Strangers’ Things

A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK

Trafalgar Studios, London, Thursday 1^st November, 2018

 

Ken Urban’s two-hander is set in an Amsterdam hotel a couple of years pre-Trump (happy days!) and tells the story of Teddy (a very strong Clifford Samuel) who invites a young man he has met in the bar up to his room so they can continue drinking after closing time.  It appears that Teddy has misread signals somewhere along the line and the nerdish, slightly effeminate Jeremy (the excellent Douglas Booth) isn’t gay after all… Or is he?  Jeremy can hardly bring himself to say the word.

As the two men talk and drink, their stories emerge.  It’s true, sometimes, that it’s easier to tell things to a stranger than to one’s closest acquaintances.  Teddy is in Amsterdam with a friend, prior to the friend’s wedding back home in New York, but there is some mystery about the friend’s absence… Jeremy is newly returned from relief work in Kampala – and there is some mystery about his departure from the clinic…

The men winkle, sometimes bully, the truth from each other, piece by piece.  After a lengthy establishing scene, Urban flicks the action between the hotel room now, the hospital in Uganda, and the hotel room when Teddy’s friend was present, with Samuel playing gay Ugandan Nicholas who befriends Jeremy, and Booth becoming Teddy’s unstable chum – who is obsessed with a story of a lonely whale whose song is of a frequency no other whales can hear… The story is a symbol for these two strangers, obviously, and is repeated perhaps one too many times.  We get it.

The quick changes between locations are achieved via Nic Farman’s lighting; the application of a colour wash transports us to sultry Africa at the touch of a button.  Also, Samuel’s African accent both convinces and helps us distinguish the whos, wheres, and whens.

The writing is sharp and funny; the playing of both actors is intense yet nuanced.  Director Jonathan O’Boyle keeps them moving around the intimate space, like caged animals, almost to the extent that I wish they’d keep still and just talk for pity’s sake.

The action covers, via Nicholas, the sickening rise of homophobic murders in Uganda, and how, even now, someone from a privileged background in the States can find it impossible to come out and be at peace with his sexuality.  Clifford’s Teddy is the more forceful presence, while Booth’s Jeremy is more subtly conflicted.  Sparks fly when tempers – and other things – are roused, and issues are thrashed out on a personal level.  With the way the world is going perhaps all we can do is cling to each other.

A thoroughly gripping, amusing yet provocative eighty minutes I strongly advise you to experience.

Setting things straight: Douglas Booth and Clifford Samuel (Photo: Helen Maybanks)

Monkey Business

ONE MONKEY DON’T STOP NO SHOW

Derby Theatre, Wednesday 20^th February, 2013

 

Eclipse Theatre Company bring us this revival of Don Evans’s 1982 play of social and sexual mores among the black community in Philadelphia, in this celebratory and exuberant production.

The set is very TV-like, split in two – and it soon becomes clear why.  The show is framed like the recording of a situation comedy in the 1970s.  Large red ON AIR signs hang above the scene.  The cast parade on before the action begins to ‘meet’ the audience.  There is canned laughter and applause.  The costumes are a riot of 1970s gaudiness, clearly connoting the comic stereotypes we will encounter as the plot unfolds.  Libby Watson’s designs are a joy.

Dawn Walton directs the cast within this heightened world of old-fashioned TV comedy.  We are quite accustomed to this retro-feel, thanks to currently popular shows Miranda and Mrs Brown’s Boys.  The comic timing, the reactions, are superbly done.  There are the occasional moments when the blocking is a little off, with actors masking each other in the crowded living-room set, but I suspect this might be part of the aesthetic, reminding us we are supposed to be the fourth wall in a TV studio rather than a theatre.  I’m prepared to give the benefit of the doubt.

The plot involves the arrival of country cousin Beverly into the home of socially pretentious Myra and her preacher husband Avery.  Their teenage son may or may not have impregnated his less affluent girlfriend, Li’l Bits.  Beverly has inherited a share in a jazz club run by Caleb, who is now her legal guardian.  It’s the basic shenanigans of sitcom and farce.

The scenes are separated by individual characters coming to the fore and performing monologues, commenting on the action and wider society in general.  This is where Evans makes most of his overt points about his ‘message’.  I found these speeches, however well-performed, slowed down the action and the gathering momentum – I wanted to see the pay-off when sexually-frustrated Myra and Avery experiment with pages from The Joy of Sex.  The comic playing of these two especially is top notch.  But then it occurred to me, it is precisely because they slow the plot down that Evans includes them.  We are NOT watching a fluffy piece of silliness.  He makes us pause and listen as the characters present themselves in more-rounded terms than the stereotypes the action requires them to be.  The message seems to be a moral one.  There is much to do with snobbery, and more to do with double standards for men and women, especially concerned with sexual matters.  At the end, when two of the three couples are neatly brought together in convenient sit-com resolution, the third – Caleb and Beverly – the road ahead is not going to be as easy.  Beverly asserts herself and makes it clear she’s not going to be walked over.  Caleb, bent but not broken, looks forward to navigating this new path, while holding onto as much of his pride and saving as much of his face as he can.  Evans points the way forward and suddenly, this decades-old play, this nostalgic bit of fun, is wholly contemporary and pertinent.

As Myra, Jocelyn Jee Eslin is superb, with her malapropisms, her pretentions and her ridiculous attempts at poise.  Karl Collins as frustrated preacher Avery is her match.  There is some lovely physical comedy from both of these and some perfectly executed reactions.  Rochelle Rose’s Li’l Bits is proud and beautiful in her enormous afro – I couldn’t help thinking of Foxy Cleopatra from Austin Powers – and I really enjoyed Jacqueline Boatswain in both of her contrasting character parts, as Mozelle the sassy beautician and the energetic Mrs Caldwell.  Rebecca Scoggs’s Beverly, the voice of reason for the most part, is a little too quiet in some scenes, I found, but there are some delightful moments with her and Clifford Samuel’s cocky Caleb, as their relationship shifts and changes, and they develop an understanding.  Isaac Ssebandeke is energetic as ‘preppy’ son Felix, trying to cope with his awakening sexuality, and the entire company is superb when reacting in unison to the surprises the plot contrives to throw at them.

It’s a very funny piece, a comedy of manners seen through the prism of the tropes of television sitcom.  It’s The Cosby Show (or even The Fosters – for those of you elderly enough to remember that one!) with a social conscience.  It’s not just about representing certain aspects of society and displaying their concerns and issues.  With Don Evans, it’s about telling them something as well.

 

Isaac Ssebandeke (Felix) and Myra (Jocelyn Jee Eslen) contemplate The Joy of Sex.