Review Victory Condition

Victory Condition
by Chris Thorpe

Different Planes
https://royalcourttheatre.co,uk

This is the kind of play you'll be either for or against. A sweeping statement, TLT and her four wheeled companion know, but this is a binary play you'll (ok, probably) either love or hate.

But to proceed. A man and woman (we never get to know names) unlock the door of their modern, pretty plush flat (design by Chloe Lamford) and wheel in their brightly coloured, plastic mould suitcases.

They go about unpacking both their luggage and their minds in an apparent stream-of-consciousness.

He (Jonjo O'Neill), it appears, is either an assassin or, influenced by a computer game he starts to play later on, imagines he is one. She (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), more plausibly for the world TLT inhabits, seems to work for an advertising agency.

Their minds range over multiple images and subjects which obviously colonize their minds - his more intent on warfare and spaceships. Her thoughts concentrates more on her personal frailty and the possibility of collapse in a public place and the abuse of a trafficked child.

O'Neill's Northern Irish  accent and Duncan-Brewster's London accent gives some variation - even though there are glimpses of the Ukraine in O'Neill's monologue, the talk of barricades also has resonance for Northern Ireland.

Duncan-Brewster's image of collapsing, on her back and helpless on an underground station platform with a brain haemorrhage, is a potent image. However, the audience is never given the chance to connect with much in the intercut monologues.

The couple (the audience is given enough to work out they are a couple) move around the well-organized flat doing whatever they feel needs doing and consuming whatever takeaway food and images that they want to consume. 
 
Our expectation was that something would happen to bring a recognizable narrative rather than an attempt  solely to bring thoughts on to the stage - albeit in fully formed words and sentences.

The overall impression was of a dream where you see yourself rather than view the world from inside your own head and you know that it's all wrong. 

There also seem to be enormous assumptions. Our first thought was that they worked as airplane stewards. Looking at the play text, it appears they've come back from a holiday in Greece. And that's part of the problem.

Why put something like Greece, which does have a resonance, in play text stage directions  when it has has no bearing on what the audience members see and hear in the performance?

TLT wouldn't always make this point about the differencce between the printed and performed script but here at least one person involved in the production is assuming that everyone thinks in the same way she or he does.

The same goes for the title of the two internal monologues - Victory Condition. There was no clue in the piece TLT watched as to what this term means - an assumption that everyone in the audience must know gaming terms. However TLT can't pretend that knowing this term now makes the play itself any more comprehensible.

The blurb says Victory Condition is  "An attempt to get to grips with the fact that everything happens at once. And to see if there’s anything we can do about it." Maybe. There's a lot of maybes with this play.

Maybe it's an attempt to make some kind of correlation between infinite psychic space and the non finite nature of computer games. Maybe it's a tease but if so, it's a rather mind-numbing, frustrating and ultimately boring one.

Maybe writer Chris Thorpe will collect all the Victory Ambition reviews and turn them into some sort of play. TLT and her engineered companion or a TLT reviewing colleague would still turn up 😉, but in the meantime it's a red/amber light.

Review Unreachable

Unreachable

By Anthony Neilsen

Framed

http://www.royalcourttheatre.com

The film industry came to Hollywood in search, amongst other things, of plenty of natural light and good weather. Oh yes and also to escape the restrictions and expense of the Thomas Edison film patents.

Unreachable is ostensibly the search by a current day enfant terrible filmmaker for the "perfect light" for making a movie. A devised drama, developed by writer and director Anthony Neilson with the cast, the basic story could be a play, a TV series or, dare one say it, even a movie.

Producer Anastasia (Amanda Drew), who also has a talent for fixing scripts, has brought together Palme d'Or winner director Maxim (Matt Smith), Director of Photography Carl (Richard Pyros), star actor, the unseen Sebastian, and ambitious actress Natasha (Tamara Lawrance) who seems, until she too succumbs to stage managing lives to curry favour, the only character who understands the difference between acting and "real" life.  

Meanwhile the financiers of the picture, an unoriginal sounding sci fi dystopia, Children of Ashes, have sent Eva (deaf actress Genevieve Barr) to monitor the progress of their investment.

Maxim (they all have Russian or German sounding names) apparently has never known his parents - why we never learn - and argues with his producer that  he should shoot on  celluloid rather than digitally. At the same time, he has lingering discussions with his leading lady and it all culminates in what seems to be a rather far-fetched but shrouded murder plot.

There are a few laughs in between with the arrival on set of Ivan, known as The Brute, named after one of the most powerful types of set lights and seemingly influenced by Klaus Kinski, Brought in by Maxim to hold up filming and the film company hostage to the director's wishes, The Brute does overpower the play like an all enveloping spotlight but he also takes a lover with the perfect credentials. 

Blonde Eva who with an outsider's eye also has a more clear sighted view than most on the set of what is going on. Meanwhile Karl turns into a wild eyed Rasputin plotter as he spots the chance to get promoted to director..

It's a bit clever-clever - Maxim and Ivan corpse during their own scenarios giving a clue that all is not exactly what it seems. TLT and her little automotive sidekick refuse to believe this is Matt Smith and Jonjo O'Neill bursting into laughter over lines they have now done night after night.

But the fact there is some confusion over this makes us think there is an uneasy alliance between character and plot with the latter moving by fits and starts and while it finally ties up, it feels clumsily done.  The elements are there but the stitching together feels problematic.

There's nothing wrong with the individual performances but the individual characters assume more importance than the plot which has a lot of different elements thrown at it. There is a final coup de  théâtre (or de video - design  by Zsolt Balogh), but it left as much of an impression as dissolving celulloid. So it's an amber light for a curious piece chiming though, we have to admit, with our short termist modern times

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