Lion and Unicorn Theatre Archives - Page 5 of 14

Blue Tights, Red Knickers and an ‘S’ on her Vest

Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Reviewed – 14th August 2019

★★★

“the tone is charmingly undramatic, somewhere between a ‘my rubbish life’ comic monologue and self-deprecating lifestyle piece in a colour supplement”

Microaggressions at work, the indignities of commuting, the strain on relationships caused by overwork… these experiences speak to millions. In this production, they speak directly to Jenna, alone on stage while others in her life are represented by disembodied voices. It’s an elegant way to portray social anxiety as a world inside the head that alienates even those who try to help. The homemade superwoman costume Jenna wears signals her as the people pleaser, taking on piles of paperwork from idle colleagues while working late to fulfil her own stressful function as a legal representative.

This everyday story is low key and familiar, something of an attractive change for a Camden Fringe show. A victim of mildly disappointing annual reviews and far from horrific workplace bullying incidents, Jenna bemoans the lack of pastoral care from the firm but also dreads the camping break they organise as a bonding exercise. She resents the loss of support from best friend David as he moves away but is wary nevertheless when he tries to stay in touch, and although she groans at her mother’s calls, it’s her mother who worries enough to pay for her endless therapy sessions.

It’s an interesting conundrum, figuring out how to respond sympathetically to someone so relatively fortunate without falling into the same trap as her work colleagues. It’s easy for the insensitive or inexperienced to dismiss depression and anxiety disorders with ‘get a grip’ and ‘cheer up’, yet it’s not clear from Jenna’s description that she is suffering from either of these serious mental health problems, as opposed to the stress of working in an unhealthy culture.

Thematic Theatre is co-founded by the play’s writer and main performer, Laura Shoebottom, along with Liam Ashmead, who both directs the piece and voices the role of David. Created expressly to stage productions with important themes, they tackle here the subject of mental health, but in their own misdiagnosis of anxiety as something that can be cured by changing jobs or being more assertive – in other words, by getting a grip – they threaten to undermine their message and mission should anyone examine them too closely.

However, the tone is charmingly undramatic, somewhere between a ‘my rubbish life’ comic monologue and self-deprecating lifestyle piece in a colour supplement. Laura Shoebottom writes and plays the central character with a drily knowing quality, while her self-confident presence is given excellent technical support from Chuma Emembolu, Daniel Foggo and Phil Matejtschuk in the sound design and lighting departments. For a city-living audience the time passes pleasantly, affirming that their bad work experiences are common and that if you do occasionally feel isolated, you’re not alone.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography courtesy Thematic Theatre

Blue Tights, Red Knickers and an ‘S’ on her Vest

Lion and Unicorn Theatre until 16th August as part of Camden Fringe 2019

Previously reviewed at this venue:

In the Wake of | ★★★ | August 2018

The German Girls | ★★★ | August 2018

The Cut | ★★ | November 2018

BackPAGE | ★★½ | February 2019

Like You Hate Me | ★★★ | April 2019

Mama G’s Story Time Roadshow | ★★★★★ | May 2019

River In The Sky | ★★½ | May 2019

Euan | ★★★★ | July 2019

The Death Of Ivan Ilyich | ★★ | August 2019

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The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Reviewed – 5th August 2019

★★

“The cast work hard to portray a group of well-off people unprepared for tragedy and though this is occasionally comic, the point is not clear”

An audience of around twenty, respectable for a Monday night fringe show, were perhaps intrigued by the idea that a Tolstoy novella about the terrors of a life lived without meaning could work as light comedy. For Unmasked Theatre’s adaptation, bourgeois life around 19th Century St Petersburg is replaced with a technology-distracted Surrey milieu where we find self-satisfied, career ladder-climbing lawyer, Ivan Ilyich (Kevin Cherry), moving with his family into the splendid new home earned by his latest promotion. He then experiences a minor tumble from an actual ladder whilst hanging curtains. The resulting mysterious pain around his kidneys ineluctably becomes a terminal illness, giving him a grim, new perspective on friends and family. As mortality shifts the focal length of his moral lens, those closest to him appear superficial next to the authenticity of those he had previously considered least important, namely Gerasim (Tyrone Purling), his lower-class carer, and his youngest child, Vasya (George Todd).

The play follows the structure of the book, starting with the news of Ivan’s death and the reactions of his peer group. Then, after the respects are paid and sympathies relayed amid the banality of funeral arrangements, Ivan’s personal effects are boxed up for all eternity, at which point we head back to the start of the story. The strength of this chronology is that we know Ivan’s fate throughout and, at least in Tolstoy’s version, feel the ensuing horror of Ivan’s living death, as he slides, tormented, towards the inevitable.

However, Unmasked Theatre declare their version to be not about death, not even about Ivan, but about those who must witness dying. The cast work hard to portray a group of well-off people unprepared for tragedy and though this is occasionally comic, the point is not clear. Deprived of Ivan’s subjectivity, the characters’ behaviour seems normal. Dealing with death does indeed involve carrying on, trying to be cheerful, adapting to new realities and hoping for a cure, so it seems perverse to find it superficial or amusing.

The performances suit the topsy-turvy nature of the venture, with Kevin Cherry as Ivan starting weakly but getting better as he deteriorated and Sarah Widdas as his wife, Praskivya, creating just enough empathy to destroy the satire of her supposed insincerity. George Todd appears too old to be the tiny, overlooked Vasya with black rings around his eyes depicted in the novella, while Seerche Deveraux as Lisa is too slight a presence to resemble a brazen socialite. Even Tyrone Purling and Matt Turpin, who fare better with the two slippery doctors, are only successful because these characters are transplanted directly from the 19th Century when medics had to cover their cluelessness with bombast, so their emergence as comedy archetypes is fortuitous.

Like Ivan Ilyich, the enterprise is doomed from the start, but Pip O’Neill and Luke Oldfield co-direct to create a fluid production and provide a unique prism through which to experience Tolstoy’s late religious angst. Seen upside down, from another century, something of the original cautionary tale remains.

Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Reviewed – 14th August 2019

★★★

“the tone is charmingly undramatic, somewhere between a ‘my rubbish life’ comic monologue and self-deprecating lifestyle piece in a colour supplement”

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography courtesy Thematic Theatre

Blue Tights, Red Knickers and an ‘S’ on her Vest

Lion and Unicorn Theatre until 16th August as part of Camden Fringe 2019

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Reviewed – 5th August 2019

★★

“The cast work hard to portray a group of well-off people unprepared for tragedy and though this is occasionally comic, the point is not clear”

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Pip O’Neill

The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

Lion and Unicorn Theatre until 6th August as part of Camden Fringe 2019

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: