“Kwaku Mills gives a commendable spirited performance holding the audience in the palm of his hand”
A new production of Arinzé Kene’s hard-hitting yet delicate 2017 play, Good Dog, seems as relevant as ever. Although set in the Noughties and inspired by the 2011 London riots, the themes of frustration and social injustice still ring true. Told in an elongated monologue form, through the eyes of a fast growing teenage boy, a multi-cultural community is seen at breaking point. He witnesses the struggles with crime, poverty, addictions and infidelity that cripples his neighbours. With raging energy and surprising chuckle-out-loud observational humour, this powerful piece of storytelling shows what happens when all hope is lost and life is full of disappointment.
Kwaku Mills gives a commendable spirited performance holding the audience in the palm of his hand single-handedly for over two hours. He moves with dexterity through the different stages of the boy’s life. Transitioning from a naive and opportunistic young teen, to a hardened and disenchanted adult, who finds out the hard way that no good comes from being good in this world.
A large, black, wooden, slatted cube dominates the stage (set design Amelia Jane Hankin), representing such places as the balcony of the boy’s high rise home, the corner shop or train platform that makes up the bleak microcosm. Mills plays and interacts with the cube as if it is another character, becoming an integral partner in the story.
Helen Skiera’s sound design helps to flesh out the performance. The voices of the community the boy observes drips out through the speakers, painting a multi-cultural picture of a down-trodden forgotten pocket of the capital. It was unfortunate that some of this dialogue was missed due to the sound being far too quiet.
Arinzé Kene’s penetrating and quick-witted colloquial writing, feels authentic and tangible. It’s storytelling of the everyday man, for the everyday man. At times it can feel dense and borderline self-indulgent, yet this is a tale that holds an honest mirror up to the world, proving to be a vital piece of theatre. Telling a truth about London life that needs to be witnessed more on stage.
Reviewed by Phoebe Cole
Photography by Wasi Daniju
Good Dog
Watford Palace Theatre until 2nd February then touring UK
“emotionally heavy subject matter often relieved by astutely funny, bittersweet observations on female relationships”
The Silence takes us through the private musings and personal interactions of Ewa, Anna and Maria – three generations of Polish women. It’s hard to pin where the focus of the play sits, running over issues of national identity, the traumas of war and the infuriation of family. That sounds a bit hefty and dramatic, doesn’t it? Well, The Silence is both of these things but also light hearted at times with emotionally heavy subject matter often relieved by astutely funny, bittersweet observations on female relationships.
Kate Spiro gives a just-fraught-enough performance of the externally beige but internally chaotic Ewa, the mother and daughter at the centrepoint of The Silence in many ways. It isn’t an easy part to fulfil sympathetically and could quite easily come across as a standard middle aged meltdown figure. This is avoided with a real sense of tension, a visible tightness that makes one constantly on edge to see if she will begin to unwind or explode in a spectacular snap.
Tina Gray handles ‘babcia’ Maria quite sweetly, setting the audience up to accept the shambling, sweet-old-girl routine well enough to make the turn of the second act all the more hard hitting. Maria Louis completes the cast as Anna and absolutely nails the irritable but dutiful late-teen phase of the youngest generation of the family. All three dip into a not insignificant amount of spoken Polish which comes across quite naturally, a good job from dialect coach Karina Knapinska.
There is something of a stereotypical feel to the characters to begin with – bumbling grandma, middle aged mess and rebellious youth but these roles round out as the play progresses, Nicola Werenowksa has crafted the story of The Silence quite skilfully to take an extraordinary life history and make it relatable to a modern British audience. We go from tales of the Gulag to groans about the M25 seamlessly, seeing parallels in stresses and relationships since the WWII era without falling into the trap of belittling current woes by comparison to harder times.
The Silence is playing in the Studio at the Mercury Theatre, to which it is well suited. Three simple grey chairs make for the majority of the set with only a few other basic props. A high grey screen to the rear of the stage adds a looming bleakness to the atmosphere, cleverly used with a backlight later in the play to fill in time lost to a costume change. This is a play about conversations – conversations with ourselves and with others and the minimalist backdrop avoids any distraction from what is being said. It cannot be described as fast moving, though it flows very well despite the frequently overlapping dialogue of each character. This is helpful to the pace but does make it challenging to keep up with at times, more than once I found myself focusing on one and losing the thread of where the stories of the other two had gone. It is definitely a captivating play and although it is enjoyable at times one doesn’t exactly leave the theatre with a warm and fuzzy feeling. Touches of humour keep it from being completely depressing, however.
As a final note, it is refreshing to see an all female cast and creatives team telling an important story in a time when immigration, refugees and conflict commemorations are such hot topics of debate, so congratulations to director Jo Newman on the production as a whole.
