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Billed as "dark comedy without the comedy" Sam Meeking's monologue-heavy and experimental tale of alleged child-murder opens on seaside sounds and Chantelle Staynings, as "the Woman", throwing bread to imaginary front-row seagulls. With a seaside clown (played with nervous compulsivity by Rhys Morgan) she begins a pretty but rather blank exploration of memories of tragedy and rumours of child-murder, all tangled up in rhapsodies about the joys of traditional English beach holidays, which occasionally strikes a bizarre contrast with the simple staging, modern costumes and young and handsome cast. But in a production which seeks to alienate and confuse the audience, perhaps this is all part of the plan. As the self-absorbed and nervous Professor, Thomas Richards navigates his way via long digressions though the Woman's stories/seduction while the temper of the town veers between fairy tale and tabloid, pulled into a world of clumsy tragedy and minute self-examination by the idea of a child-killer; but the endless deconstructing of truth and expectation quickly reduces tragedy back to a sing-song, absurd blankness. Enter the child-killer himself, a vigorous and expressive Malcolm Cocks playing an upwardly-mobile derilict in dirty pyjamas, spitting, shouting and squirming with embarassed depravity, defiantly refusing to define himself as either imaginary or real. From there, the slight story is embroidered and elaborated by this short cast of characters through a series of digressionary monologues about life, childhood, study, love, memory and many other things. The glove-puppets mentioned in the publicity (wielded by Rhys Morgan) provide a brief highlight as their attempt to perform a chirpy childrens' story is hijacked by increasingly desperate existential ravings, but all too rapidly the action returns to the complicated back and forth of dialogue which in the end returns nothing but a fairly banal tale of rumours, imaginary monsters, and elaborate nothings. Jeremy Dennis, 28.01.03 |
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