Janie and I saw a preview of this play/production. I am writing it up a few days later, ahead of seeing any reviews.
We had been looking forward to this play/production, as usually we do for the excellent small-scale stuff the Hampstead puts on downstairs. And we weren’t disappointed – a well-crafted script and highly professional production, performed by a trio of convincing actors.
We nearly didn’t go. We were exhausted by early evening, having returned to the house that morning to discover that we had been burgled. We’d only just said goodbye to the police and were still anticipating a visit from the forensics people the next day.
We steeled ourselves to the notion that a good piece of theatre would take our minds off our own domestic travails and the notion that “cancelling a treat” is not a good way to try and make yourselves feel better.
By the end of the evening, we were glad we pressed ahead.
We sat next to a nice lady whose face I recognised…it turned out from our previous visit to the Hampstead Downstairs. In chatting we realised that we had all attended the same evening of “The Billionaire Inside Your Head” a few week’s earlier.
We worked out that we’d all been there the same day when discussing the scary “voice in the head” character. The nice audience lady was relieved to learn that I was still alive after “verbally dicing with death” with that character.
Returning to Fatherland, you can read all about the production on the Hampstead website here.
To some extent we didn’t get quite what we expected. We thought the comedy element of the play would prevail, based on the description, but actually it is a bittersweet story, full of sadness expressed and supressed, together with an utterly reckless character, the father, who leaves chaos in his wake without recognising that he is a major…indeed at times the sole…cause of that disarray.
Nancy Farino, who both wrote the play and acted as the daughter, Joy, is a new name to us but certainly a name we’ll look out for in the future in both the writing and acting contexts. She was ably supported on stage by Shona Babayemi, as the understated lawyer, and Jason Thorpe as the hapless and hopeless dad.
This production might be remembered the most in theatrical circles for one highly ambitious, coup de theatre action scene, towards the end of the play, which would sound implausible in a tiny studio theatre if I were to try and describe it. But the team somehow pulls it off and the scene works.
However, I think I’ll remember the production more for Joy’s monologues and the depiction of her nightmares/sleep deprivation imaginings in her inner transcendental winter of depression.
It rather helped me and Janie in the recovery of our composure. We are fortunate not to suffer from depression. We’d just had a bad experience which we’ll deal with and move on from.
When the Fatherland reviews do come out, you’ll be able to find them through this link/search term. Whatever the pundits say, Janie and I would recommend this one for sure.