Review boom

boom
by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

From Here To Eternity
https://theatre503.com/

boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is not to be confused with Boum!, French singer Charles Trenet's pulsating song and ode to life and love where biology has taken over marked by a thumping heartbeat.

But this is the surreal enforced household of Jules - who has reinvented his name as a tribute to French science fiction and surrealist novelist Jules Verne -  and his visitor - female Jo (aha, did you really think it might turn out to be Jim for - er - Jemima - ? - to carry our artificially imposed French theme?).

Jules, a marine biologist, under the pretext of an online lonely hearts ad promising "intensely significant coupling" has lured to his student pad cum lab cum bunker,  Jo. She's a world-weary journalism student from England who is careless about whom she couples with, looking to churn out an article for an assignment.

But Jules has found out that, through his study of fish, that the earth's population is about to go boom! in the negative sense of the word and, driven by a biological and intellectual imperative, is set on saving the human race.

There are a few not insurmountable difficulties.

Jules, who calls a fish in tank Dorothy after the Wizard Of Oz heroine, is gay, even if he recognizes the necessity to create a huge family tree out of a little bush sprig.

While Jo, who also suffers from periodic blackouts, definitely does not want to procreate and a bond between the two seems highly unlikely. .

As the comet approaches the earth, it looks like Jules may be running out of options.

But wait, who is that - that mouthy, percussive museum worker with an array of levers and whose drumbeats intermittently frame the action?  That's Barbara who is your unreliable narrator tour guide to the end of the world and new beginnings.

This three-hander was first performed, and well-received by critics, in New York in 2008 the year the lever was pulled, bursting the credit bubble with the crunch.

The deliberate artificiality, the farcical destruction and creation myth obviously hit a nerve when scientist Jules recounts how his mother "couldn't have picked a worse time to go on a tour of unreinforced masonry in California".

However director Katherine Nesbitt seems unsure of how to hide the flaws of this energetic, raw piece.

Nicole Sawyerr as the journalist in training is clear and focussed but never seems to really get a handle on Jo's determination to turn the random into journalism and her lapses into unconsciousness.

Will Merrick gives good value as theorizing Jules, nicely inept as the graduate whose best laid plans go wrong from a combination of his own incompetence and outside circumstances.

Mandi Symonds's green-suited Barbara, regulating the action, making the Wizard of Oz persona her own, gradually becomes more and more part of the story. Even if her inivtation for the audience to take her into its confidence and purchase the institution's "pamphlets" plant increasing seeds of doubt.

However the play is alternately thought-provoking and tedious with the incomprehension and isolation of Jules and Jo becoming grating.

Meanwhile Barbara's downfall and (dubious) resilience feels a long time coming. There's something there but, although some aspects of this tall tale grew on TLT, it felt spread mighty thinly over an eternity of 90 or so minutes. A lower range amber light.

Review Mumburger

Mumburger
by Sarah Kosar

A Mother's Modest Proposal
http://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk/theatre.html

In Sarah Kosar's surreal satire Mumburger, Tiffany (Rosie Wyatt) has just learnt she is, in her words, "a half orphan".

She and her Dad, Hugh (Andrew Frame), are left grieving for their militantly vegan Mum, after her electric car collided with a frozen food lorry, when a surprise delivery from the afterlife drops down from on high into father and daughter's bereavement limbo.

Tiffany, who is waiting to move on with her partner, had been busying herself with the bureaucracy of death and fielding calls from relatives in between watching a video news clip of a Chinese amusement park tragedy gone viral.

Hugh, stunned by his own personal tragedy, has gone into zombie-mode. He clicks "like" on all the messages of sympathy on Facebook and immerses himself in cheesy Hollywood family movies which threaten to cloud any sense of reality.

Currently there appears to be a penchant in new writing for metaphors about the new economic and TV and movie world order, frequently with the play itself verbally announcing its metaphorical status.

This works in plays like Rotterdam where the audience doesn't necessarily have to realize there is a metaphor with fully rounded characters and their reactions, even within the play's bizarre world, seem natural to the audience.

Kosar's play introduces, often in clunky metaphors, any number of issues and current social (and playwriting) trends: the new economic and business world order, a lesbian relationship, the change of culture from family viewing to internet voyeurism, the search for new ideas,  the new media employee mentality, environmental crises, a predatory world  - and, oh yes, bereavement. 

However the characters are simply the tools of elements often introduced like a to-do list to be ticked off. Possible legal action? Tick. Driver's or firm's responsibility? Tick. It's as if somebody has told the writer about how large companies employ drivers and she's just popped it on her list.

One online form, we hear, asks about "unexpected death", although the coroner is never mentioned. OK, it's supposed to be a surreal play but in the end "surreal" can become an excuse for self-indulgence and a feeling of cut and paste rather than a rigorous exploration of the surreal to its logical ends.

Charlotte Henery's set evokes a chic functional modern well-to-do home with gray carpet and blinds, with a hint of glittering silver beyond, and a gray bench.  We were also at first intrigued by the preliminary mix of artwork and video designed by Fed.

The hard-working actors do their best with material which starts off with a focussed idea but then loses shape entirely while trying to keep up the illusion of shooting off sharp one-liners.  

Having said all this, this really feels like a possible quirky piece for the screen, especially as director Tommo Fowler does not solve major problems of pace and scene resolution which would be better served by film edits.

Also while it's set in the East End of London, the script, on the basis of what we saw, feels as if its rhythms would flow more happily with American accents.

Mumburger starts off inventively with a good idea - satirist Jonathan Swift had a similar notion back in 1729, so not bad company to keep.

Nevertheless in the end we weren't at all convinced by a play that tries to force feed the audience rather than take it on an organic psychological and culinary journey. It's a red/amber light.

Review Caste

Caste
by TW Robertson

The Book Of Esther 
 http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

Caste is like a solid piece of 1867 Victorian furniture brought out, dusted down and polished in this winning production from youthful theatre company Project One.   It's a play that's surprisingly shrewd with a deceptive simplicity which masks a sophisticated take on its own literary craft.

Indeed a certain critic named GB Shaw calling it "epoch-making" said at a 1897 revival, "'Caste' delighted everyone by its freshness, its nature, its humanity ... In the windows, in the doors ... in the kettle, in the fireplace, in the ham, in the tea, in the bread and butter ..."

The Honourable George D'Alroy (Duncan Moore), a moustachioed army officer, has transformed himself from backstage Johnny to adoring husband when he marries below his station chorus line ballet dancer Esther Eccles (Isabella Marshall).

George's mother the haughty "Brahmin princess" Marquise De St Maur (Susan Penhaligon) is horrified when she learns of the marriage, rejecting her daughter-in-law who is left almost destitute with a child when her husband goes missing presumed dead on active service in India. Suffice to say, there is a twist and turn before a Happy Ending.

Caste deals in stock characters and styles, melodrama, burlesque and the sentimental, but with knowing self-referential glances and with a claim to pioneering stage management in its use on stage of more realistic scenery and props, "a cup and saucer" drama. 

What is also surprising is like Douglas Jerrold's earlier Black-Eyed Susan, Caste turns from melodrama to genuine second act social critique in an unlikely mouth of the workshy drunkard, Esther's father Eccles (Paul Bradley in mutton chop whiskers).

One can even detect a direct line to Shaw's own Pygmalion and other later movements such as the Manchester School  and the Angry Young Men generation of playwrights.

Equally this is all pitched with genial humour and a discussion of its central theme of caste or class made more complex by the inclusion of military, colonial, political, financial and inheritance circumstances.

As Captain Hawtrey (Ben Starr), "a swell" and D'Alroy's brother in arms, puts it, "The inexorable law of caste ... commands like to mate with like ... forbids a giraffe to mate with a squirrel ... all those marriages of people with common people are all very well in novels and plays on the stage ..."

Meanwhile would-be shopkeeper Sam Gerridge (Neil Chinneck) takes the boundaries of different stations in life more literally, "Life is a railway journey, and mankind is a passenger - first class, second class, third class".

Robertson uses feisty, flirty quick-tempered  Polly (Rebecca Collingwood), Esther's sister and Sam's intended, to conjure up pictures of life outside the Eccles's London home. This not only provides burlesque amusement but gives the audience a sense of panorama, almost like cinema trailers of other types of entertainment.

Charlotte Perkins directs a nicely paced production which takes seriously the social issues without stinting on the laughs deliberately threaded in by the playwright.

We weren't convinced by the introduction of a photo studio element but this is a minor quibble in a very enjoyable hour and forty five minutes which never descends, as it so easily could in less skilful hands, into parody.   

Over 50 years ago a young actor, a certain Ian McKellen, grew to appreciate the craft in the drama when he played gasfitter Sam Gerridge. We're now in the 21st century and theatrical metaphors can be unravelled for the audience.

It's part of actor-manager's Tom Robertson's art that he knowingly carves for the audience a tasty large slice of ham, along with barnstorming melodrama but also bread and butter realism. It's a green light for a production which keeps the kettle on the boil to produce a satisfyingly strong and entertaining brew.