| Waves in the Chatroom by DJ Britton |
| First presented in 2005 by Sherman Theatre Company |
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cast size:?
synopsis: Cerys in Cardiff begins a virtual friendship with Michel in Montreal through their love of the Super Furry Animals… |
There is 1 review of Sherman Theatre Company's Waves in the Chatroom in our database:
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Waves in the Chatroom
by DJ Britton
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[print] |
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venue Sherman Theatre Cardiff |
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March 5, 2005 |
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| This review first appeared in the Western Mail.. It’s quite a time for new plays – and The Sherman has two running side by side with the odd opportunity to see them as a double-bill. The Shadow of A Boy I commended last week, as much for its fine acting as for its writing, and it’s now joined by Waves in the Chatroom with the same excellent cast enhanced by Nickie Rainsford and Jonathaon Floyd. D J Britton’s thoughtful, sensitive and ultimately romantic look at contemporary communications is premised on the neat conceit of the ghost of Marconi visiting the two sites of his famous experiments that opened the way to wireless radio technology. Somewhere near Lavernack Point, from where he sent his historic message to Flat Holm, is internet-savvy Cerys, her dodgy brother Arwyn and dippy mum Bethan, while over in Newfoundland, where later messages were received from Britain, is French-Canadian technofreak Michel and his mother Suzanne in an affluent set-up. Two families with an ocean and material wealth separating them but with much in common, from absent fathers to minority tongues by way of the Super Furry Animals, and now able to talk in the internet chatroom, a phenomenon Marconi could never have imagined. But is the geekspeak enough to enable real communication ? David Britton is obviously very much a words man and while there’s considerable sympathy shown for the internet generation, his cover is blown when Suzanne and Marconi break into Shelley’s poetry. The play and Phil Clark’s production are intelligent, with the direction maybe as yet (I saw it right at the beginning of the run) not quite creating effectively the necessary action to enable the work to inhabit the stage rather than be a radio play. Again it’s the performances that make it a success, especially from Catrin Rhys as the girl who has to hold her dysfunctional family together and Oliver Wood as her problematic brother, and. Jane Linz Roberts’s set proves as exciting and effective as it does for The Shadow of a Boy. We might consider this a little out of place in the main auditorium of The Sherman but if only new plays were less of a novelty (despite the current spate), with all the attendant demands on them, then why not ? The production values are all here and there’s a six-strong cast that can command the big stage. Catch them both: neither is staggeringly unmissable, but they are well-written, provocative, multi-layered plays performed by a company that makes you realise what talent there is around. |
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| reviewer: David Adams |
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