★★★★★

“the characters, despite being created only through shifts in Rice’s voice and posture, are three-dimensional and complex”

In what presents as a comedy monologue, but quickly evolves into a troubling modern tale, Maddie Rice writes and performs the part of Miss, a well-meaning and slightly prudish teacher. At school, Miss fills the traditional role of a stable, sexless mentor to her precocious charges while in her private life she is between relationships and desperately at sea amid the dangers of urban dating. The comic potential of two worlds in conflict is successfully mined for the first half, as Rice skilfully conjures a recognisable collection of characters.

Then, just as we wonder where all this is going, a tragic event at school triggers Miss to begin to unravel. Fighting off the intrusive concern of the school’s councillor, Laura, with her wheedling voice and mindfulness techniques, Miss hits the Pina Coladas and revisits the nightclub where she had experienced an assault at the hands of a colleague, about which she had been silent.

Several details elevate the showcase above the usual wry look at modern life. The direction by Katie Pesskin is crisp, with smart use of lighting (Mark Dymock) and sound (Dominic Kennedy). The script is genuinely funny and the characters, despite being created only through shifts in Rice’s voice and posture, are three-dimensional and complex, from handsome food-tech teacher Eric and jolly but morally bereft flatmate Mairead, to charming Raj at the corner shop and an array of street-wise pupils.

Although this is her writing debut, Rice is an accomplished performer having toured in the stage version of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s ‘Fleabag’ and played various parts in Comedy Central’s ‘Every Blank Ever’. Her role in ‘Fleabag’ provides a jumping off point for the character of Miss, but here the bawdy Saturday Night style is mellowed by an emotional authenticity and pin sharp observation. For example, the simple set (Ben Target and Tom Hartshorne) features two mounds and a sapling to represent the place in a school playing field where the girls have their heart-to-hearts. In the script, too, character is never sacrificed for easy laughs. When Miss admits that it’s high time she bought toilet rolls, kitchen rolls and sausage rolls for the flat, we realise it’s because Mairead has been excusing her these duties, exposing both the flatmate’s softer side and the extent of Miss’s fragility.

All this gives a powerful sense of reality to the show’s narrative and themes, but as serious as these are, the comedy never goes cold. Brilliant writing and performance are vital to pull of this balancing act and this one woman show gives us both barrels.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Ali Wright

The Trench

Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed – 16th October 2018

★★★

“a slick, impressive show, so long as you don’t dig too deep”

As the only tunneller awarded a Victoria Cross in the First World War, William Hackett provides inspiration, storyline and main character (renamed Bert) for this play by Oliver Lansley. Despite his heart condition, Hackett enlisted in late 1915. A few months later he was denied leave to visit his 14-year-old son, who had lost a leg in a mining accident. Then, on 22nd June 1916, he was trapped underground with four comrades by a German mine blast. Over several days he helped rescue three but died going back for the last.

In this already cheerless saga, the amputation is replaced by news from home of a baby lost in childbirth, heightening perhaps Bert’s motivation to save his much younger colleague. To ramp up the melodrama further, the journey unfolds via a solid hour of iambic pentameter, spoken mostly by Bert (Lansley himself) as he scrapes and writhes through a claustrophobic set, aided by the multiple stage skills of Edward Cartwright, James Hastings and Kadell Herida, who play his comrades. The entombed ensemble is accompanied by the brooding presence stage left of the show’s composer Alexander Wolfe riffing dolefully on guitars, with sad melodies on sundry instruments occasionally aided by the multi-talented Hastings.

If this sounds unremittingly gloomy, it is. On the upside, The Trench is the work of Les Enfant Terribles, a theatre company with its own brand of showmanship and production design. Samuel Wyer provides an explosion of visual ideas and techniques, which provide the energy needed for an otherwise plodding tale. Shadow puppetry is used especially well to depict sepulchral columns of doomed troops; high tension wires and projections combine to create a cinematic overhead camera effect as Bert stumbles through the mire of the battlefield. The team also depicts the horrors that Bert encounters with a series of demonic puppets resembling the rotting carcasses of rats and horses, culminating in a red dragon, a reference to the Red Dragon crater by which the area is still known.

It’s hard to think what William Hackett would make of all this. Most likely he would enjoy the technical flair along with everyone else and may have recognised, too, the Music Hall style rhyming monologue, sustained from ‘A species on extinction’s brink’ all the way through to ‘The flickering flame of fate has faded’. Hackett might even have recognised Oliver Lansley’s actor-manager function but if so, probably wouldn’t have recognised himself. Hackett’s photos online suggest a less commanding figure than the one portrayed and a more vulnerable performance would have raised the emotional engagement hugely.

The glorification of WW1’s futile sacrifices can become a divisive subject especially at this time of year, but there’s no escaping that this is a slick, impressive show, so long as you don’t dig too deep.

Pickle Jar

Soho Theatre

Reviewed – 26th October 2018

★★★★★

“the characters, despite being created only through shifts in Rice’s voice and posture, are three-dimensional and complex”

All this gives a powerful sense of reality to the show’s narrative and themes, but as serious as these are, the comedy never goes cold. Brilliant writing and performance are vital to pull of this balancing act and this one woman show gives us both barrels.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Ali Wright

Pickle Jar

Soho Theatre until 10th November

Previously reviewed at this theatre:

The Trench

Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed – 16th October 2018

★★★

“a slick, impressive show, so long as you don’t dig too deep”

The glorification of WW1’s futile sacrifices can become a divisive subject especially at this time of year, but there’s no escaping that this is a slick, impressive show, so long as you don’t dig too deep.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Rah Petherbridge

The Trench

Southwark Playhouse until 17th November

Previously reviewed at this venue: