Trafalgar Studios Archives - Page 5 of 15

Scary Bikers

Trafalgar Studios

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★★

“a wonderfully poignant and hilariously funny comedy about life after death”

Imagine turning on your PlayStation or opening Candy Crush, and instead of the heady dopamine hit of flashing lights and reward pathways, you get your work email inbox. That is how to it feels to find out that the play you’re going to see is about Brexit. Fortunately, Scary Bikers is as concerned about Brexit as ‘Titanic’ was about 20th-century steel ships; it’s definitely in the play, but it’s not much fun when they talk about it.

John Godber both wrote and directed Scary Bikers, and he plays Don with Jane Thornton as Carol across the stage. Don has lost his wife to lung cancer after a lifetime of working-class lore with miners’ strikes, stolen coal and the inevitable retraining. Carol too has lost her husband, a northern boy done good as an architect, lost to a brain tumour as middle age wanes and old age waxes. They meet, in a graveyard of all places, and come to chatting.

Carol now owns a middle-class cycling cafe in her husband’s memory as she plans a cycle trip to Florence. Don has fared less well with isolation, bitterness and a loss of the little faith he ever had. Somehow, Don is convinced to pay ‘two thousand bludy pounds’ to join this trip to Florence but on a tandem with Carol.

As they take the ferry from Hull to the continent, Britain goes to the polls and Godber the writer goes for the crowbar; squeezing in hindsight-rich observations about Brexit framed as an argument between the two characters. It’s all a little forced as they fall out on politics then resolve.

The pointed heads over at Sky Arts had the idea of Art 50: a pot of money for artists around the UK to produce content on the ineffable question of “What it means to be British”. He who pays the piper, calls the tune, and Godber dutifully dances just enough to satisfy his paymasters at Sky.

But he’s sly, and the play is never really about Brexit. Truthfully, it’s a wonderfully poignant and hilariously funny comedy about life after death; not your death but the death of someone you loved. Where Don and Carol struck the audience was as their lost partners appeared beside them and each talked with loss, pain and comedy pulsating out into the audience. The Brexit conversation doesn’t land in the same way. There’s a valiant attempt to represent both sides of the debate but the ideas feel more like talking points in a contemporary essay, rather than characters expressing themselves in the moment.

Scary Bikers arrives through the headwind of Brexit. Foxton’s detailed set (the cycling cafe) establishes a precise sense of place for some of the scenes and a static tandem on stage gifts the actors with opportunities for wonderful physical comedy. But the real velocity comes from the performances. Godber gets the laughs ever time with his gruff but profound portrayal and Thornton brings a beautiful arc as Carol grows and escapes the fear and anxiety which sat upon her. Ultimately, if a play which keeps mentioning Brexit can make you laugh, it’s a good’un in my books.

Reviewed by William Nash

Photography by Antony Robling

Scary Bikers

Trafalgar Studios until 27th April

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Two for the Seesaw | ★★ | July 2018

Silk Road | ★★★★ | August 2018

Dust | ★★★★★ | September 2018

A Guide for the Homesick | ★★★ | October 2018

Hot Gay Time Machine | ★★★★★ | November 2018

Coming Clean | ★★★★ | January 2019

Black Is The Color Of My Voice | ★★★ | February 2019

Soul Sessions | ★★★★ | February 2019

A Hundred Words For Snow | ★★★★★ | March 2019

Admissions | ★★★ | March 2019

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com

Admissions

Trafalgar Studios

Reviewed – 13th March 2019

★★★

“Every element of Admissions is running very smoothly, but it’s difficult not to feel like the whole thing is skirting around some realer issue”

The recent release of blockbuster superhero film Captain Marvel has seen a staggering spectrum of critiques crop up: some glowing, some vitriolic, and some more tepid. One of the more interesting arguments from the latter of those is that the film is riddled with ‘performative progressivism’ – that it heralds itself as part of a revolution in the representation of women heroes in Hollywood as though Marvel itself didn’t necessitate it with its previous twenty male-centric films. Joshua Harmon’s Admissions tries to dissect the role of performative progressivism in education – primarily university admissions – but the execution of the story raises questions as to whether the play falls victim to the very same thing.

Admissions opens with Sherri Rosen-Mason (Alex Kingston), an admissions officer at a prestigious school, chastising Roberta (Margot Leicester) for not taking diverse enough photos for their prospectus, as she’s hoping to raise the percentage of minority students to 20%. The sincerity of this belief is challenged, however, when her son Charlie (Ben Edelman) is deferred from Yale while his black friend Perry gets accepted despite them being otherwise nearly identical candidates, and so she and her husband Bill (Andrew Woodall) try to pull strings and exercise their privilege to secure a place for their son, and we see the perceived progressivism of Sherri is thrown firmly into doubt as soon as it affects someone related to her.

Harmon’s writing is explosive and satirical; Charlie’s first scene contains a venomous and entitled rant that sees him assert the notion that women and black students are only succeeding because of a need to fill quotas and ends with making a Nazi salute – it just about manages to toe the line between comedic and discomforting, despite a slightly overly-shouty performance from Edelman. Elsewhere, Sherri does her best to convince Roberta that she’s not discriminating against white people with her prospectus demands because some of her best friends are white. The performances all serve this excellently – Kingston’s stamina is exceptional, and Woodall brings a particularly stellar gravitas to his role, while Leicester wrings humour and pathos in equal measure for a beautifully measured performance.

Daniel Aukin ensures a slick pace with deft direction and scene changes that blend into each other, while Paul Wills’ set perfectly depicts the home of a white middle class family. Every element of Admissions is running very smoothly, but it’s difficult not to feel like the whole thing is skirting around some realer issue; it feels like the play at its heart is begging to critique the exclusive and privilege-ridden club that Ivy League universities (or the likes of Oxford and Cambridge here in the UK) have bred, and the opportunities that are only afforded to their graduates as a result. It comes across as hugely performative for the characters to preach the importance of making space at the table for a whole spectrum of people and identities while the play contains an all-white cast. Harmon even suggests in the programme that Admissions is a play about whiteness, but I have to wonder – do we need one?

Trafalgar Studios

Reviewed – 4th April 2019

★★★★

“a wonderfully poignant and hilariously funny comedy about life after death”

As they take the ferry from Hull to the continent, Britain goes to the polls and Godber the writer goes for the crowbar; squeezing in hindsight-rich observations about Brexit framed as an argument between the two characters. It’s all a little forced as they fall out on politics then resolve.

The pointed heads over at Sky Arts had the idea of Art 50: a pot of money for artists around the UK to produce content on the ineffable question of “What it means to be British”. He who pays the piper, calls the tune, and Godber dutifully dances just enough to satisfy his paymasters at Sky.

Reviewed by William Nash

Photography by Antony Robling

Scary Bikers

Trafalgar Studios until 27th April

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Trafalgar Studios

Reviewed – 13th March 2019

★★★

“Every element of Admissions is running very smoothly, but it’s difficult not to feel like the whole thing is skirting around some realer issue”

Reviewed by Tom Francis

Photography by Johan Persson

Admissions

Trafalgar Studios until 25th May

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: