April 16, 2009
By Siobhan Nicholas
Take the Space Theatre Company
This new play combines ‘mentalist’ tricks, ventriloquism, fire-eating, uni-cycling and some pretty funny stand-up with an emotional disclosure of the hero’s attempts to recover from a devastating tragedy that results in the loss of his son and wife. The narrative of this piece is peppered with illusions of a broad, circus/music hall nature, and is itself shifting and tricksy, so that you can’t be quite sure exactly what is happening. Some of the tricks involve the participation of members of the audience, Derren Brown-style (they are not stooges, I can assure you, as one of them was my daughter), and these are very cleverly done so that they a) astonish the audience in a how-did-they-DO-that! kind of way, and b) resonate brilliantly with the disclosure narrative. There is a constant tension between the ostensible purpose of the surface performance – a variety act designed to amuse and astonish an audience in a life-enhancing but fairly superficial way – and the underlying story of the man and his wife, which confronts the audience rather uncomfortably with terror, grief, rage and emotional breakdown; and the cultural context of the play, which evokes with uncritical nostalgia the lost arts of ‘journeymen and women: clowns, poets, actors, musicians, storytellers and magicians who throughout time have often lived on the fringes of society’ and who provided precious moments of joy to down-trodden working people in the olden days before telly. The programme notes (and title) tell us that we should be thinking of the films of Fellini and underdog scamps like Charlie Chaplin; of course we will also be bringing along memories of Archie Rice, emotional emptiness, spiritual drought. As you can see, this is a lot for a play to do that is less than an hour and a half long; but it succeeds triumphantly, because of the amazingly committed performances of Chris Barnes as Freddie Tourrino and Siobhan Nicholas (who wrote this and Take the Space’s previous play last year, Hanging Hooke) as his wife Grainne. Individually they are both remarkable; together, they are a tour de force that sweeps the audience in their wake as they strike, flare up and blaze from one another’s incandescent energy. Barnes as Freddie looks like a cross between Barquentine and the Ancient Mariner – his glittering eyes and wild hair convey a barely suppressed fury with his audience, placid and bovine and outside the circle of his personal hell (but not for long!). He has a simply wonderful nose - the nose Laurence Oliver spent his whole career trying to create out of putty (cf Olivier’s Nelson in That Hamilton Woman and his Duke of Wellington in Lady Caroline Lamb); but these external details are incidental to the actor’s emotional range and power – he seems almost to implode with grief before our eyes. Similarly, Siobhan Nicholas as Grainne exhibits the remains of a remarkable fey beauty with her huge cornflower-blue eyes and cascading hair that was once blonde and is now mostly white, but a beauty lit up from within by a spiritual furnace of love and grace with which she attempts to heal her husband’s bitterness and rage (but was she ever really there, or is he imagining it all from his prison cell?). Both performers are physically tiny but they absolutely fill up that stage (hence the company’s name I guess). Definitely a must-see.
Take the Space Theatre Company
This new play combines ‘mentalist’ tricks, ventriloquism, fire-eating, uni-cycling and some pretty funny stand-up with an emotional disclosure of the hero’s attempts to recover from a devastating tragedy that results in the loss of his son and wife. The narrative of this piece is peppered with illusions of a broad, circus/music hall nature, and is itself shifting and tricksy, so that you can’t be quite sure exactly what is happening. Some of the tricks involve the participation of members of the audience, Derren Brown-style (they are not stooges, I can assure you, as one of them was my daughter), and these are very cleverly done so that they a) astonish the audience in a how-did-they-DO-that! kind of way, and b) resonate brilliantly with the disclosure narrative. There is a constant tension between the ostensible purpose of the surface performance – a variety act designed to amuse and astonish an audience in a life-enhancing but fairly superficial way – and the underlying story of the man and his wife, which confronts the audience rather uncomfortably with terror, grief, rage and emotional breakdown; and the cultural context of the play, which evokes with uncritical nostalgia the lost arts of ‘journeymen and women: clowns, poets, actors, musicians, storytellers and magicians who throughout time have often lived on the fringes of society’ and who provided precious moments of joy to down-trodden working people in the olden days before telly. The programme notes (and title) tell us that we should be thinking of the films of Fellini and underdog scamps like Charlie Chaplin; of course we will also be bringing along memories of Archie Rice, emotional emptiness, spiritual drought. As you can see, this is a lot for a play to do that is less than an hour and a half long; but it succeeds triumphantly, because of the amazingly committed performances of Chris Barnes as Freddie Tourrino and Siobhan Nicholas (who wrote this and Take the Space’s previous play last year, Hanging Hooke) as his wife Grainne. Individually they are both remarkable; together, they are a tour de force that sweeps the audience in their wake as they strike, flare up and blaze from one another’s incandescent energy. Barnes as Freddie looks like a cross between Barquentine and the Ancient Mariner – his glittering eyes and wild hair convey a barely suppressed fury with his audience, placid and bovine and outside the circle of his personal hell (but not for long!). He has a simply wonderful nose - the nose Laurence Oliver spent his whole career trying to create out of putty (cf Olivier’s Nelson in That Hamilton Woman and his Duke of Wellington in Lady Caroline Lamb); but these external details are incidental to the actor’s emotional range and power – he seems almost to implode with grief before our eyes. Similarly, Siobhan Nicholas as Grainne exhibits the remains of a remarkable fey beauty with her huge cornflower-blue eyes and cascading hair that was once blonde and is now mostly white, but a beauty lit up from within by a spiritual furnace of love and grace with which she attempts to heal her husband’s bitterness and rage (but was she ever really there, or is he imagining it all from his prison cell?). Both performers are physically tiny but they absolutely fill up that stage (hence the company’s name I guess). Definitely a must-see.