Kieran Hurley Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★

“It’s an astonishing performance from Campbell, and Snell’s tracks complement it well”

This intense and intimate reimagining of Kieran Hurley’s 2012 play captures the appeal and vibe of ‘90s rave culture, while missing what makes it interesting now.

The concept of Beats is unusual – it’s a one man performance, by producer/director/performer Ned Campbell but is accompanied throughout by a live on-stage DJ (Tom Snell). The line between play, performance and gig is ripe to be blurred and played with. But the DJ fades increasingly into the background and is used more to build atmosphere.

The plot is simple. In suburban Scotland in 1994 Johnno McCreadie goes to his first rave, while his mother wrings her hands at home and a police officer battles with the wider political effects of his job.

There is a mesmeric quality to the lyrical prose mixed with the thudding, repetitive tracks. At times this bubbles the audience in with the performer, both caught up in the high of the music. Often though the mood is somnambulant, lulled into drowsiness by the rhythm of the piece.

Campbell effortlessly slips between multiple characters, often mid sentence. His startling grotesques are clear and well-realised. The piece is carefully calculated by him and co-Director Eloïse Poulton to make these character shifts stark and dramatic.

Hurley’s script does pose some provocative questions about rave culture and the dire effects of Thatcherism on these small Scottish communities. But all it succeeds in doing is nodding to the politics, hinting at something more interesting beyond the fairly predictable plot that is presented.

Alex Lewer’s lighting design is superb, and probably my favourite thing about this play. Slick character transitions are punctuated by lighting shifts and the rave comes alive with a smattering of colour and motion in the lights.

It’s an astonishing performance from Campbell, and Snell’s tracks complement it well. But the play itself lacks enough intrigue to remain compelling.

Mouthpiece

Soho Theatre

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★

“It becomes too clever and self-aware and we disengage”

Above Edinburgh on the Salibury Crags, Declan, a talented, working class young artist pulls a body back as it tries to jump. This body belongs to Libby, a middle-aged, middle class fading playwright who is drunkenly considering the end. So two worlds meet. As Declan talks about the realities of his life, an abusive step-father, his love for his little sister, Libby begins to write for the first time in far too long. She needs his story, she needs his words, but at that point, the play asks, does telling someone’s story become exploiting it?

Lorn Macdonald as Declan is the heart and energy of the piece. He comes to life, quick and funny, surprising and vulnerable. His story is the one we are interested in hearing, and Macdonald is simply fire on stage. I cannot fault his performance. Unfortunately Neve McIntosh’s Libby feels comparatively unreal. This is not her fault, but an impossibility within the way the character is written. She is unlikeable throughout. Her suicide attempt, which opens the story, is so lightly commented upon in the rest of the play that it seems completely unbelievable and rather half-hearted, trivialising suicide, and contributing to a version of Libby that is self-absorbed and ingenuine. She is used as a device by the playwright (Kieran Hurley) to make comments about the world of theatre, meaning she struggles to emerge. He gives her an extended monologue about the state of playwriting, about theatres and audiences, that is so self-aware it makes us self-aware. That isn’t a character speaking, and it removes us from the world of the play with immediate effect. Even her trajectory isn’t believable. She jumps from suicidal to mentor to lover to exploiter with no apparent journeys in between.

Mouthpiece is interspersed by Libby directly addressing the audience, telling us what makes a good play, walking us through the necessary ingredients as they are created onstage, foreshadowing the way the narrative must inevitably go. Sometimes this works really well. But the plot gets lost in this, and the end in particular suffers as a result. It stops being about the characters, about their story. It becomes too clever and self-aware and we disengage.

The story that is at the heart of ‘Mouthpiece’ is a fascinating one of an unlikely relationship, of exploitation, class and culture, but it gets lost in a weary exercise of meta-theatricality, in an attempt to comment on playwriting, when the story is powerful enough to make this comment on its own. Let the story speak, and we will be powerless not to listen.

BEATS at the King’s Head Theatre

★★★

“It’s an astonishing performance from Campbell, and Snell’s tracks complement it well”

BEATS at the King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed on 19th April 2024

by Auriol Reddaway

Photography by Josh McClure

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BEATS

BEATS

Soho Theatre

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★

“It becomes too clever and self-aware and we disengage”

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography by Roberto Ricciuti

Mouthpiece

Soho Theatre until 4th May

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: