio of bleak and occasionally horrifying dramatic vignettes lay bare the panic running through a certain kind of (admittedly white and middle class) modern life. The first was the strongest dramatically, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and a Alex Beckett playing desperate characters thrown together after separate, massively traumatic events at an after-work party. Its sudden turn from office comedy into bloodier territory was well-handled, as were the subtle shifts from monologue to drama.
The second, a pure monologue by Lachlan Chapman as a sneering lothario brought unexpectedly close - but not close enough - to something like genuine feeling by an office temp, didn't have the same impact. Chapman gave a fine, aggressive delivery, and the obscenity had a Mamet-ish artfulness about it. However, the character's behaviour was so extreme that he didn't seem quite believable, while the temp herself was underdrawn to the point of becoming a faceless, symbolic object of desire. Perhaps this was the point - showing that our man was never really going to escape his cycle of grubby, despair-filled liasons over a single incident - but it did lessen the impact of the tragic finale.
The final section moved closer to 'realism', with Sian Clifford as Em, a woman trying to cope with a physically but decidedly not mentally planned-for pregnancy and her mother's slow death from cancer - a parallel that came close to seeming mawkish and contrived until a plausible reason for the connection placed a moving new perspective on some of the character's behaviour. With the cast playing a variety of characters offering support both wanted and unwanted it seemed overstuffed compared to the previous pieces. Its finale, however, was surprising: Em reclaims a measure of autonomy and revives her creative spirit in a burst of amateurish song and dance that revealed a possibility of hope and redemption absent elsewhere. It stirred up my innate dislike of musicals, but that's my problem, not yours. In a modern theatrical landscape where 'dark' often seems the easy choice, this was a well-judged reminder that, awful though it all is, we do - for the most part - work things out and get by.
The second, a pure monologue by Lachlan Chapman as a sneering lothario brought unexpectedly close - but not close enough - to something like genuine feeling by an office temp, didn't have the same impact. Chapman gave a fine, aggressive delivery, and the obscenity had a Mamet-ish artfulness about it. However, the character's behaviour was so extreme that he didn't seem quite believable, while the temp herself was underdrawn to the point of becoming a faceless, symbolic object of desire. Perhaps this was the point - showing that our man was never really going to escape his cycle of grubby, despair-filled liasons over a single incident - but it did lessen the impact of the tragic finale.
The final section moved closer to 'realism', with Sian Clifford as Em, a woman trying to cope with a physically but decidedly not mentally planned-for pregnancy and her mother's slow death from cancer - a parallel that came close to seeming mawkish and contrived until a plausible reason for the connection placed a moving new perspective on some of the character's behaviour. With the cast playing a variety of characters offering support both wanted and unwanted it seemed overstuffed compared to the previous pieces. Its finale, however, was surprising: Em reclaims a measure of autonomy and revives her creative spirit in a burst of amateurish song and dance that revealed a possibility of hope and redemption absent elsewhere. It stirred up my innate dislike of musicals, but that's my problem, not yours. In a modern theatrical landscape where 'dark' often seems the easy choice, this was a well-judged reminder that, awful though it all is, we do - for the most part - work things out and get by.