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.