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Boots

The Bunker

Reviewed – 22nd February 2019

★★★★

“Sacha Voit and Jessica Butcher have written a very good play. If they were to pare down the problems a bit they could turn it into an excellent one”

A line from the show’s publicity is a good introduction to this play. “A funny, heartbreaking adventure through forests, friendship and Femfresh that reveals the loneliness of age and the power of Mother Nature.”

Willow works as a pharmacist, patiently listening to people’s problems and trying to help. Liz, an elderly customer, doesn’t think Willow looks like a pharmacist – she is a young black woman and doesn’t fit the stereotype. But Liz doesn’t fit the old lady stereotype either. She is feisty and funny, keeping her husband in the utility room, walking in the woods smoking and swearing. She is also very good at putting her foot in it. These two very different women talk to the audience and to each other, stripping off the defensive layers they have built up to protect themselves. In the process they discover a shared love for trees. Willow is writing an article and a book about the Wood Wide Web, the underground network of mycorrhizal fungi that link trees underground, allowing them to communicate and share resources. But something in her past makes her afraid in the woods. When Liz persuades her to join a protest against the destruction of the trees to make way for a new superstore, Willow is forced to revisit a terrible memory and to begin the healing process.

Tanya Loretta Dee is funny and moving as Willow; unravelling from the patient pharmacist, with a wry and sometimes hilarious take on her customer’s inability to speak about body parts, to a damaged and vulnerable woman. Nadia Papachronopoulou’s direction and Quang Kien Van’s movement direction give her some nicely stylised physical tropes.

Amanda Boxer’s Liz is engaging, surprising the audience with her quirky eccentricities and swearing. The bad times in her past are revealed straight to the audience without her ever giving way to sympathy seeking. She is very funny, but there is a double layer in the comedy, as humour is a good deflector of sadness.

Papachronopoulou makes good use of Lia Waber’s outstanding set in her direction and allows the two characters to combine naturalism with just the right amount of stylisation. Jack Weir’s lighting design and Chris Drohan’s sound help to tell the story with some lovely atmospheric touches.

Although Boots is a strong production, it does feel as though too many problems have been crammed into the fabric of the play. An hour and fifteen minutes is not really long enough to carry a narrative that includes a dead baby, postnatal depression, racism, ageism, infertility, loneliness, rape, the destruction of nature, incontinence and other ageing related issues. Sacha Voit and Jessica Butcher have written a very good play. If they were to pare down the problems a bit they could turn it into an excellent one.

Reviewed by Katre

Photography by Tim Kelly

Boots

The Bunker until 16th March

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

No One is Coming to Save You | ★★★★ | June 2018

Reboot: Shorts 2 | ★★★★ | October 2018

The Interpretation of Dreams | ★★★ | November 2018

Sam, The Good Person | ★★★ | January 2019

Welcome To The UK | ★★ | January 2019

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★★★★★

“The script builds a rhythmic, repetitive quality that creates the tension and danger”

Condensing a great calamity can only really have one of two outcomes; the work can trivialise that time in history and make it smaller, or it can personalise it, making it somehow bigger. Beast on the Moon, written by Richard Kalinoski and directed by Jelena Budimir achieves the latter and, in its first time in London for twenty years, animates the tragedy and consequences of the Armenian Genocide through the striking lives of three deep characters.

The story follows the life of Aram (George Jovanovic) and Seta (Zarima McDermott) Tomasian who begin as a couple married through a mail-order bride service; Seta escaping an orphanage at just fifteen and Aram trying to begin living out what he believes is his ideal and duty-bound domestic lifestyle. Despite both being survivors of the same genocide and their shared culture, each clash together through the tumult of immigration and childlessness. As they grow into their relationship, a different type of orphan, Vincent (Hayward B Morse), enters between the couple and exposes the repressed grief that haunts Aram and encloses Seta.

The three actors step carefully through what is undeniably a complex and slow script; each of the three takes their time with careful characterisation both within and across each scene as the characters grow up and grow together. The script builds a rhythmic, repetitive quality that creates the tension and danger between the present married couple and emanating from their individual pasts.

All three actors give tremendously thoughtful and committed performances throughout the evening as they skillfully incorporate the shifts in age and innocence the characters undergo. McDermott, in particular, grows Seta from a traumatised and stunted girl lost in a new country into a capable woman who, whilst performing a traditional female role of emotional foil to her male counterpart, delivers personal strength and resilience.

The Finborough Theatre plays host to this production with its usual intimacy; a bare set and a tense audio overlay help build scenes out of pregnant silences into climactic releases. Aram’s photography streams into a production that forces the audience to think about what drives someone to record the present as they try to overwrite their past.

No play about an almost recent genocide is an easy ride. Beast on the Moon is challenging both with its subject matter, but also through the relationships on stage, which don’t give way to hyper-modern sensibilities on gender and age. A profound and well-articulated play that speaks to the power of meaningful individual stories told with commitment and bravery.

Reviewed by William Nash

Photography by Scott Rylander

The Bunker

Reviewed – 22nd February 2019

★★★★

“Sacha Voit and Jessica Butcher have written a very good play. If they were to pare down the problems a bit they could turn it into an excellent one”

A line from the show’s publicity is a good introduction to this play. “A funny, heartbreaking adventure through forests, friendship and Femfresh that reveals the loneliness of age and the power of Mother Nature.”

Papachronopoulou makes good use of Lia Waber’s outstanding set in her direction and allows the two characters to combine naturalism with just the right amount of stylisation. Jack Weir’s lighting design and Chris Drohan’s sound help to tell the story with some lovely atmospheric touches.

Reviewed by Katre

Photography by Tim Kelly

Boots

The Bunker until 16th March

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed – 31st January 2019

★★★★★

“The script builds a rhythmic, repetitive quality that creates the tension and danger”

Reviewed by William Nash

Photography by Scott Rylander

Beast on the Moon

Finborough Theatre until 23rd February

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: