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Evelyn

Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed – 28th June 2022

★★★

“There are lovely moments of humour, juxtaposed with the darkness of Michael Crean’s evocative sound”

It’s quite apt that Tom Ratcliffe’s play “Evelyn” opens with a semi-grotesque, semi-comic re-enactment of a ‘Punch and Judy’ show. Set in a seaside town overlooking the North Sea, the action is constructed to provoke a mixture of outrage and guilty pleasure. We used to laugh at the puppet show, but modern sensibilities have forced it out of fashion. After all, when stripped down, who is Punch but a misogynistic old womaniser, who likes a drink, and who displays unashamed homicidal tendencies? Within fifteen minutes of a typical show the corpses mount up; including his child, his wife and a policeman thrown in for good measure.

Popular consensus has all but killed off the four-hundred-year-old tradition. But what Ratcliffe’s drama (based on actual events) points out is that the storyline is often repeated in real life. And in that real life, ‘popular consensus’ so easily becomes mob rule.

The surreal, albeit a touch confusing, quality generated by the Punch and Judy characters that pop up throughout the show, reveals the back story. Ten years earlier, Evelyn Mills witnessed her husband murder their child. She covered up for him, lied in court and presumably let him get off scot-free while she did time. We never really learn the fate of the murderous and abusive husband, but bizarrely it is Evelyn who is vilified. The villagers are furious that she was allowed to change her identity and be let back into society.

Meanwhile, in the present action, Sandra (Nicola Harrison) arrives in town just as the community concur that Evelyn is back in town. Fingers point at her. Understandably so, she’s an odd ball, claiming she’s from Reading, Ryde, Rochdale; whatever takes her fancy. Thinking she is going to be renting a private apartment she finds herself flat-sharing in a retirement village with dotty Jeanne (Rula Lenska). Sandra is emphatic she needs to be on her own but rapidly hooks up with local electrician Kevin (Offue Okegbe). Kevin’s sister, Laura (Yvette Boakye) bristles at the tryst.

There are bonds that unite the female characters together, focusing on concepts of motherhood and loss, but the performances fail to gel in the same cohesive way. Lenska is watchable, reminiscent of Joanna Lumley’s Patsy, but is carted off before her true relevance is realised. While there are hints of passive aggressiveness towards Harrison’s subtly portrayed Sandra, Boakye’s Laura is just aggressive. She represents the mob, while Okegbe’s Kevin gives Sandra the benefit of the doubt. Is love blind? Or is it everybody else, who cannot see beyond the hive mentality?

The question is never fully resolved. But we never fully engage in the outcome either. The performances lack the rich conviction needed to hit the target that Ratcliffe’s writing is aiming for, exploring some urgent and relevant topics while questioning society’s perception of justice, vigilantism, social media and collective coercion. There are lovely moments of humour, juxtaposed with the darkness of Michael Crean’s evocative sound (performed live by Crean), but the shift of styles distracts. The kitchen sink realism sits uncomfortably beside the ‘Commedia dell’arte’ exaggeration. The intention is crystal clear, but is muddied by its execution.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Greg Goodale

Evelyn

Southwark Playhouse until 16th July

Recently reviewed at this venue:

You Are Here | ★★★★ | May 2021

Operation Mincemeat | ★★★★★ | August 2021

Yellowfin | ★★★★ | October 2021

Indecent Proposal | ★★ | November 2021

Anyone Can Whistle | ★★★★ | April 2022

I Know I Know I Know | ★★★★ | April 2022

Click here to see our most recent reviews

★★★

“a reminder yet again of the power of theatre to bring into the light, things that would rather hide in darkness”

Matthew Gouldesbrough’s play Holy Land is a grim and disturbing look at the dark web. For audience members unaware of the dark web, it is the part of the internet not indexed by search engines. Those who post and access material on it, do so anonymously. Holy Land begins with a character describing the ease with which he can buy a gun on the dark web, no questions asked. In the space of eighty minutes, we find that the purchase of the gun is really just the final purchase in a long line of chilling acquisitions that include videos of pornography, including pornography with violence.

Harrowing stuff indeed. Nevertheless, Holy Land is an inventive script that tells its story by putting together three characters who address the audience in a series of monologues. We eventually come to understand that they all have a shared past which involves encounters with predators on and offline. Rick Romero as Jon, gives an intense, athletic performance as a bewildered father trying to hold his family together against a predatory local church. Gouldesbrough, in addition to writing the script, is the young computer nerd Tim, lured into situations of increasing horror as he tries to avoid a psychopath he first encountered in school. Hannah Morrison gives an all too believable performance as Kate, a teenager with chronic and ultimately fatal self-esteem issues, who is groomed in all sorts of online nastiness. In the ironically titled Holy Land, Gouldesbrough has created a modern morality tale where there are no winners, and no comfort for the survivors, either.

Holy Land is an economical show that focuses on the actors, with a bare boards set. But because it’s a play about the internet, the actors are also always on stage with screens. This is not an entirely successful device. Meant as a counterpoint to descriptions of videos online, the images are often presented as grainy and indistinct, but the overall effect can be distracting. Even when used to present a kind of livestream action at the end of the play, to underpin the “this is happening now in front of you” theme of the videos being presented online, the use of screens in this way comes across as a gimmick rather than illuminating. In any event, the actors have all the words they need to tell this tragic story.

Holy Land is not a play for family audiences, and there will be theatre goers who find this play challenging to sit through. Nevertheless Elegy Theatre Company deserves credit for bringing such a difficult subject to the stage. It’s a reminder yet again of the power of theatre to bring into the light, things that would rather hide in darkness.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Greg Goodale

Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed – 28th June 2022

★★★

“There are lovely moments of humour, juxtaposed with the darkness of Michael Crean’s evocative sound”

Popular consensus has all but killed off the four-hundred-year-old tradition. But what Ratcliffe’s drama (based on actual events) points out is that the storyline is often repeated in real life. And in that real life, ‘popular consensus’ so easily becomes mob rule.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Greg Goodale

Evelyn

Southwark Playhouse until 16th July

Recently reviewed at this venue:

The Space

Reviewed – 12th June 2019

★★★

“a reminder yet again of the power of theatre to bring into the light, things that would rather hide in darkness”

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Greg Goodale

Holy Land

The Space until 15th June

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: