Too
Much The Sun |
There are some things that are always difficult to do reproduce convincingly
on stage. Sex, for one. Often such attempts embarrass the audience with
sympathy for the actors going through the cringingly self-conscious and
stylised movements as much as the poor saps themselves. This, the first
performance of Nick Pierpan's play takes a calculated risk by opening
with an epileptic fit. And it is an astonishingly convincing and chilling
rendition. It is also curiously beautiful; Sammy Davis Jr's Mr Bojangles
blares out as the scene is coated in a deep red light. This boy, whether
he like it or not, got pure, uninhibited soul. It seems unfair to single out any one actor for praise; the acting is uniformly informed, restrained and excellent. Well done Beau Hopkins, Thomas Eastcott, Ross Burley and Fergus Eckersley. The direction too is equally well suited to the nature of the material, bringing home the points of the play in a beautifully understated manner. Too Much The Sun may lack a traditional narrative, but it makes its audience work enjoyably hard to untangle its secrets. Such an approach, of course, only works if there is anything TO uncover. Too Much The Sun has it in truck-loads. See this rather than the hordes of mediocre, middle-class and middlebrow productions that Oxford University normally churns out. A true delight. Munzar Sharif and Alex Murphy, 26.02.03 |