Word-Play was definitely not a miss for us, far from it, although Janie did find the short scenes with the actors playing different characters in different times and places more than a little disconcerting.
But we both agreed that the acting by all five cast members; Issam Al Ghussain, Kosar Ali, Simon Manyonda, Sirine Saba, and Yusra Warsama, was superb. Many of the scenes worked terrifically well, especially the more intimate ones. Word-Play is a very ambitious piece of writing and we shall certainly look out for Rabiah Hussain’s work again.
We booked to see the Saturday preview of this one more or less as soon as it was announced – it looked right up our street from the rubric – click here for that rubric.
Sort of chamber play, sort of about big global issues, some top quality, familiar (to us) names in the cast and crew…
One thing I had forgotten about Yous Two was our beef about the set and the resulting sight lines. Strangely, that indifference to audience concerns was replicated in the set of Cougar.
The designer, Rosanna Vize, has designed the sets for a great many plays we have seen recently, as a click through to her Ogblog tab reveals. Her sets are always imaginative and only occasionally impede the audience – in the case of Cougar both physically and visually. The ushers asked us not to walk on the set as we entered the auditorium, but we needed either to walk on the set or stomp on a couple of audience members in one or two places – we went for the set.
Back to the play – here is the trailer:
The play is basically about an increasingly chaotic, globe-trotting relationship between a forty-something woman who is a big cheese, professional environmental expert and her twenty-something lover/paramour. It is a short piece – about 75 minutes long.
An interesting and intriguing play in many ways. The power woman comes across as a rather one-dimensional monster at times, yet her self-centred, ego-fuelled behaviours would seem less monstrous and more nuanced if the gender roles were reversed.
The cross-over between the global issues around climate change and the domestic issues of excessive consumption of resources (real and emotional) pervaded the piece rather well. The short scenes jumping forwards and backwards in time seemed more like a device to maintain the sense of chaos and confusion than an essential structural device for the (straightforwardly linear) story.
If we were being hyper-critical, Janie and I agreed that the female role is perhaps over-written and the male role under-written. Rose Lewenstein more or less owns up to that in the interesting programme interview. Well acted by Charlotte Randle and especially Mike Noble.
Anyway – amongst all this – why have I described the experience as bruising, I hear you cry?
Well, in one chaotic scene, the young man smashes a camera, which I imagine is supposed to break on the stage but not spray everywhere…but spray it did – with the lens (an 18mm-55mm beastie, seeing as you asked)…
Muhammad Mahdi Karim [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], from Wikimedia Commons
…flying at me, striking me on the shin. Ouch.
A few minutes later, in another chaotic scene, the young man who has a couple of walk-on, walk-off moments (I assume Ryan Laden, who is thanked in the programme) ran off the stage in the dark, crunching into the same leg as he ran. Ouch again.
Janie wondered if I was OK. I felt a bit like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Tis but a scratch”…
…although my equivalent phrase was, “Tis nothing – I play hard ball sports”.
When we got home after the show (and after dinner at Don Fernandos) Janie offered to put some arnica on my bruises.
Oh, that is a big bruise…
…said Janie, admiring a bruise on my left leg.
That’s one I picked up playing real tennis last week. The new bruises are on the right leg,
I said.
I’m sure the cast and crew will work on those production issues between now and press night. It would be well worth going to see this play/production if you read this piece in time – it runs until 2 March 2019. Perhaps best not to book the front row for this one, though, unless you are as brave as The Black Night or a Mountain Lion (Cougar).
Malcolm [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Gosh, we thought this was a very good production indeed.
We both normally have reservations about “dystopian future” plays. Janie in particular was not sure about the subject matter of this one when we booked it. Had it not been for my enthusiasm for the specific moral dilemmas I saw coming and our general sense that Hampstead Downstairs plays are normally worth seeing, we might well not have booked this.
In short, the play is about a future society in which genetic profiling becomes the “be all and end all” of people’s prospects.
Indeed Janie said she found the subject matter creepy during the interval and we noticed that several people did not return after the interval. That is a real shame, because the play was extremely well acted, directed and produced; well worth watching for the drama that unfolds, even if the story line is not quite your bag.
The plot was somewhat predictable, because (without wanting to give too much away) the motivation that might cause certain behaviours could only logically have been caused by the eventual, pivotal plot twist.
But I still think this is a good play – the dialogue is top notch and the moral dilemmas well worth exploring, even if in the context of a future society, elements of which seem prescient but the extreme version depicted seems somewhat unlikely.
Below is the promotional video for this play/production:
The subject matter overlaps with several plays we have seen lately – not least the notion of bad parenting sometimes emanating as much if not more from the mother than the father. Also the notion of major personality and mental health issues being passed down the line.
…but in the case of Yous Two, these serious issues are portrayed in a mostly comedic, or at least light-hearted style. The mother is dead and the father is trying his best…which isn’t to say that he is doing very well in many of the parenting departments. The daughter is sassy and clever and wants life to progress for her in a hurry.
I was more impressed by the play and the acting than I was by the set. The whole play takes place in the tiny bathroom of the father and daughter’s grubby pad. The (perhaps unnecessary) full length panels depicting the outside and inside walls of the bathroom adversely affected sight lines for most of the audience, at one end or both. I think that could have been avoided without detracting from the claustrophobic feel.
Worse; the layout of the bathroom was contrary to all common sense – with the toilet backing on to the inside wall and the radiator backing on to the outside wall. Yes I know some botched up bathrooms might end up designed that way, but given the sight-line problem and the illogical nature of the obstacles causing the sight-line problem…
If directors can get type cast in the same way as actors, Chelsea might expect to be directing plays set in bathrooms for the rest of her career now…so she should get her head around plumbing and the basics of design around utility services. I did also wonder, briefly, whether the notion of “kitchen sink drama” has now been superseded by a new genre; “bathroom tub drama”…yes, I obsessed.
So to get back to the bit that really matters, we did really like the play and we thought all of the performances were very good.
All of the protagonists were there the night we went – Chelsea Walker, Georgia Christou the writer etc, as we were there on a preview night.
Unusually for downstairs, there was a proper programme for this show and apparently there will be a press night and formal reviews. Perhaps there has been a permanent change of policy downstairs?…the ushers were unsure. We have long felt it is a shame that some of the wonderful things we have seen downstairs don’t get formal reviews, although we did understand the “freedom for experimentation and innovation” thinking behind the policy. Times change.
It is the tale of three sisters from a self-confessed chav family which moves to a posh town for the sake of the girls’ education.
It throws up a great many issues about class, families, aspirations and the like.
The problem with it is the extreme nature of the plot. I’m not sure where this posh town might be, entirely populated by such snobby, middle-class people that this trio of roofer’s daughters are so utterly different from all of their peers.
Still, the story provides a vehicle for those pertinent issues and a vehicle also for three very high energy and vibrant performances by the actresses.
Weird set with the audience separated into four quadrants while the stage formed a cross formation covering most of the room, allowing the girls plenty of space for their performances.
It’s a short play (100 minutes without an interval) which suited us well. Janie had bought one of those crispy Gressingham duck things for the weekend and it seemed a shame not to roast and eat it when we got home.
Unlike Scarlett, though, this production is a revival of a 1980’s play. Indeed, a quintessentially 1980’s play. It’s a three-hander. All three actresses performed their roles very well.
Lots of excellent reviews up there, mostly four stars. Of course, the Orange Tree only puts up the best ones with stars, so I add these only for balance:
Several of the reviews discuss feminism 1988 style and debate the extent to which things have changed since then – very much the conversation Janie and I had over dinner and the next day.
Anyway, Janie and I both really enjoyed our evening at the theatre and our Don Fernando grubsie afterwards.
I rather liked the idea of this modern adaptation of Gogol’s magnificent short story, Diary of a Madman, set in modern Scotland.
This show is going to Edinburgh in August and then running at The Gate Theatre in September, but we booked for one of three previews at The Gate, which we thought would be a good way to see the production.
The play and production certainly had its moments, but also had some longueurs. Perhaps these will be ironed out between preview and main show, but the preview ran for some 90 minutes and I suspect that 60 to 70 would work better; there is certainly at least 20 minutes-worth of material, mostly earlier in the piece, that is surplus to requirements and made the play seem slow.
But it was very well acted and there were some lovely ideas in there. The bar scene towards the end was a wonderful mixture of anarchic, comedic and suspenseful drama. Some of the topical humour about referenda should play well, especially in Edinburgh.
![Malcolm [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/ianlouisharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/512px-Cougar.jpg?resize=512%2C384&ssl=1)