Tag Archives: VAULT Festival 2020

Giving Up Marty

Giving Up Marty

★★★★

VAULT Festival 2020

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Giving Up Marty

Giving Up Marty

Crescent – The Vaults

Reviewed – 10th March 2020

★★★★

 

“gives a voice to a group who are too often misunderstood and unheard”

 

Think of adoption and your mind may well turn to an emotion-tugging soap opera or a tear-jerking predictable TV reality show.

Writer Karen Bartholomew explores the harsher truths of the subject and its impact on everyone involved in her sharp new play “Giving Up Marty,” which suggests that seeking out long lost families does not always have a happy ending.

The focus is on adoption reunion, the moment when an adopted child meets their birth parents and siblings, but this isn’t a story about a disgruntled teenager wanting to find his “real” family. Instead this drama considers the effects on a stable and happy 18-year-old and his adopted family when his birth mum and sister go looking for him.

To say that Bartholomew, who has personal experience of the issue, writes carefully would be to undermine the uncompromising challenge and complexity at the heart of this rich story. She and director Annie Sutton want us to recognise that in so many cases there are no love and kisses, more likely pain and a sense of not belonging.

A likeable and compelling Danny Hetherington is Joel, the well-adjusted young man (originally named Marty) who has been curious about his background but who is secure in who he is and has never shown any great desire to probe his origins. He allows us to see the character crumbling with the thought that he might have been “a mistake” as he faces the heartlessness of bureaucracy and unresolved tension, somehow feeling he doesn’t quite fit.

The plastic chairs are the only items of furniture on the stage, making us think this is an “everyman” tale where too many characters are faceless, while props (most notably a selection of dated case files) hang from pegs on lines to the right and left. Perhaps there is a feeling that people are simply hung up and left out to dry by the pressured system.

While the intentions of Joel’s birth mother and sister seem cold and selfish we also understand the genuine sense of loss they feel for a son/brother they know about but have had no involvement with. Dorothy Lawrence as mum Martha and Natasha Atkinson as sister Melissa give assured performances that highlight the mental stress of family who feel they have the right to know the truth yet recognise the can of worms being opened the minute they begin the hunt for Marty.

Alexis Leighton gives a lovely performance as Kit, the adoring mum who has adopted several children and loves them as her own, while Ugo Nelson’s Femi is a case worker who wants to do the right things, warns of the potential hurdles, yet ultimately can do little more than add the real people to a list of statistics.

This Motormouse production tackles a seldom-addressed real-life issue and is an important way of educating audiences to a far from uncommon plight. But more significantly “Giving Up Marty” gives a voice to a group who are too often misunderstood and unheard and who deserve to be treated more seriously than politics, popular media and society has ever done.

 

Reviewed by David Guest

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

 

VAULT Festival 2020

 

 

Click here to see all our reviews from VAULT Festival 2020

 

Take Care

Take Care

★★★★

VAULT Festival 2020

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Take Care

Take Care

Network Theatre

Reviewed – 11th March 2020

★★★★

 

“it’s going to make you feel something, which is exactly what theatre should do”

 

Every time I see a verbatim show, I wonder why everyone isn’t doing it all the time. Beside the fact that it gives you ready-made dialogue, for some reason taking something seemingly ordinary that someone has said casually in conversation, with every mispronunciation, repetition and hesitation, and reframing it on stage immediately elevates it to excellence. This is exactly the point for Take Care, as directed by Zoe Templeman-Young, whose aim is to give a voice to those who can’t speak for themselves.

Everyone in the cast has either been a carer or a professional within the care work industry, and they have all seen first-hand the difficulty of giving someone the care they need, made all the more trying by over a decade of budget cuts and broken promises from the government.

We hear first-hand accounts from across the board: people in care, people taking care of family members, people taking care of strangers, nurses, safety training specialists, carer support charity workers, and so on, and whilst these accounts are interspersed with overhead snippets from lying politicians, for the most part the message is delivered with as much subtlety as possible, allowing people’s experiences to speak for themselves.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. We also hear about people’s love of caring, either for someone they know or someone they don’t, and we hear about the joy of it too. On being asked why she would want to take care of her elderly mother, one woman answers, “Old people can be fucking hilarious.”

With very little by way of production or design, besides a bunch of chairs and a few bits and pieces scattered about the stage (a cup of coffee, a lampshade, a Christmas tree), the script and performances speak for themselves. A cast of only four portrays a number of characters each, and with only the use of cravat or a jacket, they are completely transformed, embodying an entirely different person.

There is an idea that a strong argument must be made without emotion; must be entirely objective. Take Care takes quite the opposite tact, showing that personal experience is the argument. You can look at statistics and financial benefits, but at the end of the day, a government’s legislation affects real people, and they deserve to be heard.
Regardless of your political standing, this show will make you angry, either because old people and people in need have been seemingly cast aside by the government, or because you don’t think that’s the case and despite having watched a bunch of first-hand accounts, you have something different to say about it. Regardless, it’s going to make you feel something, which is exactly what theatre should do.

 

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

 

VAULT Festival 2020

 

 

Click here to see all our reviews from VAULT Festival 2020