It's not the character's problem - Royalty Theatre - Review

It's Not The Character's Problem
Royalty Theatre

2nd June 2017

Written and performed by Jordan Carling

I have seen a fair few one man (and one woman) shows over the last couple of years. It's a form of theatre that I increasingly love. They are invariably performed in small venues, and not necessarily to capacity audiences. Although, it has to be said, depending on the particular venue even a capacity audience can be pretty intimate.

There is something very special about being in a small space, listening to what are essentially very personal experiences. The shows take many forms - some have a lot of props to create atmosphere or context. They tend to follow a similar pattern in terms of theme - the meaning of life - or death - the nature of love, hate, indifference. They deal with some heavy subjects, and they usually do it with a fair amount of humour - often self deprecating - as the protagonist takes us on their journey of discovery. They are conversational, questions are posed, answers are invited, the audience is drawn in.

It's Not The Character's Problem we are told is a hard story tell, and may be a hard story to hear. It's Jordan's story. It is very personal. For this reason, I think, after the initial introduction - with some very sobering statistics about male suicide rates - he switches from first person, to third person. He tells Jordan's story almost like a case study, thereby distancing himself from it, and at the same time illustrating perfectly the isolation he creates for himself. In order to cope with unwelcome, negative feelings, Jordan removes them from his life - he banishes them to the wall of switches and turns them off. He builds a fortress around himself so that he doesn't have to deal with any of them, thinking that this makes him a man. Cold, dispassionate, ruled by his head not his heart. And it works fine (sort of) until a cataclysmic event leads him to finally realise that feelings, even the painful ones, are necessary to be able to fully experience life.

The show deals with a difficult subject and themes. It is a journey of self discovery. It is Jordan's journey, as he explores the way men are conditioned to respond to the emotional demands of life. How are men supposed to react to the events that life throws at them? How, in fact, has Jordan reacted to these? Not too well to begin with, as it turns out.

In this respect, this show is pretty much like others that I have seen. However it is also quite different. This is a very serious piece of story telling. There is humour - but the humour is used sparingly, with pinpoint accuracy it punctuates the narrative, providing a moment of welcome relief and preventing it from becoming too difficult to bear.

The dispassionate, third person narration means that when finally emotion begins to break through, it is all the more telling; the anger is more shocking, the grief more poignant.

"It's not the character's problem" is performed very simply with minimal props, and almost no staging - a chair, some papers, a spotlight and a white screen. Nothing is projected onto the screen, it is just there. Jordan sits throughout, reading from the papers and discarding the pages one at a time, until the story is almost done. The only action is the representation of the heart monitor in the hospital room, he draws the line in the air with his finger and taps out the heartbeat on his chest. This is an incredibly moving moment, followed by a literal thirty second pause, until the realisation that the heart has stopped. I find myself counting off the seconds. On the count of 30 Jordan resumes the story and brings it to slowly to its conclusion.

Finally an image appears on the screen.  A dedication to his father.

This must be a hard story to tell. It is a hard story to hear, but for an hour the audience's attention is held, and we listen and we feel.

"It's not the character's problem"  showed for one night only to an almost capacity crowd in the studio at the Royalty. It has also been staged at Northern Stage and the Customs House. I would hope it gets an airing in other venues, it's a story worth telling and a story worth hearing.

Denise Sparrowhawk 

 

How to be a Man - Review - Alphabetti Theatre

How to be a Man
Alphabetti Theatre
2nd Dec 2016

We enter the theatre to the strains of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' "Walk Like a Man". The falsetto exhortations of a father to his son always struck me as a little ironic as a child (yes, I was a child who got irony) but it is the perfect theme tune for Jon Coleman's exploration of manliness. Jon himself enters the stage clad only in a pair a grey underpants. He begins with an explanation and an apology - he is white, privileged and manly - proud of, and comfortable with, his masculinity and yet, he is not. He is not really sure whether his idea of being a man is correct. The show, he says, will not explain how to be a man. It will not answer the important question. It will explore the ideas of manliness and masculinity, with help from his friends Leo and Manfred (two mannequins) and A Guide to the Art of Manliness (a real book).  Jon chooses clothes from a rack and shrugs himself into a red, sparkly dress. Skin-tight, it shows off his assets, though perhaps not quite his manliness. Or does it?

Why should a man have to wear a suit and tie? Can he not be just as manly in a frock? And this is the crux of the show. Through various stories, scenarios and arguments with Leo and Manfred, Jon illustrates the accepted preconceptions of being a man. From the friendly competitive wrestling to forge friendships, to the inability to express feelings and emotions and the disappointment of learning that your father is not the infallible man you thought him to be, via the correct way to execute a man-hug, and bonding over whiskey and shortbread Jon Coleman raises the question of what it is to be a man. He looks at the traditional roles and the dilemma of the modern man.

This is funny, irreverent, surprising, thought provoking and a little confusing. Leo and Manfred are essentially Jon's conscience - they act like a pair of Jiminy Cricketts, questioning his motives, offering alternate points of view, and generally disagreeing with him. He argues, and fights with them. The confusion comes because they both have pretty much the same voice, so it wasn't always obvious which one was speaking (and yes, I know, I said they are mannequins but they areas much part of the action as Jon himself). Jon mixes conversations, with Leo and Manfred, with the audience, alongside recounting stories and enacting scenes. It is a fast paced presentation - there's a lot to get through in an hour including several costume changes and an exercise regime. Jon's style is open and engaging and he has a good rapport with the audience.

I left the theatre to the sound of Four Non Blondes singing "What's Up?",  feeling good but with a lot to think about. Possibly not least the reason men have such a hard time knowing what their role is these days is because none of us know how we are meant to be; nothing is clear cut, everything is a contradiction and we will almost certainly say or do the wrong thing to someone at some point in our day, week, month, year, life...
In an ideal world a man could walk down the street in a dress and heels, if he wanted.

Denise Sparrowhawk

The Vagina Monologues - Review - Royalty Theatre

The Vagina Monologues
Royalty Theatre
27th April 2016

Cast:
Amy Herdman-Burns
Emma McLeary
Beth McAneny
Jude Nelson
Julie Chisholm


The Royalty is staging The Vagina Monologues as its second studio production this season. It's a bold choice but perfectly suited to the intimacy of the studio venue.

The scene is set with a red brick wall as backdrop, no stage and the performance area is incredibly close to the audience making for a close and intimate experience. As the play starts the women are actually seated in the front rows and each stands and joins the others in a conversation about the most intimate part of their anatomy, explaining what the monologues are, how and why they they came about before introducing the first one.

It's brash, it's forward, it's funny. There is much laughter as they list the many names given to vaginas around the country. The women declare their love and loathing, their interest and indifference about this magical, mysterious and monstrous part of their bodies. It is part of us, but it is never spoken about, never touched by us and heaven forbid that we should ever LOOK at it! The monologues, we are told, are a mixture of individual and collective stories. Most are a humorous look at our - and others - attitudes to our vaginas, but some are serious and sad and horrifying. Vaginas, it seems are rarely seen as belonging to the woman whose body it is a part of and the monologues are about us reclaiming, and coming to love what is ours. I was expecting some rank feminism and there certainly is an element of it, but what comes across most is the sadness and confusion that women have felt about their bodies and their lives. The monologues are about finding our identy, and sometimes losing it.

The writing is colourful and frank, and incredibly sensitive and beautiful. The cast do it full justice. presenting the monlogues with such a sense of fun but with seriousness and calm when the script demands it.

I came to this with misgivings, I have been disappointed in the last two productions at the Royalty and was totally unsure that the team here would be able to deliver on this one. But deliver they do - slick production, excellent lighting and sound, and the closeness of the actors to the audience is perfect for the subject matter - providing intimacy and just enough discomfort when eye contact is made! The five women give strong and varied performances. And if on the first night the proximity of the audience and first night nerves got the better of them at times it was barely noticed and expertly dealt with. Nikki Briggs has done a great job directing her cast of women and they have produced an entertaining and thought provoking show.

If the performances in all their productions were as assured and professional as this the theatre would be full every time.
Wednesday was a full house - I recommend booking your ticket in advance - it's worth the booking fee to guarantee you get a seat for this. The Vagina Monologues runs until Sat 30th.

Denise Sparrowhawk

Eight - Review - People's Theatre

Eight
People's Theatre
9th February 2016

The People's Theatre's first studio production of 2016 is a challenging one - both in terms of the content and the production process, eight actors, three directors, eight monologues, one play.
Eight, by Ella Hickson, was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe back in 2008 and the monologues are of that time - they deal with the bombings of 7.7, the post Thatcher demise of the Conservatives, the War on Terror. But almost ten years on they still have an impact because they are also about the people, young people, struggling to fit into a world that seems increasingly alien to them. We have injured squaddies, broken homes, criminals, financial whizz kids, single mothers, teenagers learning about life in the adult world. Each one of them a misfit, just trying to find their place in a world that doesn't seem to want them, into which they have to justify their place.

The stage setting is simple - a black background, with eight shutters and in the first act, a black block. Characters appear from behind the shutters to tell their tales. The block serves as a bed - in a mortuary, in a French Riviera guest house, in an adulteress's bedroom. At times other people - or bodies - occupy the bed to illustrate aspects of the tales. As each tale is told a shutter is turned to reveal an illustration representing their story. The only spots of colour in the blackness, though they are not necessarily bright. In the second act the bed has gone and more props are introduced - a table and chair, or nothing at all in the case of Miles and Buttons who simply pace back and forth on the blank stage, with this shutters turned to show the graphs and figures of a business high flyer, and the  cell door of a criminal about to be released.

The direction is seemless, despite there being three different directors. The play comes together as a whole and there is a symmetry in the way the stories unfold.

The performances by the young actors are powerful and moving. Their characters are complex and their situations difficult. It would be easy to dislike them, and yet there is a redeeming fragility about each one - sometimes only a glimpse, but there. There is humour - black, black humour - and passion, and horror. Innocence is lost, and guilt is hidden. There are arguments, dishonesty and self-delusion, and honesty and openness and fear. 

These are dark tales. They will make your flesh creep, and your heart ache and by the break for the interval you will wonder if there is any hope at all for these young people and their world - every moment of joy or hope is countered with even greater bleakness. But you will also laugh out loud, and you may possibly leave on a note - faint and tremulous - of hope.

Powerful, engaging and brilliantly performed and produced.


Eight plays until Saturday 13th Feb. There are still tickets available. Buy one.

Photo by Paula Smart

Denise Sparrowhawk