★★★½

“an engrossing and innovative watch”

This new revival of French-Canadian playwright Carole Fréchette’s 2002 work, Seven Days in the Life of Simon Labrosse is a compelling piece of metatheatre that plays with the boundaries between the real and the fictional, stage and audience.

The principal narrative of the play is, as the title suggests, a retelling of seven days in the life of Simon Labrosse, an unemployed man in an unspecified city. His existence is shaped by sending voice cassettes to his girlfriend Natalie somewhere in Africa, where she is ‘helping the helpless’, confrontations with his landlord and people repossessing his property, and get-rich-quick schemes including working as a sentence finisher and an emotional stuntman.

However, the action begins even before the metaphorical curtain rises on the narrative of the piece. Rob Wyn Jones, playing Simon Labrosse, and Elaine Bastible, as a hired actor also called Natalie, chat on stage about him borrowing her ‘ghetto blaster’ (an unfortunate term that serves as a reminder of the age of the play). Wyn Jones is also forced to leave the stage to go and get actor-director Tony Wadham, playing his depressed neighbour Leo, half dragging him on stage to take his position for the start.

Before telling the story of Labrosse’s life, each of the characters introduces themselves and begins to display their eccentricities. Natalie has an obsession with the workings of the inside of her body, and takes every opportunity she can to address the audience directly on this topic and to attempt to play a mysterious VHS – the content of which is only revealed in the chaotic climax; and Leo, who suffered a tragic accident as a child that left him unable to experience positive emotions, is cast in the role of many surly interlocutors in Labrosse’s life. His main intention in the play is to share his deeply depressing poetry.

The most exciting and innovative moments in the piece come from this trifold relationship between the real-life actors, playing actors within the play, who are in turn playing the characters of the narrative. Watching the actors within the play struggle for control of the piece, as Simon Labrosse tries to keep Leo and Natalie on message is very funny and more interesting than the sketch-like events of the days of the play’s primary story. The actors all give very strong performances: the interplay between them feels natural and is especially commendable given the difficulties involved in playing an actor playing a character.

Wadham’s direction capitalises on the layout of the White Bear Theatre, with the seats lining two sides of the stage, and the physical comedy is outstanding. The set design is evocative of the early twenty-first century and the attention to detail in the costumes is fantastic. This is especially true in the case of Natalie, whose green jumper, blue jeans, knitted shoulder bag and white cowboy boot ensemble fits the oddness of her character perfectly.

Seven Days in the Life of Simon Labrosse is, therefore, a well-acted and intriguing piece that slips between various narrative and structural layers. While it is rather dated in some respects (although 2002 is not 1955), such as the aforementioned ‘ghetto blaster’ and repeated references to Africa as a ‘Dark Continent’, overall, it is an engrossing and innovative watch.

JULIUS CAESAR at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★

“Overall, this is an exciting if imperfect production”

Icarus Theatre’s new production of this Shakesperean historical tragedy brings the story of conspiracy and the murder of Rome’s would-be first emperor into a dystopian near future, where technology has advanced further that we can imagine and is omnipresent in the fabric of the city and our lives.

The play opens with Marullus (Angus Dunican) presenting a diatribe against Caesar (Will Travis) projected onto one of the three movable and openable cylinders that form the stage. His delivery is reminiscent of a YouTube live stream with comments from viewers appearing below his head and is clearly an allusion towards the media climate of the present day, in which social media moulds politics. In this way, the production immediately foregrounds its innovative use of technology, including multiple levels of projection, messages being delivered directly to characters, as via instant messaging apps, as well as surtitles styled like chat boxes that rearrange themselves to follow the actors’ position on stage. Political language in the style of online discourse (#notmyemperor) is projected onto the background, demonstrative of the opinions of the population of Rome to the events happening at the highest levels of society. The surtitles are an excellent addition and improve the accessibility of a work that adheres closely to Shakespeare’s beautiful, if knotty, verse. Their inclusion also creates a production that is equally open to deaf and hearing audiences, a key aim of Icarus Theatre, which is to be commended.

Other choices around the use of technology are less effective, however. The decision to have Caesar appear only as a Big Brother-style projection, including in the moment of his death, serves to highlight the way he has elevated himself above the Roman people, but makes less sense when he is visited in his home – if he were so clearly aloof with everyone, would the rabble-rousing speech made by Mark Antony (James Heatlie) in the wake of his death have had the same impact? Nevertheless, the creative team including director Max Lewendel, projection designer Will Monks, and creative captioning consultant Samantha Baines deserve a lot of credit for this strikingly new production.

The costumes have a retro-sci-fi feel, with long hair, dark eye makeup, and baggy, almost punky clothes, which some will love. The casting also breaks with tradition: many of Shakespeare’s male characters are played by women including Brutus (Rowan Winter), Trebonius (Eleanor Crosswell), and Caius Ligarius (Yvonne Grundy), and there are frequent scenes of queer intimacy, challenging traditional notions of heteronormativity.

The main cast of eleven, with many multi-rolling, is good and standouts performers include Michael Skellern as a sensitive and jealous Cassius, James Heatlie as the loyal and persuasive Mark Antony, and Gabrielle Sheppard as Casca and Portia, Brutus’s wife – a role to which she brings great emotional resonance while the couple discuss Brutus’s withdrawal from their relationship.

Overall, this is an exciting if imperfect production. The use of technology, especially the surtitles to improve accessibility, as well as the challenges to traditional ideas of gender and sexuality is to be lauded. However, at times the production techniques prove to be somewhat distracting. It could be also argued that the text of the play itself already contains the necessary material to assess today’s political climate – from gifted orators riling up the crowds to the machinations of an elite far removed the general population – without the gestures towards an enhanced social media-like commentar

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE at the White Bear Theatre

★★★½

“an engrossing and innovative watch”

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE at the White Bear Theatre

Reviewed on 24th October 2024

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Henrietta Hale

Previously reviewed at this venue:

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE

SEVEN DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SIMON LABROSSE

JULIUS CAESAR at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★

“Overall, this is an exciting if imperfect production”

JULIUS CAESAR at Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 13th September 2024

by Rob Tomlinson

Photography by Adrian Warner

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues

JULIUS CAESAR

JULIUS CAESAR