“clearly has heartfelt intentions, but the execution is hugely disappointing”
Big sends Fat Girl (Erin Gill) on a journey of body confidence after her overbearing mother (Vaani K Sharma) signs her up for a reality show in which an ‘ugly’ contestant is paired up with Hot Boy (Ewan Pollitt), in an attempt to break up her ravenous relationship with Pizza (Geraint Rhys). The conceit of personifying the food Fat Girl finds comforts in seems like a quirky idea at first, but Big soon reveals itself to be a painfully generic and ineffective rehash of every coming of age story you’ve even seen.
Written by Urvashi Bohra, the script doesn’t take time to let story and character developments properly establish themselves or settle, with each scene taking the plot from A to B in a perfunctory but unengaging manner. The script feels unsupported by director Georgia Leanne Harris’ vacuous black box design which only exacerbates the issue of how bland the show feels. The performances are a mixed bag too – while Sharma and Pollitt commit well to their roles, Gill’s portrayal came across as very unenthusiastic, dropping the energy and momentum of the play. This is a stark contrast with Rhys who appears to have wandered in from a nearby panto, as his cartoonish facial expressions made for a deeply jarring experience considering he was mostly acting alongside Gill.
The clear reason for the cartoonishness, though, is that Rhys’ role is entirely mute, which begs the question – why bother personifying someone’s relationship with food in the first place if you’re not going to let them speak? Unfortunately, this feeling of ideas being half-baked and confused permeates throughout the show – the reality programme within Big supposedly always has cameras rolling, although it’s never mentioned until a plot contrivance requires it towards the end. And the entire message around body positivity, as well as feeling totally unearned, also comes across as disingenuous when the character has been defined by the writing exclusively by her weight, with Bohra forgoing a name and settling simply for ‘Fat Girl’.
Big clearly has heartfelt intentions, but the execution is hugely disappointing.
“The science in Luna may be attention getting, but it’s too detail heavy”
Toby Hulse’s new play Luna: A Play About the Moon (which he also directs) is aimed at a young audience of outer space enthusiasts. And one certainly couldn’t ask for a more detailed examination of all things lunar in this production by Roustabout Theatre in the Studio at the Vaults. Luna even includes a reenactment of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission that succeeded in putting men on the moon. Add in some useful information about astronauts—even one female cosmonaut—and what’s not to love? Yet Luna is not so much a play, as a series of entertaining sketches.
What are the strengths of this show? Especially enjoyable are the two charming and versatile actors, Jean Goubert and Shaelee Rooke, who take on a solar system of roles both historical and mythical, human and non-human, and even a planet (Terry) and its satellite (Luna). The audience is introduced to Luna and Terry’s troubled relationship in which both parties struggle with an irresistible attraction to each other even though they’d like to break away. (That’s gravity for you.) There are the scenes in which a policeman is trapped in a room with various lunatics who are on the verge of transformation under the full moon’s light. (The Moon gets a bad rap for this, even though we are assured that Luna doesn’t really have that kind of power). There are disastrous first dates where science nerds never seem to attract the right partner, or a New Age jewellery saleswoman who can never quite make that first sale of “genuine” moon rock necklaces. In an attempt to portray the Moon in a better light (sorry) we are treated to a recitation of Verlaine’s Clair de Lune in French. Each vignette is either funny or charming – although the transformation of a human into a very believable werewolf was a little too much for one small boy who had to seek refuge in his mother’s lap. Added together, though, Hulse’s play reveals itself to be a hit and miss mash up of science, history and mythology, despite the strong performing skills of the actors, and eye catching design of Bronia Housman.
The science in Luna may be attention getting, but it’s too detail heavy, and is aimed at audiences a little older than the primary school set. Nevertheless, it takes more than good science to make a compelling drama. As every parent and teacher knows, if you can hook an audience of kids with one good story and strong leading characters, they’ll enthusiastically go and find out all the other information for themselves.
