★★★

“The fast pace creates its own sense of delirium, and the bitter aftertaste is delicious”

There is love happening in a festive Staten Island apartment. There is heartbreak happening too. There are heartfelt dilemmas as a twentysomething quartet – three men and a woman – try to sort out their criss-crossed relationships on the eve of Christmas.

In director Helen Bang’s cacophonous onslaught, sometimes it’s difficult to pick out these love stories from the rest. Because, between episodes of soul-searching, ecstasy and grief, there are the endless, merciless histrionics. No thought goes unexpressed. No minor shift in mood or status isn’t analysed then shouted loudly into someone’s face.

At the heart of it all, though, there’s the love quadrangle. Bitter queen Terry (scene stealer James Grimm) adores clean-cut Buck (James Mackay). But Buck has fallen for twisted and torn bi-sexual Alex (Jonny Davidson) who has girlfriend Sam (Sinead Donnelly) at arm’s length until he figures out his feelings for Buck, who loves him to the point of weepy despair.

Sam arrives for a showdown, having figured out something’s afoot. She stirs a pot already whizzing like a whirlpool.

Terry, never short of a bitchy exit line, sums it up thus, “Everyone I know is in love with everyone else I know.” Terry, shorn of reciprocal love himself, tends to scoop up random men, such as macho married-with-kids Roger (Nicholas Gauci) for hook-ups.

Terry, a feather boa on legs, is exhausting. They all are. Their verbal assaults tend to peak in either furious sex or rancorous wrestling, the difference between the two being moot.

Writer Buddy Thomas’ wordy mile-a-minute script – funny, busy and clever – is overwhelming at times. The cast feel it. They gamely wrangle the machine-gun acid drops but sometimes it simply gets away from them. The script is like a very big dog on a leash who spots a squirrel in the park – they hang on being pulled this way and that, hoping for a break.

There’s little time for nuance or character. They barely have a chance to register a reaction to some putdown before issuing a fully formed, impeccably paced, beautifully sour response. Consequently, there is very little genuine interaction, just a lot of staged sequential and sour monologues.

However, there are plums in the pudding. Alex’s comic retelling of his sacking as a mall Santa has room to breathe and is rewarding as a result. Grimm does a good line in drunken self-annihilation and Donnelly’s mousy Sam brings a squeak of genuine sadness to the tinselled madhouse.

Of course, Christmas spirit wins in the end, sort of, if not resolving the woes, then at least postponing conflict until the New Year. Everyone can have some turkey and lay down their weapons. Although you sense the men love the friction more than the ceasefire and can’t wait for hostilities to resume.

The performances here are spirited and fun. The fast pace creates its own sense of delirium, and the bitter aftertaste is delicious. If you’re looking for a dark alternative to a raft of cloying Christmas shows, set up camp in The Crumple Zone.

Naughty but nice. But naughty.

THE GREAT GATSBY at the Cockpit Theatre

★★★

“the repercussions of Jay Gatsby’s gender swap are not fully explored in an otherwise faithful revival of the story”

F Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” needs no introduction. The title has entered the language to the extent that everybody now thinks they own a slice of it. Since its publication nearly a century ago it has been the subject of intense analysis, numerous adaptations and various eclectic interpretations. Even the word ‘Gatsby’ was added to the Collegiate Dictionary in 2003. So prolific is its presence that any new presentation, like with the works of Shakespeare, is under pressure to find a new way of looking at it.

Scar Theatre, the Oxford based collective, have grabbed the challenge with both hands by making ‘he’ a ‘she’. The concept appears to be its main selling point so it’s no big reveal or spoiler. It is potentially a fascinating angle to take, although the repercussions of Jay Gatsby’s gender swap are not fully explored in an otherwise faithful revival of the story. Nick Carraway (Ethan Bareham) remains the narrator, slipping into and out of the action as he relates his memories of that long hot summer to his analyst – a device ‘borrowed’ from Baz Luhrmann.

Bareham’s is a natural performance, capturing the essence of Nick Carraway – the unwitting and slightly baffled hero in a world where he doesn’t belong. A slight figure who hints at just the right amount of disdain for the careless people that surround him. Particularly Roman Pitman’s Tom Buchanan; a two-dimensional bully who neither deserves, nor quite pulls off, the whiff of innate privilege that follows him like an unpleasant odour. Lily Carson, as Daisy Buchanan, has the stiffness that serves her well in her cheerless marriage, but she somehow fails to loosen up sufficiently when reunited with the so-called love of her life in Gatsby.

A nod to queerness and feminism, it remains just that; with not enough exploration to earn its advertised status. Emily Serdahl, in the title role, cuts a formidable figure that affirms her ability to succeed ‘in a man’s world’, yet it is impossible to believe that her ambition stems from a deep longing for Daisy. As a pair, their declarations of love are often words without spark or real meaning. We also grapple with the credulity of Gatsby’s backstory (her serving as an officer in the Great War by impersonating a man – for example) which is repeatedly brushed aside rather too efficiently.

There are atmospheric moments, aided by Vanessa Silva’s movement direction and Finley Bettsworth’s moody lighting. The underside of the American Dream is vividly portrayed during the brief visits to Fitzgerald’s ‘Valley of Ashes’. Fitzroy ‘Pablo’ Wickham, as the murderously doomed mechanic George Wilson, is both pitiable and menacing – spoilt only by the writers’ tinkering with the final showdown that dilutes the sense of tragedy. It is a clumsy moment that interrupts the natural momentum of a show that elsewhere ebbs and flows like an unreliable memory. Such inconsistencies do show up quite starkly against the stylised background.

Peter Todd and Mina Moniri (the co-writers and co-directors) have set out to emphasise the queerness that is more covert in the original novel – a subject that has spawned countless debates over the last century. Nick Carraway’s sexuality has been hotly speculated over. This is hinted at here, but like Gatsby’s sapphic makeover, it is more of an abstraction. We are left wanting more. Daisy’s childhood friend Jordan Baker goes some way to addressing this. Played with an impressive, detached coolness by Danielle Nnene, she quietly challenges Gatsby’s motives, yet the credulity is again hindered by Gatsby’s gender.

What survives, though, is the clarity of the story telling. The energy of the parties is matched by the despondency of the underlying wasteland that Fitzgerald prophesised was on the horizon. And much of the iconic original text is intact in this production that does, in fact, underline the ongoing and ceaseless relevance of “The Great Gatsby” in the present day.

Category Archives: Reviews

THE CRUMPLE ZONE

★★★

Waterloo East Theatre

THE CRUMPLE ZONE at the Waterloo East Theatre

★★★

“The fast pace creates its own sense of delirium, and the bitter aftertaste is delicious”

THE CRUMPLE ZONE at the Waterloo East Theatre

Reviewed on 29th November 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Peter Davies

Previously reviewed at this venue:

STARTING HERE, STARTING NOW | ★★★★★ | July 2021

THE CRUMPLE ZONE

THE CRUMPLE ZONE

Click here to see our Recommended Shows page

THE GREAT GATSBY

★★★

Cockpit Theatre

THE GREAT GATSBY at the Cockpit Theatre

★★★

“the repercussions of Jay Gatsby’s gender swap are not fully explored in an otherwise faithful revival of the story”