Wasted - Theatre Review

Sherman Cymru

Photo: Richard Davenport

Sat 24 March

★★★☆☆

Wasted is the debut play by Kate Tempest, the writer and performance poet currently taking hip-hop and performance poetry scenes by storm.

Ted, Danny and Charlotte are three childhood friends bound by the death of a friend. As the 10-year anniversary appears, the trio look back on their own lives, asking whether one lost life has led them to waste their own.

Now, Charlotte (Lizzy Watts) is a disillusioned teacher, unable to inspire the classroom, Ted (Cary Crankson) wears a city suit yet pushes paper around his desk with monotony, and Danny (Ashley George) is an aspiring musician living the good life but failing to get anywhere.

The play opens with the three characters storming on stage to launch into fascinating observations on London life. It is these sections – full of Tempest’s spellbinding verse - sporadically placed throughout that hold the power: rhythmically perfect monologues and layered conversations filled with strong messages about living life.

As theses sections fade into the more traditional theatre form the momentum drops, leaving the piece with little depth. The characters never reach nor realise their goal - living their lives as before -leaving us with only superficial glances into their personalities and the potential emotional themes left unrealized: skimmed over as if insignificant. Even as Danny wrestles with his love for Charlotte and his old life and Ted tries to convince him that a relationship is about work and knowing what the other person needs, with Ted then bemoaning his own stagnant relationship - the routine of nothingness – it all feels sluggish and very superficial. In a moment of epiphany Charlotte books a flight to go travelling yet she never leaves -with to many excuses not to go she can’t move on physically, a state of paralysis.

The mammoth performances of Crankson, George and Watts deliver both the poetic language and ordinary dialogue with brilliant intensity and energy.  They are accompanied by a raving soundtrack that pumps the life through the audience and feeds the lyrical power. Cai Dyfan’s set is effective yet simple, backed by a screen not out of place in a club with multi-functioning speakers scattering the floor to be used as seats, stages and flashing lights.  The screen provides backdrops and a montage of images depicting the daily dissatisfaction and frustrations of the characters.

As the characters promise to throw out conventions as they confess to being “the awkward ones in the theatre” Tempest seems to wrestle with her want to express expansive ideals and observations on society and theatrical conventions instead of using her talent to throw out those conventions and create something new.

A Provincial Life - Theatre Review

#NTW17

Sherman Cymru

5 March 2012

Provincial Life see’s the return of National Theatre Wales for their newest round of productions. Staging it in the newly refurbished Sherman Cymru it is written and directed by acclaimed director Peter Gill who returns to his native city after a glittering career spanning half a century.

Originally adapted from Chekhov’s short story ‘My Life’ in 1966, it brings with it a timely poignancy, resonating with much of the audience, as today many struggle with the financial consequences of social mobility, and the continuing search for equality. Following Misail we watch as a young man struggling to reconcile his position of privilege with that of the working life in 1890’s Russia: a time when social conventions were under scrutiny and political ideal’s changing, Karl Marx having only died in 1883. Misail’s eventually shuns his status and inheritance to take up a work man’s life, only to regain some social standing in his marriage to Maria. His hopes of success in their venture are later dashed when she realises their failure and deserts him and the estate to return to privilege.

Much of Chekhov’s work is a careful weave of tragedy and comic genius, and A Provincial Life capture’s this mix eloquently, as Ivan (John Paul-Macleod) provides humorous interludes against the expansive emotional ponderings and familial arguments. It is Boris (Lee Haven-Jones) the flighty, loveable, forever on the move, yet responsible doctor who provides the debating table for Misail’s reckonings. Nicholas Shaw’s portrayal of Misail is faultless yet his character is not the life and soul of the piece, its life and soul is made up of the endearing, loveable and bizarre character’s Misail seems to attract. The strong cast adds a Welsh flavour as the Chekhovian wit fits the stronger accents like a glove.

Set against a stark backdrop of wooden boards the props are a fabulous, lavish mix period furniture and intricate fixtures, employed perfectly by the cast. There is a seamlessness between scene changes as the costumed ensemble act as stage hands, in some ways giving their portrayal of the lower classes, of servants an extra dimension and clarity. The lighting was simple and very effective, depicting the turn of the seasons as well as reflecting the scene’s mood. The cliff hanger style ending at the interval was a very ingenious technique, with the cast mid step as the curtain dropped

At almost 3 hours the production did feel over-long, particularly for a short-story adaptation. There were moments where the piece intentionally slows, giving the audience chance to digest and ponder the ideas and lives before them. These moments stretch the emotional connections the audience has gained a little too far.

Chekhov’s My Life has Misail as the narrator and whereas A Provincial Life has him as the protagonist and the parade of monologues are a testament to the story’s original form, as a result the play sits on the fence and the levels of action are inconsistent. At the finale the format fully shifts and Misail finally takes up the narrator role, standing alone and bereft in the final scene to recount the death of his sister – the price she pays for flouting conventions – and the ideal’s he has come to terms with. The shift in theatrical device is a little disorientating, having been given Misail as hero and idealist until that point. In saying that, the finale is emotional and heart rending: a testament to the convincing and compelling skills of the whole NTW team.

Continues at Sherman Cymru until 17TH March
Info: www.shermancymru.co.uk

The wizard, the goat and the man who won the war. Theatre

Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama

Fri 3 March

I first saw this fabulous solo performance two years ago on the closing day of the Dylan Thomas Festival, then in its infancy it was a fantastic play but still under development. Now on tour, the play has evolved from an informed, solid piece: a stronger, funnier and more lyrical performance.

It is a one man oratory on Lloyd George: a fictional telling of the great man’s life based on a framework of well researched facts and comparisons to the first rendition are not necessary as I fell under the spellbinding lyricism of Richard Elfyn’s voice.  “What went on in Lloyd George’s heart and mind, is of course, open to theatrical speculation” the programme explains, yet for a man faced with disapproval and scorn from his Welsh heritage and his standing in British politics and a known womanizer it might be easy to guess some of what pathways his thoughts took. 

The first performance included a significant amount about his relationship with daughter Mair, his perfect image of the future and the belief’s they both hold about the other great British figure, King Arthur. The evolved performance has had the content on Mair reduced and introduced more about his Political and British life, weaving his grief for her into the wider WWI picture. Yet this does not detract from the passion, power and energy displayed, far from it in fact, it is simply that the narrative has changed tack slightly and Lloyd George’s love for the child is still strongly evident. He talks about events and people in his life; Mair, who died at 17, Frances his mistress and growing up as a child in Criccieth, fatherless. It soon becomes evident that his life is one large juggling act: between his wife and mistress; his Welsh identity and British image and his role as the people’s protector with his ever increasing wealth.


Richard Elfyn as Lloyd George, photo's James Davies

The cloth makers of Provence are the makers of his Union towel, commemorating his winning of WWI, but “Oh for a Ddraig Goch” he cries: what do the French know of a Ddraig Goch exactly? To Richard Elfyn’s Lloyd George, it is not he who has abandoned Wales, but Wales who has abandoned him, which to the real man may have been the truth.

The play is a mix of three languages with the English speech broken up by flashes of Welsh and French and whilst many in the audience may not understand the French or Welsh it adds to the atmosphere and the depth of the character before us.

Lloyd George would be at home in today’s political arena: a Liberal-Conservative coalition, political scandal, social reform and of course the press: an institution as prevalent to the politicians then as now, and it included The News of the World, a paper that has never changed its skins. Lloyd George’s actions alos exposed a corrupt system of peerages, something we are familiar with even now, having given newspaper proprietor’s Max Aitkin and George Rydell Lordships for a price. There are several political jokes, he notes Chamberlain leap frogged his elder brother to the top job, quipping “who in the world of politics would ever do that” a cheeky aside to the Milliband brothers.

What Elfyn undertakes for the show is a feat, for a one man show the energy hardly pauses and is kept at a high level throughout and the passion flows right though his oratory – keeping the audience entranced from the outset. With only a walking stick, towel and bench as prop’s he does extremely well to keep going – the stick a particularly useful tool, morphing from its traditional use to become woman in an his embrace as he dances, a golf club as he discusses the golf clubs and pointing at all sorts. He addresses the audience as the sea, his stage vantage point being the beach at Lloyd George’s favourite resort of Antibes, yet through that abstract viewpoint Elfyn involves the audience: making one woman blush and as if on cue the audience join in his rendition of Myfanwy. The singing a throwback to the knowledge Lloyd George gathered his cabinet around the piano and showed off his Welsh heritage.