Bea at Soho Theatre

Bea is first seen bouncing on her bed. A Madonna song is playing on the stereo as she springs about her bedroom with an adolescent energy. Yet as Mick Gordon’s new play unfolds it becomes clear that this exuberant, excitable young woman is the inner Bea, the real Bea is only occasionally glimpsed lying limp on the bed she never leaves. Gordon’s previous On Theatre projects have been collaborative, co-written with people like A C. Grayling (On Religion) or the neuropsychologist Paul Broks (On Emotion). This new play is a solo effort and eschews the ‘On’ moniker, though On Empathy or On Euthanasia would be fitting subtitles.

Bea is a young woman with a chronic, debilitating condition that has seen her confined to bed for eight years. She’s in need of constant care; someone else has to feed her, to wash her, to dress her. Her mother, a prickly, protective barrister, hires the camp and verbally incontinent Ray as her daughter’s new carer. He’s verbose but sensitive and Bea is able to communicate with him, though how much of what she says to him is actually vocalised is unclear. What is clear is that Bea wants to die; she does not consider her life to be worth living any longer and wants to end it, something she will need help to achieve. She dictates a letter to Ray to this end so that she can better explain her wish to her mother. While Bea’s decision to end her life provides the play with its core, the tone of the piece is upbeat and vibrant, almost aggressively so in places. It seems determined not to be a downer, not until it needs to be. And so, for the most part, this is very much a play about life and living; the inner Bea cannot be contained for long and she frequently takes over, laughing and singing and dancing. Alice Woodward's colourful set reflects this. It’s dominated by an oversized bed and a backboard studded with gaudy earrings; it’s a teenage space, punctured by the occasional piece of grey medical kit; in many ways it looks as if a pause button has been pressed, her bedroom still looks like that of a girl, not of the woman she has become. Time in this room has stopped. There’s poignancy in the details: the party dresses unworn (except by Ray) and the furniture unused. Sometimes the play is thin-skinned, in that its internal workings all too visible – this is particularly true when Ray describes a common test for autism and explains the concept of mind-blindness. A question is clearly posed to the audience: how possible is it for us to understand another person’s pain? At other times the play is less keen to explain itself and there remains a question mark over how Bea and Ray communicate; how many of their interactions are verbal, how many are sensed? How much of what Bea ‘says’ does she actually say? Her mother sometimes appears not to hear her at all, but is this just part of her character, this need not to hear the things that will be too difficult or upsetting? It’s true that as the play progresses Bea’s mother seems better able to hear her. Often this doesn’t matter and it’s enough that Ray understands her and makes her happy, but it become more pertinent when he administers certain services to the sex-starved Bea. This is presented as a liberating and appealingly anarchic moment (Ray has just completed a most unique reading of A Streetcar Named Desire) but even so there’s a sense of uneasiness about what is actually occurring. In both tone and content the production is reminiscent of Anthony Neilson’s The Wonderful World of Dissocia, a play which contrasted a young mentally ill woman’s inner world with her stark, bleak, medicated reality, though in that world the line between the two was a solid one, a brutal cut off, whereas here Bea slips and slides between her two states. All three performances are strong. Pippa Nixon manages to convey both Bea’s inner vitality and the physical reality of her situation. Al Weaver is hurricane-like as Ray; his comic energy is remarkable, words simply spill from him, a constant flow, which while just as the character is written is in some ways too much – he’s too dominant a force. Paula Wilcox is, by necessity, more understated as Bea’s brittle mother. Gordon’s previous plays have been in the business of sparking debate, setting up questions and situations that require picking over, and yet here the fundamental question of Bea’s desire to die goes oddly unchallenged. It is presented as necessary and right, which may well be true but the audience is left with little space to decide this for themselves. That said Gordon manages to avoid pressing too many overtly emotional buttons and the play is thought-provoking, genuinely funny and undeniably powerful: life plays the lead here and death is very much a supporting character. Reviewed for musicOMH

Pressure Drop at the Wellcome Collection

Pressure Drop, the first theatrical work to be staged at the Wellcome Collection, describes itself – fairly accurately – as "part gig, part play, part installation." Billy Bragg and his band provide live musical accompaniment to Mick Gordon’s play on Englishness, identity and what it means to come home.

The centre’s exhibition space, recently home to an exhibition on identity to which this is an apt coda, has been strikingly designed for the production by Tim Scutt; dotted around the room are three separate sets: a suburban living room, a pub and a chapel, all united by a great red rip which runs around the walls.


There is also a stage, on which Bragg and his band sit, providing songs that are interspersed with the scenes of the play. There is initially a bit of banter between Bragg and the audience - he starts by summing up promenade theatre for the uninitiated: “you walk up and down the room; if you see a light, go towards it” – but his presence and his playing soon becomes part of the fabric of the production.
The story itself is a (very) well worn one, but it is well-executed. Two brothers are reunited by a family funeral. One, Jon, has left home – a rundown, recession-hit town on the outskirts of London – some years back and has become successful trader in New York; the other, Jack, has stayed behind, married and had a son, but the recent loss of his job has left him adrift. Now Tony (a volatile David Kennedy), his friend since childhood, heavy-set, short-fused and confrontational, is trying to get Jack to run as local councillor for a far right party with a three-letter name and Jack, despite some reservations, can see the appeal, of regaining his voice, ceasing to be passive.

It’s fair to say his dad wouldn’t have approved. The recently deceased Ron, their reggae loving father – the title song by Toots and the Maytels is the music he’s requested for his funeral – regularly emerges from his coffin to offer sage advice from beyond the grave.

Gordon’s play is heavy-handed in places, particularly in its handling of a subplot involving a stolen knife and a stabbing, but the writing is also nicely textured and – mostly – free of didacticism. There are few hard and true lines, a lot of muddy middle ground. Jon is appalled at what Tony is asking Jack to do, but then he also lives a comfortable life, far away from the difficulties they face. Tony is not just a one-note thug, but a father who has lost a son, and through this lens his anger and his hate become more understandable, if not acceptable.

Though in many ways quite conventional, the play springs a few nice narrative surprises, which are well handled by director Christopher Haydon. The cast all give strong performances - particularly Justin Salinger as Jon, the ambivalent outsider, whose feels both distaste and longing for a place that is no longer his home – and the hybrid format, half gig, half play, really works. The pacing of the piece is well managed, with sufficient room left between the scenes for the audience to make their way around the space. But it’s the believability of the characters and their predicament, the warmth of the piece, which ends up shining through. The final scenes are moving and uplifting in equal measure (if a little too clean and contrived) and Bragg and his band lift it that little bit further.

Reviewed for musicOMH

On Emotion at Soho Theatre

Question: when is a play not a play? Answer: when it’s an essay with characters attached.

While On Emotion raises some fascinating points, about how the human mind works and about the gulf between reason and emotion, as theatre its scaffolding is always very visible, one can see the thinking behind every scene and interchange, to the detriment of the drama.

On Emotion is the latest in Mick Gordon’s series of On Something plays (On Love, On Religion) and the second one on which he has collaborated with the neuropsychologist Paul Broks, following On Ego.

The play concerns a cognitive behavioural therapist, Stephen, and his two children, Lucy, a rather self-absorbed young actress, and Mark, who, conveniently in a play that deals in the workings of human feelings, appears to have some form of autism. Though his condition is left unspecified, he has many of the associated poor social skills that come with it: he has no concept of fear and a tendency to repeat verbatim conversations he has overheard. Mark cannot read emotion, preferring instead the world of Star Trek, the logical mindset of Mr Spock; his greatest pleasure is his 8 o’clock visit to his father’s study to look at the stars through a telescope.

Stephen is treating one of Lucy’s friends, Anna, an artist and puppet-maker (which, once again, feels a bit too neat, seeing as the play’s main thrust is that we are puppets of our emotions). Anna is beset by dark dreams and angry outbursts; she is sinking, but Stephen is helping her keep her head above water. Recently divorced, he is also attracted to her, and, while composing a lecture on human emotion (much of which he delivers direct to the audience), he indulges his sexual fantasies in the privacy of his study.

This brief masturbatory interlude seems an initially tasteless scene, but then this play is asking its audience to address and question why certain scenarios trigger disgust and upset in people, so in that sense it is fitting. But like so much else in this play it feels as if it were included to illustrate a theoretical point rather than as a way of evolving the plot.

The strong cast do much to give shape to potentially two-dimensional characters. James Wilby has the necessary air of authority as Stephen, but is also able to show the human frailties beneath the professional veneer. Caroline Catz strikes the right balance as Anna: she may be losing her grip, but she's still far more grounded than her flighty friend Lucy, played by Rhian Blythe (recently seen in Gordon's acclaimed Deep Cut).

Mark Down, stuck with the difficult role of Mark, a man who engages with the world on a different level to most, manages to sidestep some, if not all, of the clichés inherent in such a character. Down is also the co-founder of Blind Summit, the puppet theatre company responsible for the cool three foot high space man puppet that is given considerable stage time.

While the meat of Stephen's lecture about the way in which emotions shape our interactions with the world is indeed fascinating (as was Broks’ book Into The Silent Land, which is definitely worth seeking out), the play into which it is woven feels too contrived to genuinely enlighten. And, crucially for a play that deals with emotions, the would be pathos-tinged ending is inexcusably unmoving.

Words once more borrowed from musicOMH.

Having primed myself for puppets, I was disappointed at how little they featured. Ah well. There were other things to engage with. The couple directly in front of me seemed to disagree though. They fidgeted, chatted and giggled almost from the start before making a noisy exit about twenty minutes from the end (they were in the middle of the aisle and there was no interval). I've seen many a thing at the theatre that hasn't really done it for me, where I've felt no connection with what's happening on the stage and the minutes have crawled by as a result, but I still think it's a little unfair to inflict your displeasure on those around you. Tsk.