Tag: Claire Goose

Holy Sh!t at the Kiln Theatre review ****

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Holy Sh!t

Kiln Theatre, 19th September 2018

Their exclamation mark not mine. Even at my age I get a vicarious thrill out of swearing to cause offence. A little bit of punk attitude remains I like to think.

Actually, on the subject of manufactured offence, I gather there have been picket lines outside the newly re-opened Kiln Theatre objecting to its change of name. Really? Like the Tricycle wasn’t a bit of a daft name to begin with. Maybe if the artistic team, led by the redoubtable Indhu Rubasingham, had ditched some connection to the building’s history, the Foresters’ Hall, I could see the point, but the original Tricycle didn’t even start here. Anyway what we now have is an absolutely wonderful space. The Kiln, in terms of design, comfort and facilities, has easily catapulted itself into the leading local, large, fringe theatre in London. All the scaffolding bric-a-brac of the interior is gone, sight-lines  are optimal upstairs and downstairs, leg-room is good, seats plush and wide enough for the Tourist’s ample rear. The performing space is intimate yet airy, as are the bar and restaurant, with the main entrance now matching the box office side. Staff tip top friendly as ever. The SO loved it, even convincing herself that the trek to urban Kilburn was “easy”.

And if Holy Sh!t is anything to go by, this season is shaping up to be one of Ms Rubasingham’s best. I like the look of the next two productions, White Teeth (based on the Zadie Smith novel) and Approaching Empty, and the new season, just announced, has such goodies as the UK premiere of Florian Zeller’s The Son (Zeller was a Tricycle “discovery”), Inua Ellams (Barber Shop Chronicles) latest work The Half God of Rainfall which sound bonkersly ambitious, Wife, connected with Ibsen’s Dolls House, which also looks similarly progressive, and When the Crows Visit, this time with Ghosts as an inspiration, and which looks set to add to a fine run of plays bringing modern India to the London stage. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, Sharon D Clarke in a blues musical revival. If you haven’t see her in Caroline, or Change, reprising at the Playhouse Theatre, then you are, I am sorry to say, a ninnyhammer.

I only know writer Alexis Zegerman from her role in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky but she can plainly wield a pen. Now I can see why some might think Holy Sh!t is a little overwritten, It identifies, and then takes aim, at its target demographic, and I mean target in both senses here, and doesn’t let go. Two couples, web designer Sam Green (Daniel Lapaine) and journalist Simone Kellerman (Dorothea Myer-Bennett), and teacher Nick (Daon Broni) and marketeer Juliet Obasi (Claire Goose), are forty-somethings whose friendship is put the test when they “compete” to get their daughters into St Mary’s, a North London Church school. Sam and Simone are liberal Jews though Sam now professes atheism, Nick is of Nigerian descent and Juliet is happy to turn up her Catholicism dial when it suits. The play starts off with a little too much forced exposition but once it gets into its stride, and moves beyond the par for the course comedy of manners, it doesn’t hold back using the four characters ethnicity and religion to expose the hypocrisy and prejudice that lie beneath their cultural liberalism as well as the lengths they will go to to protect themselves and their children.

I can’t pretend it is subtle, at times everyone gets a bit hysterical and the set-ups test credulity, but it does have killer line after killer line which left us (the SO agreed) hooked. It is the accumulation of well observed, and often funny, detail that made us forgive some of the crasser ploy mechanics. By the end, when Nick delivers his powerful rejoinder to the perceived victimhood of the other three, I did care about these people even as I recognised the forced stereotyping in their creation. Ms Zegerman has packed a lot of observation into the play, which is after all a comedy, and if some of it lands a little too heavily I didn’t object. I was still royally entertained. There is a whiff of Yasmina Reza about Ms Zegerman’s writing; you know you are being guided a little too forcefully down the corridors of her imagination but there is more than enough to see and enjoy along the way.

Ms Rubasingham’s brisk direction helped ensure the comic energy wasn’t dissipated whilst still making the points and Robert Jones served up pitch perfect (and flexible) aspiring metropolitan interiors. Dorothea Myer-Bennett was the standout performer the last time I say her at the Orange Tree (The Lottery of Love at the Orange Tree review ***) and once again she edges it. She captures Simone’s air of brisk certainty which contrasts with Claire Goose’s (Twitstorm at the Park Theatre review ***) more hesitant character. At first it is a little hard to believe they would be university friends but, as the tension escalates, their dependency does become more convincing. Daon Broni, who we last saw in the somewhat underpowered Slaves of Solitude, (Slaves of Solitude at the Hampstead Theatre review ***), was the most sympathetic of the four with Daniel Lapoine, (last seem by me in The Invisible Hand on this very stage), probably the actor who suffered the most from having to pull all of Sam’s traits into a believable whole.

So a production definitely worth seeing in a theatre definitely worth seeing. The first of many to come I’ll wager.

Twitstorm at the Park Theatre review ***

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Twitstorm

Park Theatre, 15th June 2017

Right then. Where to start with Twitstorm, a new play by Chris England, which has a couple more weeks to run at the Park Theatre.

Well once again the Park has taken an intriguing and a la mode idea and stuffed it full of faces off the telly to pull in the punters. However once again it has not quite lived up to the billing, although this in large part I think reflects the mixed messaging on the part of the writer.

In essence it is a satire on the modern predilection for mock outrage on social media. Jason Merrells plays Guy Manton a supercilious day-time TV presenter of a show called “Arguing the Toss” who prides himself on being the scourge of “political correctness”. It is not too difficult to see writer Chris England’s own alter ego in this character though he himself has chosen to play Rupert, Guy’s manager. Guy’s writing partner, Neil, played by the instantly recognisable Justin Edwards whose facial tics are comedy gold, resentfully takes something of a professional back seat and still hankers after Guy’s wife Bex, played by Clare Goose. With minimal preamble Tom Moutchi is pitched in to proceedings as Ike, the now grown up “child from Africa” that Bex and Guy had disinterestedly “sponsored” and who is invited to stay.

Obviously this plot device bears little scrutiny but it’s what you do with it that matters so we can let it pass for the moment. From this beginning (and incorporating the excellent Ben Kavanagh doubling as work colleague Steve and new media commentariat Daniel Priest) Mr England fashions his satire as (no detail to avoid spoiling) Guy’s twitter feed posts a highly offensive tweet which provokes a media frenzy, and then parlays into a further bizarre plot twist involving Ike.

Now clearly there is scope for a very interesting satire to evolve from this premise. Unfortunately Twitstorm is not quite that satire. It definitely succeeds in pricking the bubble of the self serving, sententious nature of the modern entertainment and digital media eco-system. Guy is a grotesque and deluded egotist and Jason Merrells captures his type perfectly. If Mr England had just stuck to the story of his downfall we would, I believe, have had a funnier and more successful play. But his compulsion to turn his acerbic pen against all manner of “things we are no longer allowed to say” creates some frankly very odd and uncomfortable moments.

Just to be clear I get that satire has no boundaries and we should not be afraid of saying the unsayable. But some of the lines here and bits of the plot look like they have dropped straight out of some 1970s “blimey Dad did people really say/think that in those days” sitcom. And therein lies the problem. Even if these crass lapses in tone are intended to be ironic they just weren’t funny and make Mr England sound like some apoplectic Mail reading sub Clarkson. It feels like the Ike character has been shoehorned in to an underwritten plot simply so Mr England can up the outrage quotient. Having done this the play then gets trapped by its own deus ex machina. This is not a farce (though the middle class show home set gives that impression), so taking liberties by piling up the improbable detracts from the justified ridicule.

So these are the drawbacks. Unfortunately for this liberal, PC, metropolitan elite Guardian reader it was also pretty funny at times. And as I said its scattergun approach to bringing down modern cultural shibboleths does sometimes hit the target, even if the intent is unclear. It is also interesting to think about that dividing line between what is funny for the “right” reasons and what is funny for the “wrong” reasons. I worship at the altar of comedian Stewart Lee but find Mrs Brown’s Boys puerile and unfunny. But given my class, education and world view that is not surprising.

So I would ignore the reviews that dismiss this out of hand, and ignore most of what I have said above and go see for yourself. At the very least it will clarify your thoughts on what you and others find funny and where you sit on the “political correctness gone mad” and “synthetic outrage” debates. Which, in Mr England’s defence, I suppose, was what he was trying to do in the first place.