"Marco Plays the Blues" is a double bill of comedy. The first play is "Marco's" by Chip Horne, and is set in a restaurant, where Harriet and three of her friends meet, and two silent actors in the background share a meal, with some very convincing miming of eating. It's a little difficult for me to tell you where the comedy comes in without giving away a certain element of surprise, rather like telling you the twist in a film such as "The Sixth Sense", though the twist here is easy to see through because the acting of it is a little two wide eyed and loud. I laughed, but it could have been played to greater effect. One thing to note was that there were some good comedy faces amongst the cast: the prompt, Kristopher Newlands, had a very straight deadpan, uncertain face, which lit up with a coy blush when he noticed the audience. The comedy wound up to absurdity, but a very logical absurdity, following a strangely reasonable path (along the lines of something such as Monty Python) - and that's what makes it funny.

"The Blues" by James Harris, the second play on the bill, is also fairly absurd. I spent most of this short feeling lost, as though the words were being spoken with an accent so strong that it was almost unintelligible. The action takes place in a bar, where a strange group of people are waiting for "the Major" to arrive. The style of these players was much more actorly than those in "Marco's", and they spoke with an almost Shakespearean lilt. The words stopped and started and wound around themselves so that common phrases changed their meanings with the loss or addition of just one word, or forced themselves to be taken literally. This itself might have been intrinsically funny, regardless of plot, if it wasn't for the fact that the words were spoken so that I couldn't even hear the unexpected. The whole thing seemed muffled.

People's facial expressions again, though, were very good, almost caricature-like. Clayton, played by Thomas Richards, seemed to have a sloping head and still, staring eyes. He was the straightman, always motionless. He fell from the bar a number of times, with no apparent pain and the same rigidity. The Bartender, Richard Power, was all philosophical bonhomie and seemed able to turn, bounce and spin as though he had elastic in his shoes, or was a circus acrobat. I particularly liked (and who wouldn't) the blues-man, Steven-John Holgate, who sat in a corner of the stage and only moved once. That's a nice simple joke.

The bartender said one thing that stuck with me, along the lines of "A man walks into a bar; isn't there more to say". If there had been, it would probably have been amusing to hear it.

Cecily Crampin, 12.11.02