February 26, 2010
This is a brand-new play by Oliver Rowse, the writer of the much-acclaimed Udder, which is simultaneously hugely bold and bafflingly weird. It’s bold because, as the title indicates, it sets out quite deliberately to bore the audience to death by presenting them with a main character who is monumentally insensitive and inflicts his endless, self-aggrandizing, convoluted, pompous, narcissistic, selfish, and staggeringly dull monologues on his downtrodden wife. I’m not being mean here - the flyer blurb itself describes the play as disclosing ‘the conversational labours ... kitchen crimes and descent of an evil bore’.
After the first ten minutes or so you conclude that this character, Edward Fish, must be absolutely fantastic in bed, because there could be no other reason his long-suffering wife would put up with him. But no – he attempts to kiss her, and she reacts with unmistakeable disgust. So what on earth is going on? And gradually you become intrigued – just enough to stop you leaving in the interval, when your teenage daughter announces that she would rather gnaw her own legs off than remain.
In the second act Constance Fish’s old school friend Rachel arrives for supper, and we find Edward repeating exactly the same tedious stories, word for word, but transformed by the dynamic tension provided by Rachel’s alcohol-fuelled (and otherwise inexplicable) appreciation of his charms, and his wife’s very evident dread and anxiety about what he’s going to do. I won’t reveal the rest of the plot, such as it is – suffice to say that Edward (and possibly Oliver) is addicted to game-playing.
I wouldn’t really call this a comedy; the audience does laugh from time to time in the second act, but it’s the uneasy laughter of those who are relieved that the production hasn’t trousered their nine quid and presented them with invisible haute couture. It is cleverly constructed and well-written, and extremely well-acted, by Tom Palmer as Edward, Ed Pearce as Constance and Lindsay Dukes as Rachel. It doesn’t have quite the satirical bite of Udder, unless the irony is entirely at the audience’s expense, which is what I mean by bafflingly weird. We aren’t given any context for the bizarre relationship endured by Edward and Constance, no back-story, no explanation, no apology. It is what it is. There’s no denouement.
Tonight’s first night was packed, and the audience was very appreciative, so if this sounds like your cup of tea you should probably nip along and bag your tickets before they all sell out.
After the first ten minutes or so you conclude that this character, Edward Fish, must be absolutely fantastic in bed, because there could be no other reason his long-suffering wife would put up with him. But no – he attempts to kiss her, and she reacts with unmistakeable disgust. So what on earth is going on? And gradually you become intrigued – just enough to stop you leaving in the interval, when your teenage daughter announces that she would rather gnaw her own legs off than remain.
In the second act Constance Fish’s old school friend Rachel arrives for supper, and we find Edward repeating exactly the same tedious stories, word for word, but transformed by the dynamic tension provided by Rachel’s alcohol-fuelled (and otherwise inexplicable) appreciation of his charms, and his wife’s very evident dread and anxiety about what he’s going to do. I won’t reveal the rest of the plot, such as it is – suffice to say that Edward (and possibly Oliver) is addicted to game-playing.
I wouldn’t really call this a comedy; the audience does laugh from time to time in the second act, but it’s the uneasy laughter of those who are relieved that the production hasn’t trousered their nine quid and presented them with invisible haute couture. It is cleverly constructed and well-written, and extremely well-acted, by Tom Palmer as Edward, Ed Pearce as Constance and Lindsay Dukes as Rachel. It doesn’t have quite the satirical bite of Udder, unless the irony is entirely at the audience’s expense, which is what I mean by bafflingly weird. We aren’t given any context for the bizarre relationship endured by Edward and Constance, no back-story, no explanation, no apology. It is what it is. There’s no denouement.
Tonight’s first night was packed, and the audience was very appreciative, so if this sounds like your cup of tea you should probably nip along and bag your tickets before they all sell out.