Tyrone Huggins Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★★

“Writers Gareth Brierly and Fiona Creese expertly employ a number of surreal elements”

Sometimes art ends up being startlingly present by accident. Perhaps with how the pandemic seems to have exposed and exacerbated every issue rooted into society, these accidents have been happening more and more frequently, but nonetheless People Show 138: Last Day lands on screens at a prescient moment despite being filmed before lockdown.

This short film from People Show focuses on HR Manager Sidney (Tyrone Huggins) dealing with psychological onslaught of having to make his staff (an ensemble of thirty excellent performers from the University of Roehampton) redundant. As he recounts how he hired his employees, helped them grow, and gave them a voice in the company, the emotional burden of having to now take their jobs away from them consumes him. The guilt is deepened as Sidney is at the same time taking a huge retirement bonus after thirty years at the company, forcing him to grapple with the consequences of whether to serve the interests of the company or its minimum-wage employees.

Writers Gareth Brierly and Fiona Creese, who also directed and assistant directed respectively, expertly employ a number of surreal elements to dramatise Sidney’s burden, such as his employees all handing him clocks to signify how their futures are literally in his hands, or the company’s management board being depicted by villainous sock puppets. These moments help to make the film feel less heavy and elevate the emotional repercussions to corporate actions – a relief as without them there probably wouldn’t be much difference between watching Last Day and just turning on the news.

The film knows when to pull away on surrealism and let reality speak for itself too, aided by Huggins’ weighty performance, Rob Kennedy’s punchy editing, and Jonathan Bloom’s crisp cinematography. The interjection of these grounded moments punctuate the film superbly, delivering a nuanced exploration of the responsibility put on low-level managers to bear bad news while higher-ups never have to face the trauma they cause.

Reviewed by Ethan Doyle

To Move in Time

The Yard Theatre

Reviewed – 12th February 2019

★★½

“the effect is ultimately hypnotic rather than captivating”

To Move in Time is first on the bill for week five of Now 19, The Yard’s yearly festival in which it invites ten contemporary theatre makers at the top of their game to perform. The Yard is a theatre that, rightly, has a reputation for supporting new work and giving makers a platform to experiment and expose new stories and ways of telling them; a reputation matched by Tim Etchells and his collaborative team of thirty years standing, Forced Entertainment, in whose crucible To Move in Time was forged.

The piece was created with and for the performer Tyrone Huggins, and is an hour long monologue exploring the possibilities of time travel. We are invited to join Huggins in his mental wanderings as he repeatedly muses, ‘If I could travel in time….’. It’s a simple premise, in which theatre is stripped back to its story-telling core, and as such invites the audience to really focus on the words. This is a big ask, in a world of continual visual stimulation, and a necessary one too. But in order for it to work – for an audience to be held captivated for a full hour – both the tale and its teller need to be exceptionally bewitching. Unfortunately, both fell somewhat short on this occasion.

Tim Etchell’s monologue roots itself in our shared consciousness. When presented with time travel as a hypothetical option, most of us will have had similar ideas: of correcting historical mistakes – from remembering to press Save on the computer, to preventing the birth of Stalin; of playing practical jokes on our friends; of getting rich quick by placing bets on known outcomes. This familiarity, which is initially engaging, begins to lose its grip relatively quickly however, and the power of the words is reduced, giving the performance the status of an endless, slightly exhausting anecdote.

Similarly, Tyrone Huggins has a personable quality in performance, and a lovely speaking voice – gentle and mellow – but his tone is so even throughout, that the effect is ultimately hypnotic rather than captivating. There are moments of poetry – ‘If I could dissolve metal with my tears’ – but these are sadly few and far between, and, although the final few seconds have discernible magic, it feels too little too late.

Online

Reviewed – 18th October 2020

★★★★

“Writers Gareth Brierly and Fiona Creese expertly employ a number of surreal elements”

Reviewed by Ethan Doyle

People Show 138: Last Day

Online until 23rd October

Last ten shows reviewed by Ethan:

The Yard Theatre

Reviewed – 12th February 2019

★★½

“the effect is ultimately hypnotic rather than captivating”

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Maurizio Martorana

To Move in Time

The Yard Theatre until 16th February as part of Now 19 Festival

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: