Tag Archives: Hen and Chickens Theatre

Mojo
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Hen & Chickens Theatre

Mojo

Mojo

Hen & Chickens Theatre

Reviewed – 20th November 2018

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“a formidable endeavour, which That Lot have been ambitious in undertaking”

 

New London theatre company, That Lot, along with director Kara M. Tyler, have taken on Jez Butterworthโ€™s Mojo for their debut production. Butterworthโ€™s first play, a dark gangster comedy which premiered at the Royal Court in 1995, is an exceedingly challenging piece which That Lot have been bold in tackling, but havenโ€™t quite managed to pin down.

The script takes us to 1950s Soho. Itโ€™s a world of crime, drugs, and rock & roll. Pill-popping gangsters Potts (Louis Cummings), Sweets (Brad Leigh), and Skinny (Thao Nguyen) struggle to cope when second-in-command Mickey (Adam Bloom) announces their boss, Ezra, is dead. Cut in half and delivered to them in rubbish bins. The play follows the panicking of Sid, Sweets, and Skinny, who assume theyโ€™re next, and the power struggle between Mickey and Baby (Oliver Parnell), Ezraโ€™s son, who despite being fairly unhinged, is heir to the gang and his fatherโ€™s nightclub.

One of the reasons Mojo is so difficult, is it contains very little plot. The action, until the very end, is almost exclusively limited to the characters hiding out in the nightclub. Only the most incisively nuanced characterisation and expertly timed dialogue will keep an audience invested. Itโ€™s a daunting task even for the most seasoned professionals, and unfortunately the performances here donโ€™t bring the power and maturity required to drive the play alone. The two-hour runtime makes its length felt, and I wasnโ€™t entirely surprised to spot someone near me sleeping through the second act.

Leigh (Sweets) stands out for a first-rate performance as the pilled-up, dim-witted stooge, and Parnell (Baby) has an admirably easy confidence. However, Cummings (Potts), and Bloom (Mickey) seem less comfortable in their roles. Holes in the movement direction often leave Bloom standing awkwardly while others talk around him, further impeding the weight and dominance lacking from the performance. Nguyen (Skinny) is frequently off-tempo with his lines.

Timing is a blanket issue throughout. Mojo is fast-paced and rhythmic. The actors struggle to bounce the lines between them, and never really manage to hit a stride. The comedy in particular suffers as a result. For a play billed as a black comedy, this performance was noticeably short on laughs. Following the rocky first act, I overheard someone comment โ€˜tough crowdโ€™, although of course the opposite is true of an opening night audience filled with friends and supporters.

All revivals shoulder the burden of relevance. What does a play already in the shadow of Mamet, Pinter, and Tarantino in 1995, and since buried by countless others, have to say to a 2018 audience? The issue of toxic masculinity feels like itโ€™s been left unmined. Babyโ€™s history of sexual abuse is muted. The statement That Lot and Tyler are making with this production doesnโ€™t come through.

Mojo is a formidable endeavour, which That Lot have been ambitious in undertaking. There is genuinely good effort here, but this uneven production needs further development to find its mojo.

 

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Artwork byย Oliver Bloom

 


Mojo

Hen & Chickens Theatre until 24th November

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Abducting Diana | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…ยฝ | March 2018
Isaac Saddlesore & the Witches of Drenn | โ˜…โ˜…โ˜…โ˜… | April 2018
I Will Miss you When You’re Gone | โ˜…โ˜…ยฝ | September 2018

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com

 

I Will Miss You When Youโ€™re Gone – 2.5 Stars

Gone

I Will Miss You When Youโ€™re Gone

Hen & Chickens Theatre

Reviewed – 18th August 2018

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“thereโ€™s no reason why this play couldnโ€™t evolve into a very valuable voice in the conversation surrounding grief”

 

Perhaps the main issue with I Will Miss You When Youโ€™re Gone is that, despite promising to discuss the effects and experience of living with grief, it gets so caught up in the throes of ghost politics that it all but forgets to do what it set out to. To explain what I mean by this, this play comes in at just over an hour in length. One would think that in this time there could be plenty of discussion of what it means to grieve and eventually move on, but this just doesnโ€™t happen. Instead, much of the time seems to be taken up with the minutiae of who can or canโ€™t see who and why. Certainly, this could be of interest, but it felt to me that it seriously overshadowed what the play allegedly set out to do. There were many points at which it became evident that, for all the talking, the plot was not really growing or progressing. Instead, it felt like it was managing to go in circles without breaking any new ground.

Additionally, while not all of the acting was wonderful, there was also a strong sense that this would be a challenging piece to perform extremely well. Far too many of the lines jarred uncomfortably, and some moments just felt so unnatural that it was virtually impossible to take them seriously. Most of the time, it would be hard to really blame the actors for this. The issue clearly lies far more with Jessica Moss’ original material. However, I didnโ€™t get the impression that the direction (Vuqun Fan) pulled much out of the text. It was frequently hard to discern just why the characters were doing what they were doing as their motivations were never really made clear. Because of this, many of the momentary snapshot scenes (all too frequently sandwiched between painfully extended blackouts) just didnโ€™t quite make sense. Given the simplicity of the set (Aiden Connor) and the small size of the cast, it would be hard to justify any blackouts between scenes at all, and yet these were often long to the point of distraction. If these quick successions of small scenes are to work, there must be a better way to do that than cutting the play off for twenty seconds every time.

Despite these issues, I canโ€™t write this play off. Perhaps if the director and cast manage to hone their focus in on the elements of the text that explore real issues, these can be more visibly drawn out. If that is possible, then thereโ€™s no reason why this play couldnโ€™t evolve into a very valuable voice in the conversation surrounding grief, and on how we as a society deal with it. There is some important material in there – thereโ€™s discussion of how isolation plays into mental health issues, how humans respond to grief and what it means to succeed. If these issues can be brought to the forefront, that would be a good place to start.

 

Reviewed by Grace Patrick

 


I Will Miss You When Youโ€™re Gone

Hen & Chickens Theatre until 29th September

 

 

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