“The actors’ energy is going into the objects, rather than each other and as a results it sucks out the intimacy”
Luke Adamson’s play about Alzheimer’s and old age, One Last Waltz returns to the Greenwich Studio Theatre. Mandy takes her mother Alice on a trip to Blackpool for one last dance in the Tower Ballroom – but Alice finds things have changed beyond recognition triggering a frightening realisation.
This has the makings of a great show. The script is both heartfelt and humorous, the characters well drawn and the cast are spirited. But it falls down thanks to one thing; there is simply too much stuff on the stage. The cast are way laden with things, each scene having a multitude of costume changes and props to show off. While in a show with a bigger budget, this attention to detail would be admirable, in a stripped back studio space it’s fatal. It affects the pace that too often drags and worse still comes to uncomfortable pauses. Every scene change, every action depends on positioning the props before the emotional beats. It’s pre-emptive and it’s just not necessary with a cast this talented. Most damningly they get in the way of the most important element of the play – the character relationships. The actors’ energy is going into the objects, rather than each other and as a results it sucks out the intimacy, undermining some of the key moments of the play.
I’ve seen plays where this is a bigger problem before, but none where it has left me so frustrated. Because this should be a brilliant review. This is a gentle, loving story with both genuine feeling and a message that is incredibly relevant. While occasionally drifting into exposition, on the whole the script is well plotted and nicely crafted to find the humanity and positivity in what could be a terrifying reality. The performers are all excellent. Amanda Reed’s Alice is charming, giving the character real strength even in the moments where her memory starts to play tricks. Julia Faulkner’s Georgette is a buzzing comic antidote, never allowing the play to dwell too long in its own sobriety and Julie Binysh’s devoted Mandy anchors the piece with her down to earth, pragmatic optimism as she deals with both the loss of her father and the decline of her mother. But too often the direction gets in their way, and as a result the relationships feel unearned. In the confrontation on Blackpool beach, I knew what I should feel but it did not hit home.
This is not a bad night at the theatre by any means. But it is annoying when you see how much better it could be. This is a beautiful piece – it just needs to trust its performers and literally get out of its own way.
Odd Man Out, showing at The Hope Theatre, is a two tale offering of very different men inviting us to bear witness to the stories and confessions of pivotal moments in their lives.
The first, Rabbitskin, written by Dominic Grace and affectionately performed by Luke Adamson is the story of Joe, a young man working out his place in his family and the world, following his mother’s death.
After a slightly clunky start, Adamson finds fluidity to the jumps of Joe’s erratic and gently charming story telling. Adamson is evidently a capable performer, comfortably engaging in multiple roles with ease. Physically Joe’s awkwardness is consistently delivered but I was left wondering if certain, heavily repeated traits were the actor’s choice or director’s request.
The biggest downfall was a tendency to play larger than the space required. At times this lead to a somewhat animated performance and a loss of the much needed intimacy between audience and performer, which is vital for a piece of this nature to fully hit all its emotional marks. With this in mind, I would be interested to see a stripped back, starker portrayal to allow us to engage more with the raw and deeply personal memories.
The writing is well paced with beautiful visual detail, an ideal piece for a one-man performance. The time jump after the penultimate scene could have been utilised to fully cement the emotional journeys of the other characters and allow the final reveal the truly harrowing response it deserves.
In Diary of a Welshcake by Lesley Ross, we quickly warm to the bubbling Ralph (Gregory Ashton) as he offers us Welshcake and asks us to stand for the National Anthem. His early acclamation that this is not theatre, nor stand-up, but a deeply personal story is a useful insight, however not really followed through.
Ralph is Welsh, but doesn’t carry the accent. He is patriotic but spent much of his time in the Midlands before returning to Wales following a painful break-up with his Comic-Con wife. On his best friend’s advice he journeys to Hong Kong to teach English where he starts a bizarre relationship with one of his students which predicable ends in disaster.
The final message of the piece is along the lines of finding oneself on a belated gap year. Unfortunately the performance, thoughts and storyline dart off in tangents that benefit neither the character nor the story. The emotions the audience should experience are utterly prescribed; a tragedy occurs, you should feel devastated or upset. You don’t.
That said, Ralph is harmless and likeable, though it is in the embodiment of Ralph’s new flatmate Matthew (pronounced M-ugh-chew) that Ashton is at his strongest and most engaging.
Overall these are two well contrasted pieces offering the audience the opportunity to engage in the full spectrum of human emotion.
