“The space is wonderfully navigated, a clear indication of the quality of Luke Davies’ direction”
The smell of late night takeaway wafts through the space as we enter the living room of a flat on a South Yorkshire council estate. Pat has been having violent dreams and they are making him scared of himself. When he meets Danny, a family friend of his mums in the pub, Danny invites him back to his flat to implement a tailored therapy course that he assures Pat will heal him, but this is a sinister sort of therapy involving violence and cricket bats, and Pat isn’t allowed to leave.
The script is fantastically crafted, awfully inevitable yet still pumped with a claustrophobic sense of suspense. Joseph Skelton, the play’s writer, is a clear talent, mixing humour with darkness and presenting a narrative of desperate manipulation and complete abuse of power and trust.
Both characters are beautifully layered, lonely and confused and in crisis, in a climate where male mental health issues are notoriously under discussed and masculinity is defined by power. Robert Walter plays Danny, a man who is so fragile he is dangerous. Pat is played by Hugh Train, wide-eyed with the hope and optimism of this therapy, this friendship, later jaded and darker. Walters and Train deliver faultless performances, both as a pair and individually, at ease onstage, never dropping the pace for a moment.
The design is beautifully thought through, detailed and coherent, tied together by the repeating red of the furniture, the lampshade, a ketchup bottle, a sleeping bag. The space is wonderfully navigated, a clear indication of the quality of Luke Davies’ direction.
This is a brilliant piece of theatre, well-written, well-executed and unapologetically dark, investigating masculinity, mental health and abuse with an unflinching depth.
“Ultimately, though, I was gripped on every level; transported, whilst being very aware of the presentness and relevance of the issues being discussed”
Louise Coulthard’s tender, funny and eloquent play has all the theatrical ingredients for something uniquely beautiful. Written and performed by Coulthard, Cockamamy is awesomely executed by its vibrantly talented cast of three, and achieves a level of realism heightened by the closeness of the space, and brought home by the emotive subject matter.
Cockamamy is full of wit, and fleshes out its characters from the opening scene. As Alice, Mary Rutherford performs with such detail and skill that the audience is invited right into her world of grief, confusion and gradual loss of control. Alice’s descent into Alzheimer’s is all the more tragic, because the play begins with her as a modern, healthy, cool grandmother. Expertly paced and realized, Rebecca Loudon’s direction coaxes out so many beautiful images and moments between Rosie and Alice. Equal to them being grandmother and granddaughter, they are friends, and it was a joy to see an intergenerational female relationship portrayed in all its complexity on stage.
Rowan Polonski shines as the patient, supportive Cavan. The chemistry between Polonski and Coulthard is unmistakable: the contrast between their new passion, and Alice reliving the memory of her dead husband, is nuanced, well-balanced and truly novel. Rosie’s restlessness to escape the life of being a carer, whilst feeling intensely guilty for wanting to leaving someone who has also acted as a mother for her, is subtly, yet masterfully, played out.
Cockamamy continually entangles humour with poignancy. When it rises to its peak, in a final scene which takes the audience through every inch of tension and release, the result is truthful and tightly-wrought drama of the best kind. Frequently, Jacob Welsh’s sound design was a strong support for portraying the recession of Alice’s mental state. A wartime song is Alice’s theme which provokes her past. She sees ghosts, relives an air-raid, and – in a neat bit of doubling – sees her husband, played by Cavan in uniform – come into the living room and eat a bourbon biscuit. These elements of Cockamamy deepened it further, and clever changes of perspective between Rosie and Alice made sure that our emotional position was always in flux.
Chris May’s lighting design helps create an abstract tone in a naturalistic space. The choice to leave the stage bare for most scene changes was occasionally very effective, but more events in the sound and lighting cues would have made these seem artistically intentional. Elle Loudon’s design was a perfect creation of intimacy and warmth in the Hope’s black box, and Rebecca Loudon’s direction, supported by Oliver de Rohan, fit perfectly in thrust, with only occasional sight line problems when two characters conversed on the sofa at a time.
Ultimately, though, I was gripped on every level; transported, whilst being very aware of the presentness and relevance of the issues being discussed. A play about love, family, and what it means to be of sound mind, Cockamamy must be seen, shared, and talked about with those you love.
