Tag Archives: Che Walker

The Prince

The Prince

★★★

Southwark Playhouse

THE PRINCE at the Southwark Playhouse

★★★

 

The Prince

“Over the course of the play, no antagonist is revealed, and little conflict truly arises, resulting in a flat conclusion”

 

Performance itself lies at the heart of The Prince, Abigail Thorn’s playwriting debut at Southwark Playhouse’s Large Theatre. Characters find themselves stuck inside a multiverse of Shakespearean dramas (Though the action is mostly confined to Henry IV Part I) and at odds with the rigidity of their roles. Sam, played by Joni Ayton-Kent, who is cast as a number of nameless bit characters, is desperately searching for a way out. Mary Malone plays Jen, who finds herself in a similar situation and decides to tag along with Sam. Jen, however, finds tensions within the ways in which the primary characters perform their gender, and begins to poke holes in their constructed identities. In particular, Jen reads Thorn’s Hotspur as a trans woman and Corey Montague Sholay’s Prince Hal as a gay man. Over the course of the play, both characters waffle between conformity to their roles and self-actualization, a broader metaphor for the struggles endured and decisions faced when butting up against a rigid gender binary, especially the construct of masculinity. Though The Prince suffers from a lack of narrative coherence, the metaphor is powerful and at times quite personally affecting.

Thorn and Malone, both in principal roles, turn in strong performances. Malone plays Jen’s fish-out-of-water bewilderment with earnest charm and comedic timing. The funniest moments of the play come from the ways in which other characters play off of hers. Thorn, as Hotspur, carries the show. She peels back her character’s internal tension in careful layers and remains nimble and forceful in her handling of both her own verse and Shakespeare’s. The scenes in which she actively decides to continue in the role of the masculine hero at the expense of her own identity carry tremendous weight. It is unfortunate then, that the structural foundation of the play is unable to support these performances.

The Prince seems to eschew both coherent world-building and narrative signposting, both of which are essential when leading an audience through a multiverse. The moments when Jen is able to break the Shakespearean characters out of their performances are nearly indistinguishable for the moments when they remain stuck. In essence, these breaks happen at random, giving Jen little to learn about the mechanics of the world into which she has been dropped. Sam’s desire to escape should be easily aided by a magical map of sorts, represented by a somewhat unconvincing plastic tetrahedron, but the object only appears all-powerful in Jen’s hands, though no context is given to allow the audience to understand this discrepancy. These two characters are also denied specific or rich inner lives, even an inkling of who they might be outside of their current situation. The multiverse device primarily exists in absentia, as most of Sam and Jen’s haphazard narrative hopping occurs within Henry IV Part I. The play’s only detour into Hamlet arrives without much context and serves only as justification to shoehorn in the “To be, or not to be?” soliloquy, though Thorn delivers it well. Over the course of the play, no antagonist is revealed, and little conflict truly arises, resulting in a flat conclusion.

Martha Godfrey’s lighting design feels similarly uneven. The tubes of LED light that hang at odd angles above the playing space are visually compelling and seem to indicate different corners of the Shakespearean multiverse. But their function remains out of sync with the play throughout, illuminating, changing colours, falling and rising without impetus or textual justification. Rebecca Cartwright’s historical costumes, on the other hand, are a strong point of the play’s design—the ways in which they mutate alongside Jen’s poking and prodding is masterful.

Though it contains joyous and raucous moments, as well as symbolic significance, Thorn’s debut remains unnecessarily messy throughout, wanting for narrative drive and formal consistency.

 

Reviewed on 19th September 2022

by JC Kerr

Photography by Mark Senior

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

The Woods | ★★★ | March 2022
Anyone Can Whistle | ★★★★ | April 2022
I Know I Know I Know | ★★★★ | April 2022
The Lion | ★★★ | May 2022
Evelyn | ★★★ | June 2022
Tasting Notes | ★★ | July 2022
Doctor Faustus | ★★★★★ | September 2022

 

 

Click here to read all our latest reviews

 

The Time of Our Lies

★★★★

Park Theatre

The Time of Our Lies

The Time of Our Lies

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 1st August 2019

★★★★

 

“a memorable and haunting tribute to both the historian and his work”

 

It’s not often that audiences see the dramatisation of a history book on stage, so playwright Bianca Bagatourian is to be congratulated for her courage in taking on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Of The United States. And it’s important to note that if Howard Zinn had not been such a remarkable historian living through several remarkable events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Bagatourian’s play, The Time Of Our Lies, might not be such a satisfying piece of theatre. The show at the Park Theatre, skillfully directed by Ché Walker, delivers a memorable and haunting tribute to both the historian and his work.

The Time Of Our Lies is an hour or so of storytelling and beautifully performed songs in an empty space presented by a highly competent ensemble of six actors who switch easily between a range of American accents, and a range of other languages as well. The seventh performer, representing Zinn himself, was ably taken on at very short notice by the brilliant Martina Laird, stepping in for an indisposed Daniel Benzali. Laird held the audience spellbound as she recounted stories from Zinn’s life, including service as a bombardier in World War Two, and being knocked unconscious by police batons while attending a workers’ rights demonstration as a seventeen year old in New York City.

This is not just a series of stories (and songs) strung together, vivid and compelling though they are. Zinn’s distinguishing feature of his life as a historian, is presenting the stories of people living through catastrophic times, told in their own words. Hence the importance of the moment in which the act of being knocked unconscious turns Zinn into a conscious observer of historically significant events. Later on, this consciousness leads to his determination to support the actions of his African American students during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The play dramatises these events effectively and then goes one step further — it ties all these narratives together under Zinn’s overarching belief that you should never believe what your government is telling you. In his experience, government always lies — and often for petty, self-serving reasons — and it is only historians who can sort out the truth from the lies. And this is why Bagatourian’s play succeeds — she takes this powerful idea and dramatises it with eyewitness accounts of important historical events, including Zinn’s own.

In short, although going to a show about a history book might not seem the most enjoyable way to spend an evening, do yourself a favour and go. If you can find an American to take along to explain why some of the characters in the play are so significant, so much the better. But if not, you can always read A People’s History Of The United States. Both Zinn’s book, and Bagatourian’s play, are well worth your time.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Tomas Turpie

 


The Time of Our Lies

Park Theatre until 10th August

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
The Dame | ★★★★ | January 2019
Gently Down The Stream | ★★★★★ | February 2019
My Dad’s Gap Year | ★★½ | February 2019
Cry Havoc | ★★ | March 2019
The Life I Lead | ★★★ | March 2019
We’re Staying Right Here | ★★★★ | March 2019
Hell Yes I’m Tough Enough | ★★½ | April 2019
Intra Muros | | April 2019
Napoli, Brooklyn | ★★★★ | June 2019
Summer Rolls | ★★★½ | June 2019

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com