Mayfly
Orange Tree Theatre, 21st May 2018
A play set in a rural location about a family processing grief. Not a million miles away from the not entirely successful Nightfall at the Bridge Theatre I hear you clamour. (Nightfall at the Bridge Theatre review ***). Well yes after a fashion. Joe White’s debut play though benefits, unlike Nightfall, from its location, in the round in the intimate OT space, and because its writing is tighter, funnier and more affecting. This may not be the most innovative play in terms of form and subject that you will ever see but it is a mightily polished effort which marks Joe White out as another talent to add to the list of young British playwrights.
Harry, (a disarmingly genuine performance from Irfan Shamji), works in a rural pub that is closing down. He encounters the plainly damaged pig farmer Ben (Simon Scardifield) trying to take his own life in the river. It is a Sunday in early May in Shropshire. (There are allusions to Housman, Auden and even Breughel through the play. Mr White clearly knows his elegiac English, and Flemish, onions). Loops, played superbly by Evelyn Hoskins, “hard as fuck me”, remembers Harry from some school cadet trip and means to make him her boyfriend. Cat, played by Niky Wardley, completing the quartet of marvellous actors, is lonely and makes an embarrassing pass at Harry in the pub. We soon see that Ben and Cats marriage is stressed to breaking point and immature daughter Loops is trapped. Their pain stems from the death of their young lad, Adam, son and brother. Harry gets sucked in when he comes to eat with them. He too is grieving. Some, limited, catharsis follows. The End.
All in one day. Like the life of the mayfly. The play works because Mr White is neither afraid of, nor forces through, the emotional core at the heart of his story and because it is very funny, more so than many comedies you might see. The naturalistic lilt of the character’s speech is expertly captured but there is still room for telling metaphor. The crumbling of the social and economic fabric in rural areas lurks in the background mirroring the household’s breakdown. When the pub goes all that will remain will be a Spar and a betting shop.
Mayfly is sympathetically directed here by Guy Jones, one of Paul Miller’s proteges at the OT, and the set from Cecile Tremolieres is inventive, (as it was for Suzy Storck at the Gate last year). I’d be surprised if this play doesn’t pop up again elsewhere and I certainly recommend tracking Mr White’s career. The plot here is just occasionally derivative. With a bigger and more complex idea I reckon he might surprise, big time.
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist 