“Excepting the performances, everything feels a bit “debut”, despite the creative team’s impressive programme credits”
Kyle has spent his whole life desperate to be in the army. Idolising his father who was a soldier, he’s sacrificed the possibility of love, both romantic and familial, to ensure his military future. When he meets Chuck while serving in Afghanistan, he starts to wonder if he can have both. But after stepping on an IED, his hopes are upended.
Paper Cut by Andrew Rosendorf poses some important questions about masculinity, family loyalty, and love. The idea that gay men should have had to hide their sexual orientation in order to serve is rightly highlighted as bizarre and destructive, and the idea, too, that romantic love requires sex is called in to question.
Kyle’s relationship with his twin brother Jack is a brilliant example of unconditional love, of caring for someone even after they’ve betrayed you for their own ends. Joe Bollard as Jack is warm and awkward, laughs and tears coming as easily as each other, and he’s a brilliant counterpart to his overly intense brother.
Prince Kundai, who plays love interest Chuck, is charismatic and lovable. Entirely comfortable in his own skin, and endearingly sincere, it’s easy to see how he and Kyle might slip from friends to lovers.
Tobie Donovan, playing Harry, another love interest, is sweet and ridiculous. He’s got great comic timing and even gets a few laughs where I’m not sure there was supposed to be one.
While the plot itself is gritty and melancholy, the script feels a little too sentimental, relying on clichés and long…meaningful…pauses. Callum Mardy (Kyle) seems to get the bulk of these staring-off-in-the-distance speeches about the meaning of serving your country and so forth, and it overrides the genuine tragedy of his story, with him coming off a little ridiculous.
The script’s final lines, for example, completely diminish the fervent conversation that preceded them, as Kyle and Chuck look out at the sunset: “If you could go back and change anything, would you?”/ “So much.” The end. It’s just a bit lazy. And it’s a shame because in Mardy’s moments of levity, irony and even anger, he shows his capabilities, but he’s let down by the script’s sap.
Sorcha Corcoran’s design, a simple wooden backwall with a row of inbuilt storage chests, works fine, serving its practical purpose of hiding props and keeping the stage clean. That is, until the penultimate scene when before, in the cover of dark, the stage is scattered with gold confetti. This all comes to make sense when the final scene takes place on the beach, but less so when we’re in Jack’s apartment. Why not just wait a minute, and scatter the confetti directly before the beach scene? Or, given how minimalist the rest of the set is, why do it at all?
Lucia Sanchez Roldan’s lighting design is inoffensive: Strip lights hang from the ceiling, changing colours throughout. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the story though, and seems a bit “designy” for the sake of it.
Excepting the performances, everything feels a bit “debut”, despite the creative team’s impressive programme credits. That said, there’s plenty to work with, and nothing a bit of red ink couldn’t fix.
“as meaningful a piece of drama as when it was first written”
Lidless Theatre presents a revival of Philip Ridley’s 2007 East End family drama minimally directed by Max Harrison. Played in the round with an acting space restricted by black benches on four sides (Designer Kit Hinchcliffe), it’s a small square to work in but the movement never appears cramped. With audience all around and a mirror glass floor reflecting upwards, the four characters are under examination from all directions.
Excellently lit throughout (Lighting Designer Alex Lewer) the mood is dark and brooding and none better than in the scene almost totally lit by candlelight, highlighting the action whilst emphasising the fears that lurk in the shadows. This atmosphere is heightened during scene changes by a strange and eerie soundscape (Sound Designer Sam Glossop).
Harrison writes in his programme note, that the play is about the elusiveness of memory and how the past can be manipulated to shape our lives. And, in fact, shape the lives of others. The relationship between two brothers is key. A relationship that is tainted by the memory of their pasts. They are both quite clear what they remember. It’s just that what they remember isn’t the same.
Truth is an elusive thing. What is the real reason that Debbie leaves the home and flees to her sister? A fear of rats in the cellar or of domestic abuse? And Liz (Kacey Ainsworth), mother to the two boys, changes her recollections of Barry’s artwork from something she thought hideous to something she remembers as beautiful. Memories are twisted and can’t be trusted.
Smartly dressed with his hair cut short, Steven (Ned Costello) is the elder brother and driving force in the family company. His lips tightly pursed, he is near monosyllabic when forced into conversation, responding to questioning with silence and a distant stare. The same response too when wife Debbie (Katie Buchholz) announces she is expecting their first child. But is Steven the father? Steven paranoically suggests he might not be.
Barry (Joseph Potter) is all that Steven is not. Dressed casually, hair flying free, he bounds with energy, a wildness lying behind his eyes. If Steven retains self-control, a coiled spring held in check, then Barry is that coil let go, a free spirit. If Steven’s languid articulation seems like something is being left unsaid, then Barry might suggest it is because his brother is repressing something unsavoury.
The cast of four are excellent together. Only the estuary vowels of the four Londoners, Liz particularly, close a little too near to soap opera at times.
This work is as meaningful a piece of drama as when it was first written. With its hints of shocking secrets that the family are unable to voice out loud, this production brings to the fore taboos of modern society that need to be shouted out loud.
