| Desire Lines by Ian Rowlands |
| First presented in 2011 by Sherman Cymru |
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cast size:5
synopsis: Wryly funny and heartfelt, Desire Lines is a lyrical portrayal of the seven ages of man told through the journey of one man around Wales. The piece traces the pulls and pushes that lead and drive us through life and asks, how do we decide on a place to call home and if we could live it all again, what would we change |
There are 3 reviews of Sherman Cymru's Desire Lines in our database:
| An acute exploration of individual vulnerabilities and sensitivities. | |
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Desire Lines
by Ian Rowlands
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[print] |
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venue Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff |
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April 14, 2011 |
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| A while ago Ian Rowlands was described as the finest playwright working in Wales. Now that’s a crown I’m sure he is pleased to share with a number of others. This latest piece, Desire Lines is a deep and skilfully written work, a lyrical poem that absorbs and tantalises us. He takes us travelling, on a train through Wales, through life from birth to death. An acute exploration of individual vulnerabilities and sensitivities. The play is excellently served by a strong cast of, certainly some of the best actors working in Wales today. The characters are simply called Man, Middle-Aged Man, Young Man, Older Woman and Younger Woman. We meet them on a train, the train travelling through Wales visiting some wryly factiously named places that Rowlands has derived from real places in Wales, i.e. “Bluerinse Bay = Colwyn Bay, A retirement town full of ageing newcomers and Dullage = Bridgend, An excruciating dull place.” The central character on the train is Man, a deep and thoughtful performance from Ifan Huw Dafydd. He is travelling hopefully on a voyage of discovery not quite certain what, if anything he is looking for. His opening speech sees a baby born, only quickly to cry out “Let me crawl back into the black.” Romance and despair comes from his encounter with Younger Woman, a sparkling and intelligent performance from Alys Thomas. Huw Garmon, Middle-Aged Man who is also the guard on the train introducing a note of sharp comedy as we learn that he has forgotten his wife’s birthday. Joshua McCord expertly gives us two versions of slightly irritating youthful vitality, one of studious intellect and the other as a self possessed gay guy. All the while, until very late in the play the Older Woman has been sitting enigmatically on her own in the carriage. Occasionally she casts beautifully sung music into the atmosphere. She is of course the dead wife of Man and it seems can still miraculously darn his socks. The most beautiful part of the evening comes in the closing moments when Man and Older Woman come together and show us that the strength of their love will endure now that the journey is over. The delicacy of these moments is so perfectly captured by the fine and very sensitive playing by Sue Roderick and Ifan Huw Dafydd. We are captivated and able to care and warm towards them. Sadly in this production there are not enough moments like this. Particularly in the opening scenes where the characters are all sat behind one another on the train, mostly each character speaks out, not conversing with the others and some of the speech rhythms are developed to reflect the movements of the train. The sub-text is lost, the stage feels cold, we are unable to sympathise or care about anyone ,which I’m sure is not what Rowlands intended. The director Irina Brown and the designer Chloe Lamford seem to have put artfulness before integrity. It is a brilliantly designed set making the Chapter stage look very much bigger than it usually is but much too elaborate and fails to capture the zeitgeist of the drama. Equally much of the early dialogue fails to captivate and neither does it have the weight the writing demands. |
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| reviewer: Michael Kelligan |
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Desire Lines
by Ian Rowlands
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[print] |
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venue Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff |
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April 21, 2011 |
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| Desire Lines is a play that pulls open the lives of individuals as they jaunt along on their journeys, analysing who they are in a country still coming of age. We meet ‘Man’ on what is likely to be his final train journey around his ‘small country’ and as he travels his memory comes alive, taking us through the choices of his youth, middle years, his loves, losses and regrets. ‘Sorry’: such a small word that means so much, are we sorry we didn’t hear what you said? Or sorry because as a people that is what we have been conditioned to say? If so, what are we sorry for exactly? There is something quite welsh about that, how an invisible border can affect so much and so little. Younger Woman: I just want our child to grow up It’s time to go home, Adam. Not believing that he has to get our Time to go home because I want our child to believe To be big; In himself, As you tried to be. In his country, I don’t want our child to believe the shit In his own language. you swallowed. Not to feel the constant need to ask for permission to ‘be’ In their tongue To be constantly sorry, sorry, sorry! It stops with me! With us... With him Along with these, there were other flashes of brilliant dialogue that that struck a chord, in a country still growing and with an increasingly greater voice; many of the younger generation find the need to ‘find themselves’, to prove they are capable of greatness. Yet there is greatness on their doorstep and many are simply too focused on the negatives to see it. The younger ‘Man’ is a perfect example of this as he leaves searching for the ‘big city’ only to come home later on. Trains are the perfect place for memories, stuck with little to do on a fixed track, thoughts and memories will take over. Rowlands has capitalized on this idea, layering his character’s dialogue over one another as thoughts. Whilst this technique does make it noticeably difficult to pick the language apart and understand what is going on, it does represent a level of reality. Those moments of audience difficulty are disappointing, in the face of such poignant other moments of heartfelt emotion and comedic brilliance. We are all forced to overhear inane and annoying conversations eventually on public transport and Man’s reaction is hugely comic, how many of us have wanted to grab that idiot’s phone and chuck it out the nearest window? Or scream at the idiot on the other end? Do we really travel alone on a train? Or are you with those passengers around us? Passenger interaction is rare but the surrounding chatter and noise ensures you are never left alone. The presence of some characters perplexed me, whilst capably performed by Joshua McCord the stereotypical intellectual youth and ignorant yob might not be out of place on a regular train but they have little place in the play. Except for the scene where he is seated next to ‘man’ for his exchange as the young gay man and the expert transformation into the son by ‘man’s’ invading memories, it felt like he was a bum on seat actor to represent a ‘typical’ train journey. ‘Old Woman’ stays silent for the majority of the play, following ‘man’ as he makes his way along. Occasionally her haunting, beautiful voice fills the space with old Welsh language tunes, bringing a feeling of peace that can only be found when a soul returns home. Between her and ‘younger woman’ they bring the voice of reason and truth that seems lacking in ‘man’s’ life and it is left to older woman’s ghost to bring man to his final stop, a journey he, inevitably, must take alone. Ian Rowlands attempt to objectify each place comes as a mixed bag. He almost universalizes the towns as ‘Dullage’, ‘Chavton’, ‘Our city’, ‘Ugly’ or ‘Bluerinse Bay’ and really, they could be any towns on any train journey. Although each name is a mischievous dig or a sneaky nod to places with certain reputations: ‘Our City’ is Cardiff, a vibrant up and coming cosmopolitan that makes us proud versus ‘Ugly’ and ‘Chavton’ as Llanelli and Rhyll respectively with reputations of dirty industrialisation and poverty. Desire Lines is a play that brings out mixed opinions, heartfelt and emotional it had me welling up one minute and laughing freely the next yet those moments of laxness left me frustrated and wanting an explanation. It is at once a play of Wales and Welsh and a play of human life and its choices. It is up to the audience which piece of the play they take away with them. |
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| reviewer: Rachel Williams |
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Desire Lines
by Ian Rowlands
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[print] |
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venue Mold |
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May 14, 2011 |
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| There's a good idea at the core of Ian Rowlands' new play, the trouble is that it's confusingly enmeshed in an odd mixture of wilful obscurity, blindingly obvious symbolism, simplistic emotion and, thank heavens, some sardonic humour. The past life that flashes before the Man's eyes (and yes I'm afraid all the characters are simply labelled by their age and sex) in the moments before his death is seen against the background of an imagined trip by train and bus around the borders of Wales. Problem number one. If you think it's a good idea to be born and to die in the tunnel the train plunges into when travelling east from Bangor (and that is in fact a very good use of symbol) then why not make it clear to the audience that you are doing just that? All the journeys here pass through real places given obscure or cringingly simplistic names. Unless you keep reading the crib in the play-script the names make little impact. Root the journey into reality, use real place names, and the otherworldness has a greater impact. Problem number two, the Man is angry. It's no fault of Ifan Huw Dafydd, who gives a very strong performance, that for a long stretch his stream of consciousness splenetic mutterings have an alienating effect. They do not seem rooted in either a life or a world view. They do have a relevance to him but we are not allowed any empathy with this old man. Thankfully during these early scenes we are allowed to enjoy the guard who has forgotten his wife's birthday, the trolley attendant with dreams of glamour and the young gay man who cannot stop gossiping on his mobile phone. A very good reason to see this production is to see Huw Garmon, Alys Thomas and Joshua McCord essay not only those roles but the many others they take on through the play. The other cast member is Sue Roderick who is called on to sit enigmatically throughout and to sing ethereally from time to time. She does this superbly and when she does come into her own her calm, down to earth demeanour is a breath of fresh air. Since from a very early point her identity and purpose are blindingly obvious I would rather have seen her being asked to play parts through which the Man could have denied her presence. Towards the end, as he begins to face up to his denials and his feelings of guilt, he does become someone you can feel for and the end is faintly moving but there could have been so much more here. I wasn't bored but nor was I engaged. Chloe Lamford's design with its criss-crossing lines that illuminate to show the track being travelled was very effective if tricky for the actors to negotiate. Mike Beer's sound design was powerful and atmospheric. Adequate production, good acting, half-formed play. One last question, why Desire Lines? I saw and heard lots of lines but very little, if any, desire – not even for death. |
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| reviewer: Victor Hallett |
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