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Manic Street Creature

Manic Street Creature

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Southwark Playhouse Borough

MANIC STREET CREATURE at Southwark Playhouse Borough

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Manic Street Creature

โ€œemotionally raw, yet sophisticated, with significant musical prowessโ€

You may not recognise Maimuna Memonโ€™s name just yet, but if you saw her in Standing at the Skyโ€™s Edge, you will instantly jolt as soon as she opens her mouth to sing. Memon has a huge stage presence and gives another mesmerising performance in Manic Street Creature, where she has also written the accomplished book, music, and lyrics.

Manic Street Creature is structured as an album recording, with narrative interspersed within and between nine tracks that Memon as new-to-London musician Ria is recording. The album tells the story of Riaโ€™s rollercoaster relationship with Dan, the first person to show her kindness in London. It feels like a modern situationship: young lovers scared of their own feelings. So 2023, so avoidant. However, hiding behind Danโ€™s addictive charm is a darkness and severe vulnerability that eventually encompasses their relationship and forces Ria to lose herself in old patterns making an unwelcome return from her childhood.

On the back of the record-sleeve-like programme is a list of charities and resources for anyone affected by caring for someone struggling with mental health. It is worth checking the content notes ahead of time as there are moments of heaviness that could be triggering, with Memon unafraid to confront difficult and conflicting issues in her brave performance.

Walking into the Southwark Playhouseโ€™s main house you see Memon busy tuning guitars with Rachel Barnes on cello and Harley Johnston on percussion. The band are busy in a central square space while the audience file to four raked seating stalls surrounding them on each side. There is an eclectic mix of guitars, a cellist, percussion, keyboard and a squeeze box situated on top of assorted Afghan carpets. Libby Watson (Designer) has created a recording studio in the theatre, with trailing cables on full display and an open tech box. The lights go down before the stage is flooded in red: the recording has begun.

Jamie Platt, Lighting Designer, has done a great job throughout the piece, using strobes, colours and spotlights to reflect at different times rollicking emotional turbulence and the gentle, slowly intensifying glow of a long-awaited sunrise.

โ€œMemonโ€™s voice is spectacularโ€

This is Riaโ€™s story, with Memon also speaking Danโ€™s lines except for one recorded call to emergency services and voicemail messages from her fatherโ€™s phone (Sound Quiet Time provides the moody sound design). Rachel Barnes and Harley Johnston mostly provide instrumentation and intricate harmonies to Memonโ€™s main melodies. When they do speak lines, Barnes in particular does a great caricature of a highbrow Highgate psychoanalyst.

Manic Street Creature is centred around some high quality original songs. Memonโ€™s voice is spectacular. She has a fantastic lower register and can growl through lyrics with strong emotional tugs. There are also moments of lightness, with vocal runs and sophisticated flights. She fits so much into her lyrics: the opening On My Way is a โ€˜moving to the big cityโ€™ track that works both as an anthem and a scene setter, whereas Souls on the Precipice tackles really challenging ideas, and is an articulate stream of consciousness with more of a progressive song form. Memon was nominated for an Olivier award for a staggering performance in Standing At The Skyโ€™s Edge, where she put her voice to Richard Hawleyโ€™s Open up Your Doors, and there are perhaps some lyrical and melodic influences from the likes of Hawley, the Manics and other rock and alternative artists here.

The clever selection of instruments including a keyboard and a vintage squeezebox that provides organ like chords underlying smoother and more pensive moments. The band nimbly switches across instruments, with Director Kirsty Patrick Ward keeping transitions seamless. Memon keeps the piece moving with most songs performed back to back and unlike a gig there is no applause until the end of the piece. This keeps the focus centred on the storytelling, and Riaโ€™s descent into memory.

Not everything is heavy, with the irreverent delivery and conversational style eliciting many laughs from the audience, but it rarely strays far. An episode takes place in a cat cafe that is initially benign and a little surreal, though this cute anniversary date quickly takes a turn for the macabre.

The conclusion is not necessarily a triumph, just two people having to make a very hard choice. It is not necessarily satisfying or optimistic but it is inevitable, and the most honest way a story like this ends.

Nonetheless, there was a standing ovation before the stage had even been cleared. This piece affected many people in the room, me included. It is emotionally raw, yet sophisticated, with significant musical prowess. It deservedly won several awards at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe in 2022, and is a piece of new writing that deserves to have a long life.


MANIC STREET CREATURE at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 25th October

by Rosie Thomas

Photography by Ali Wright

 

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

The Changeling | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…ยฝ | October 2023
Ride | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | July 2023
How To Succeed In Business โ€ฆ | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | May 2023
Strike! | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | April 2023
The Tragedy Of Macbeth | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | March 2023
Smoke | โ˜…โ˜… | February 2023
The Walworth Farce | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | February 2023
Hamlet | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | January 2023
Whoโ€™s Holiday! | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | December 2022
Doctor Faustus | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | September 2022

Manic Street Creature

Manic Street Creature

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The Swell

The Swell

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Orange Tree Theatre

THE SWELL at the Orange Tree Theatre

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The Swell

โ€œThe play is a fiendishly clever piece of writing, served brilliantly by a formidable companyโ€

 

They say itโ€™s the quiet ones you have to watch out forโ€™, or โ€˜never trust a smiling catโ€™. Although not perfect in their analogy, it would be a similar phrase that describes how we feel walking away from Isley Lynnโ€™s new play โ€œThe Swellโ€. Lynnโ€™s writing is deceptively artful and astute, crafty yet judiciously crafted. She has that rare gift of duping us into thinking we are on safe ground, but then abruptly pulling that ground away from under our feet.

Conceived five years ago as part of Hightideโ€™s summer writing festival, director Hannah Hauer-King has helped steer the piece towards its premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre. Her close attachment shows up in the crisp and sensitive staging of the text. Specifically played in the round there is nowhere really to hide; a challenge that is embraced. When not directly involved in in the action, the characters are still ever present; in shadows, watching, chanting or silently echoing the unfolding drama centre stage.

The โ€œSwellโ€ in the playโ€™s title refers variously to the crest of a wave, the metaphorical rush of blood to the heart when in love, or the rising of a choristerโ€™s chest. But also, to the swelling in the brain of a blood clot that can cause a stroke โ€“ which informs the bulk of the brilliantly executed shifts and twists that shape our understanding of the charactersโ€™ journeys; their motives, relationships and deceptions.

The action shifts between then and now. Annie and Bel are seemingly in love, preparing for their wedding. Until Flo โ€“ a childhood friend of Annieโ€™s โ€“ crashes into their lives with predictable results. Suffice to say the wedding never takes place. Jessica Clark fires Floโ€™s spirit with an energy that races ahead of her bubbly free spirit. Saroja-Lily Ratnavel, as the young Annie, veils her emotional scar tissue with taut jitteriness that borders on violence, while Ruby Crepin-Glyneโ€™s rootless Bel is caught in the slow dance of domesticity, aching for the tempo to change. Sophie Ward, Shuna Snow and Viss Elliot Safavi are the girls thirty years later. The extraordinarily accomplished performances tease out the intervening backstory with an understated intensity that boils beneath the gentle simmering. It feels like a caress, but all along it is scorching us.

The play is a fiendishly clever piece of writing, served brilliantly by a formidable company of actresses. You cannot avoid the fact that queerness runs through it like marble. However, like Brokeback Mountain for example, the fears and prejudice sadly still experienced are addressed without coming across as a piece of queer writing. Sexual identity is not being scrutinised, yet questions and assumptions of personal identity are thrillingly exposed and cannily upturned.

The literal and the figurative walk hand in hand. Imagine them walking through a rather predictable romcom, but then they turn a corner and are ambushed by a psychological thriller. One in which lies come in all shades of white, and betrayal can be the kindest act. The mood is underpinned, though not particularly enhanced, by Nicola T. Changโ€™s a Capella vocal score. The essence lies within the dialogue and the drama, and swells into a fine fusion of writing and performance.

 

 

Reviewed on 29th June 2023

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Ali Wright

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

Duet For One | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | February 2023
Rice | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | October 2021
The Solid Life Of Sugar Water | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | October 2022
Two Billion Beats | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…ยฝ | February 2022
While the Sun Shines | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | November 2021

 

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