We Choose To Go To The Moon - Cape Theatre

Seen 7th Nov 2015 at Camden People's Theatre, London.

We Choose To Go To The Moon by Cape Theatre begins with a plea to the audience. We are asked to laugh in the right places, cry in the right places, to applaud, and most importantly, to love the performers. Like, really love them. Like, travel halfway round the world just to see them for two seconds kind of love. That love born from pure admiration, pure idolatry. And it is up to Cassie and Reena to help us get to that point.

It’s a charming beginning, and intriguing that already, we love the double act standing before us, but for none of the reasons they are striving for. Their aim is to reach a level of charisma akin to their own idol, John F Kennedy, with the aid of a self-help book - 'The Charisma Effect' by Andrew Leigh. Over the ensuing comedy of donning suits, changing their smiles, and putting a twinkle in their eyes via eyedrops and various sliced vegetables, we watch their personalities dissipate and their obsession increase.

It’s a journey that I’m sure most of us can recognise. I remember drawing a tattoo around the top of my arm and pulling two strands of hair around of my face to be just like Sporty Spice. I also had an odd fascination with Lara Croft (strong independent woman), and wore combat shorts accordingly. But, I remember the moment when I wasn’t sure where the obsession stopped and I began, and this blurring is what this show brings into interrogation.

Initially, what I found most interesting was that two girls were idolising a man, and it is a vibrant nod to feminism that they should strive to be the sort of person who ran a country, charmed an entire nation and could stand and speak before an audience of 35,000 people. As such, the show builds towards them both delivering John F Kennedy’s ‘We choose to go to the moon’ speech verbatim, and with precisely the same amount of charisma. But, it is more vibrant that they should come to learn that simply being themselves is the most charismatic they can be, and that they should wish to keep the suits.

The show is a unique execution of a familiar concept, full of charm and light-heartedness. The double act itself is ready for more growth, and there is space for them to be more daring in their relationship. The moments of potential conflict between them are the most delicious, because we know that their friendship will be ever-stronger by the end of the show. The text itself lags in places, and the overall pace would benefit from more verve and agility. But, it’s an early glimpse at an exciting company. All the ingredients are there for a sparkling, dynamic, hilarious show, ripe with schadenfreude and silly dancing.

We Choose To Go To The Moon was performed at Camden People's Theatre, programmed as part of the Fitter, Happier, More Productive season.

Four Minutes Twelve Seconds - Trafalgar Studios 2

What's the biggest lesson you can learn from your time in education? What’s really the stuff that’s going to propel you into the big wide world as a brilliant, honest, successful human being? In what context will your parents smile proudly and say “Yes, yes she/he did really well”?

So goes the predicament that Jack’s parents face at the heart of Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, written by James Fritz. As it gradually transpires that their son has made a video of him having sex with his girlfriend Cara, and that the sex was not consensual, and that the video is plastered across the internet, the morality of the ensuing action spirals out of control. Do they protect their son until he has completed his exams ahead of going to university? Or do they report him to the police and teach him the error of his ways?

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and the play brings up gleefully horrifying revelations that hurtle Di and David’s marriage into disarray. The pace and manner in which we are fed the information is delicious, until we are an audience aghast with wide eyes and hands over our mouths.

Fritz’ play is structurally satisfying and topically provocative, and the liveness of watching the action unfold makes for a very short 90 minutes. Anna Ledwich’s direction is sharp, and the performances are consistently bright, focused and engaging. While Kate Maravan and Jonathan McGuiness as Di and David thrive in the darkness of the comedy, Ria Zmitrowicz’ feisty performance as Cara is the grounding voice of reason. Meanwhile, Anyebe Godwin’s charming performance as Jack’s friend Nick brings warmth to what looks like a sorry state of affairs for the next generation.

It's just so solidly realised, with astute things to say about class, sexual consent and the internet. It is an intriguing choice that we should never meet or hear from Jack: all we get is heresy - a version of events - much like the internet itself. The play highlights the terrifying capacity for news to spread widely, quickly and permanently across the internet, to the point where the original author need not even grace the stage.

The play and its production are both provocative and clever, and are as inclined to moments of comedy as they are to pertinent questions. Will Jack glide through higher education and a sterling career without a whisper or repeat of his past misdemeanours? We can only hope so.
http://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2015/four-minutes-twelve-seconds/

The Session - Soho Theatre

Originally written for Exeunt.

The Session, written by Andrew Muir, is the story of a British man and a Polish woman meeting, falling in love, and experiencing the breakdown of their marriage. The audience play their marriage counsellor for the evening, and are privy to the re-enactment of their lightest and darkest moments together in a bid to move forwards.

The play covers some big topics, from language, to love, to home and belonging. But most broadly, it is about communication, and when Robbie (Tom Shepherd) and Lena (Izabella Urbanowicz) first meet, they can barely say two words to each other. They speak charmingly in physical gestures and simple English, and their relationship is born of a pure love and appreciation of the other person’s energy and physicality.

It raises interesting questions, particularly at a time when immigration is such a ripe topic for discussion. When Lena threatens to leave Robbie and move back home to Poland, we are willing her to stay as much out of repairing their marriage as for her to feel like she belongs here. But will that be possible while her husband won’t even bother to learn Polish, and takes no interest in Polish traditions? After all, now she’s in Britain, what possible use could those things have?

The depth of their love onstage is, however, not totally convincing. This might be due to the fact that the majority of the text is addressed to the audience, and the confusion created by the characters talking individually about different things. Nonetheless, it is interesting to observe how we as an audience oscillate between willing them to succeed in healing their marriage, and thinking they’re better off apart. Indeed, if only they spoke about the same thing, at the same time, in the same language, maybe we would expect them to stand chance.

Whereas a lot can be said for the play, less can be said for the production. It’s nice to see the text up on its feet: the dynamics of the story are approached delicately and sensitively, the comedic moments land well enough, and Debbie Hannan’s direction ensures the journey between the highs and lows moves elegantly. The set is simple and practical, and props lay covered in fabric, waiting to be unveiled and spark a memory. But I’m not sure we learn anything more about the characters as a result of them standing before us. It is a beautiful depiction of the story, but it is a safe one, nuzzled behind the beats of the text itself. Perhaps it speaks too plainly.

The Notebook - Forced Entertainment - Battersea Arts Centre

Written for Exeunt.

This production of The Notebook - a translation and adaptation of a novel by Hungarian writer Ágosta Kristóf - is conceived and devised by Forced Entertainment, and performed at the Battersea Arts Centre.

I’m going to launch right in here, to what I believe to be the heart of the matter, and talk about the translation of the book to the stage. I’m not doing so necessarily to discuss form, nor to discuss it in any kind of zeitgeisty context, but because I think the process of that adaptation is the very reason that this is a stunning piece of theatre.

I’m not saying that the book should have been made into a piece of theatre, nor that the production is in any way superior to the book. They are separate entities, and I spent most of my journey home wondering why - why this adaptation had to happen.

The Forced Entertainment production, directed by Tim Etchells, presents us with two grown men on a stage populated by two wooden chairs, atmospheric lighting and a couple of bottles of water. the men are dressed identically, they move identically, and they speak either in unison or take turns. The story is of two young boys - identical twins - who are evacuated to their Grandmother’s farm in a Europe impoverished by World War II. The men on stage, Robin Arthur and Richard Lowdon, take on the character of one twin each, and read the story from identical yellow notebooks.

The notebook is something that the twins bought together with the intention of compiling within its pages accounts of their days and adventures. One of the rules of the notebook is that the stories in it are written as truths, devoid of opinion and emotional bias. The result is an emotionally cold retelling of the darkest corners of their young years - the death of family members, visions of bestiality, perversion, the burning of children and the horrors of the war. 

Salient point number one: due to the poker-faced reading - the events told as plain fact - the audience’s imagination runs clear and sharp with images that I - personally - will struggle to forget. As such, it is when the performers stop to move their chairs, to take a sip of water, or to begin the next chapter, that there is a chilling collective recognition of the fragile humanity of it all. 

The next crucial element is the delivery of the story. Our performers are two grown men, they are two grown men playing twins, they are men playing young boys. This disjunct brings to life the very sentiment that is instrumental to a lot of the discomfort of the piece: that the two boys are experiencing horrors beyond their young years. The difference in age creates a sorrowful image of the maturity the boys have been forced to ascend to. Moreover (without giving away any spoilers), to see the twins lifted off the page of the book, physicalised as separate people who move, think and speak as one, makes the idea of any kind of separation all the more heartbreaking. 

Still, I'm not intending to say that this production is an enhancement of the book. It is just a different way of telling the tale, and in this regard, all of my wondering “why” has come back as controversially superfluous. The production harks at the golden notion of theatre as storytelling, stripped of spectacle and complication. Nonetheless, it is a testament to the book itself and Forced Entertainment’s adaptation that we should have the will to stay until the end, for over two hours. The students who were sat next to me couldn’t quite believe how long they were going to have to sit without an interval, and indeed, many may consider it a feat of endurance. Makers of theatre are told never to put a clock in the set because the audience will only be focused on how long they have been there, and how much longer is left. Unfortunately the notebooks from which Arthur and Lowden read have a similar effect, and it may well be personal to me that I found it excruciating to watch how few pages were turned and how many remained. 

Yet, there’s something in the endurance that makes the ending all the richer. The content of what we have sat through has been undeniably moving, evocative, beautiful and devastating. And as the boys become real to us, the passing pages of their lives until the end of the notebook are, on reflection, something quite special. We watch the passing minutes of youth, we will a war to end. This stark piece of theatre reminds us that it is the moments in between the chapters that are most poignant. 

First Love Is The Revolution - Soho Theatre

Originally written for Exeunt.

I tried to approach my viewing of First Love is the Revolution with no preconceptions. I expected nothing and everything, and was ready to be hit with whatever nonsense and brilliance the Soho Theatre main stage had to offer.

Even still, I was knocked sideways. This play by Rita Kalnejais follows the story of two star-crossed lovers forbidden from being with each other because of their warring families, surrounded by brutal murder and prejudice. But the emotional rawness of this Romeo and Juliet tale, coupled with the darkness of a depressed mother and murdered father between them, is framed with ridiculous comedy and joyful absurdity. The catalyst for this combination is the very thing that took me aback: this is no simple boy-meets-girl story, it is boy-meets-fox, complete with hunting, romping, and banter with other animals.

In this respect, it is the movement direction that deserves significant praise, and the performances therein. Aline David’s work successfully puts paws on foxes, a slink in a cat, and a doddering peck in the chickens. Hayley Carmichael’s performance as the caring, over-protective mother fox is particularly moving, embodying the wise hungry eyes that counter the innocent, bright ones of her cubs. Likewise, Emily Burnett as Rdeča is a delight to watch, and her relationship with Basti, intelligently played by James Tarpey, is directed beautifully and with delicacy by Steve Marmion.

The play itself is well paced, neatly structured and has just the right amount of bonkers to carry forward a poignant message: the revolution will begin when love between humans and foxes is accepted. It will begin when the barriers between species, race, nationality and gender are broken. This is something we can recognise and sympathise with, and the comedy in the play allows this to be a celebration. The only concern one might have is with the casting of this production: is it potentially problematic to cast the black girl as the fox, the white boy as the human? The female as the animal? The black boy as the dog?

Perhaps the casting is this way to make that exact controversial point, and make it crystal clear for the audience. Perhaps it was the clearest way of appealing to historical preconceptions and thwarting them. The ending, in which the revolution begins with the murder of their parents, may well be designed to mark the murder of a poisonous, stereotypical approach to casting. But are we still not ready for a production that marks a revolution beyond that point?

Either way, the production is a lot of fun, and the energy that oozes from its youthful, urban bounce is infectious. There are possibilities and alternative meanings within its layers and subtext that are rich and provocative: is it real? Is it actually all happening inside Basti’s head as a response to the trauma of his mentally unstable mother and philandering father? Are they all in fact human, and this is simply how Basti views the world?

It is a unique play with a lot to offer, both in thought and entertainment. A laudable contribution to the Soho Theatre’s Love Against The Odds season.


http://www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/first-love-is-the-revolution/