Oh dear. No this one wasn’t for us. It came at the end of a long week for both of us, but any week we would have found the oppressive family situation depicted here difficult to bear for two hours.
The central characters are escapees from the Armenian genocide and as such both are sympathetic characters. But the writing seemed, to us, laboured. The progress through the plot is well signalled in advance and therefore seemed very slow. Here is the playwright’s own take on the piece, which includes a video snippet.
But the acting was all very good and as always with the Finborough, you feel that you are seeing a tiny place punch well above its weight.
We’ve mostly been very impressed by the stuff we’ve seen at the Finborough Theatre. We started trying the Finborough less than a year ago and this piece, White Guy On The Bus, was our tenth visit in that short time. Again we were most impressed.
We thought we must have seen US playwright Bruce Graham’s work before, until we realised that we were both probably making an amalgam of Bruce Norris and James Graham. The best of those two would make a pretty formidable amalgam as it happens and Bruce Graham’s piece, while perhaps lacking some of the flair of either of his semi-namesakes, was an excellent piece of writing.
Add to that Finborough’s ability to assemble a quality team of actors and creatives to pull together a low budget production that punches well above its weight…
…this was a very good evening of fringe theatre.
The themes of racial tensions, social inequality and political correctness seemed absolutely pertinent for our times. In truth the play is a bit of a slow starter, but by the interval we found ourselves hooked on a thriller with lots of issues and by the end we felt thoroughly entertained and thought-provoked. Two hours well spent.
Below is a trailer from one of the US productions – Curious Theatre Company:
Below is an extract from another of the US productions – Northlight Theatre – which gives a better feel for how the play comes across on a small stage:
as Janie and I we were walking up the stairs to the theatre, the man in front of me turned around and said “hello Ian” – it was Kim Ridge. I wondered out loud whether Kim and Catherine were regulars at the Finborough, but it turned out that they were there quite by happenstance having decided to give the place a try for the first time;
after the show, “The Ridges” disappeared rapidly, but Janie and I stuck around and chatted briefly with a very nice Canadian lady who had been sitting next to us. It turns out she goes to many of the fringe places we go to – I didn’t recognise her face but suspect we’ll run into her again. Next to her was a really pleasant young woman who also chatted with us about the play. It was that sort of theatre experience for us – we wanted to talk about the issues afterwards;
a yummy meal in Noddyland taken away from Mohsen’s – Janie and I continued to mull the issues over dinner.
