COMPOSITOR E at the Omnibus Theatre

★★★

“It’s a fascinating concept – well researched and historically accurate”

Who owns our stories? And how is meaning imbued in them? Marking 400 years since the printing of Shakespeare’s first folio, Compositor E, an original story and script by Charlie Dupré, explores the collective endeavour of its publication. We get beyond Shakespeare as singular genius and instead learn, directly and indirectly, about the role of King James I in the development of Macbeth, the printer Isaac Jaggard and compositors Richard and John who arrange the type for the first folio.

It’s a fascinating concept – well researched and historically accurate. There was a real 17-year-old John Leason who started an apprenticeship with Jaggard in 1622. Scholars have dubbed him compositor e, ranked fifth compared to the other compositors due to his inaccuracy and difficulties dealing with the manuscript copy. The play opens in the midst of the printing process in Jaggard’s printing house when John Leason arrives for his first day. It’s farcical seeing Leason thrown in at the deep end by a stretched and stressed Jaggard whilst Richard Bardolph, another compositor, winds him up. Leason is a fast learner and soon gets promoted to deciphering the manuscripts into type when Richard falls ill. But Jaggard’s advice that the compositor leaves a mark goes to John’s head, and he’s left thinking about making changes to correct, in his view, the wrongs that have been done to the women in the story, drawing on the wrongs that were done to his own mother.

The piece includes high calibre performances from the three main cast members. Tré Medley as John Leason plays both the naivete and dark underlying trauma with concentrated intensity. David Monteith as Richard Bardolph brings light relief, with his evenly-paced, booming voice and physical humour; pissing into a chamber pot and spewing up on stage. Kaffe Keating, for me, is the standout of the cast, playing the busy head of the family company trying to make a name for himself in his father’s absence with maturity and depth.

“Set and costume design are beautifully interpreted”

Medley has possibly the most challenging role of the three due to his character’s flighty and inconsistent nature. He goes from inexperienced apprentice, to plotting against his boss, to then packing up to leave in unbelievably quick succession, although Medley handles these well. What can’t be made up for is a lack of exposition in terms of his motivation. It’s clear early on that something around the circumstances of his mother’s death is haunting Leason, but it’s not until the final scenes of the piece that we start to unpick what happened, and why that drives his fixation on whether the women of Macbeth are wayward or weyard. Given so much of the tension of the piece derives from this – the audience needs to know, sooner, what’s going on.

Three female cast members use stylised movement to operate the printing press and mix the ink, evoking the three witches, or wayward sisters, of Macbeth. Given the plays strong critique of the treatment of women in witch hunts under James I’s reign – it would have been appropriate for there to be more speaking female characters, rather than them being an addendum to the main action.

Set and costume design (Sophia Pardon) are beautifully interpreted. All action takes place in the workshop and so the stage is covered with ink stains on the floor, across clothes and up the papyrus-coloured walls. Words spelt out by Leason are projected onto printed sheets suspended across the stage. The closing monologue is also supported by an intricate video projection (Rachel Sampley) that adds, alongside the musical crescendo (Adam McCready), to the sense of an earth-shaking moment with the publication of the first folio.

Compositor E has an original and inspired concept, brought to life by its talented cast and creatives. More internal consistency and earlier explanation of its main character’s motives would elevate this to greater heights.

COMPOSITOR E at the Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed on 22nd September 2023

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Dan Tsantillis

Previously reviewed at this venue:

FLIGHTS ★★★½ February 2020

THE GLASS WILL SHATTER ★★★★ January 2020

THE LITTLE PRINCE ★★★★ December 2019

FIJI ★★★★★ November 2019

Compositor E

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★★★

“Coates shines the brightest of the pair with his deadpan manner and fearless displays of physical humour”

Edging, a new play by co-writer and co-stars Harry Al-Adwani and Martin Coates, tells the story of Henry and Marcus, two childhood friends who reconnect after five years when Henry needs a place to stay after a break up. When Marcus relents and lets Henry stay, scenes from their childhood together in a seaside town, whose main event the Donkey Derby is clearly the only thing of note, play on his mind.

At its heart, Edging is a story of male friendship complicated by feelings that indicate more. Told mostly from Marcus’ perspective, we learn that Marcus is openly gay, coming out to Henry when they were teens. It’s implied that Henry is straight, having recently broken up with his girlfriend. It’s pretty clear as soon as Henry re-enters Marcus’ life that he feels something more. The piece explores the unrequited love between a gay man and his straight best friend – evoking the obsessive yearning and sexual frustration of adolescence that continues through to young adulthood with tenderness and raucous humour.

Marcus, played by Martin Coates, ironically comes across as the comedic straight man of the duo. But that’s not to say he plays second fiddle to Harry Al-Adwani’s funny man Henry. If anything, Coates shines the brightest of the pair with his deadpan manner and fearless displays of physical humour from Marcus’ incessant masturbation and solo sexual exploits. The piece’s opening tableau sets the tone and a scene with a carrot is particularly, intentionally, cringe-inducing. He is uncanny as Henry’s darling agent, who proclaims there is ‘nothing more important than acting’ between vegetable based terms of endearment.

“The ending is unexpectedly interesting”

Al-Adwani also draws laughs, but more obviously so. He delivers the wise cracks and wink-wink moments that balance against Marcus’ more dry manner. Perhaps it’s part of his character, as an aspiring actor that doesn’t have his life together yet, but he comes across as much more naive. And when, as Henry, he becomes obsessed with fixing Marcus a date, his ‘straight-eye for the queer-guy role’ wears thin quite quickly. Nonetheless Al-Adwani and Coates’ do have good chemistry.

The show is blessed with an extensive set in the steaming hot black box theatre of The Old Red Lion. All action takes place in Marcus’ flat – decked out with plenty of vintage furniture, ‘Milch’ posters, and ‘Cow Juice’ branded milk carton that really show the commitment to Marcus’s career as a milk salesman executive.

However, the story takes too long to reach its climax and at times the staging and temporal shifts feel a little juvenile. The ending is unexpectedly interesting – a case of conflicting memories over the incident that led to their friendship fading five years prior. Rather than wondering who was right, we want to know whether and how the pair will move forward.

Edging is almost a sharp show, carried by the comedic performances, but an overly complex and lengthy plot blunts its potential.

Tag Archives: Amber Woodward

Compositor E

★★★

Omnibus Theatre

COMPOSITOR E at the Omnibus Theatre

★★★

“It’s a fascinating concept – well researched and historically accurate”

“Set and costume design are beautifully interpreted”