| A dated production of a clunky script |
At Hijinx Theatre |
| Hijinx Theatre- Ruling the Roost , The Riverfront Newport , May 11, 2007 |
this review first appeared in the Western MailIt may be because I’ve been at a couple of European festivals recently, where I’ve seen productions from Estonia to Macedonia and Berlin to Vienna, but a lot of Welsh theatre companies seem to me to have got into a bit of a rut over the past few years: we need new writers and new directors desperately but in the meanwhile while we have to do more than change the deckchairs on the Titanic, a good shake-up is long overdue. Hence the arrival at Hijinx Theatre of Louise Osborn (featured on these pages last week), whose debut production as associate director of one of our best-established and affectionately-regarded groups opened at Newport’s Riverfront studio; paired with playwright Glenys Evans, whose previous work for the company showed she could create sharply-observed, multi-layered emotional stories that resonate with a range of audiences, there was the promise of a new-look Hijinx. A dream ticket, then. Except Ruling the Roost is really a terrible disappointment, or at least looked that way at its premiere. The idea behind it is fine enough: a three-way generational clash that examines different attitudes to work, to integrity and to family responsibilities, set on a Mediterranean island where a grandmother is being persuaded by her daughter and grandson to quit her lifestyle among the lavender and figs and move to the mainland. There is, of course, more to it: unsurprisingly, the daughter really wants the land to develop it as a holiday villa complete with swimming pool. The plot, then, is pretty obvious and remarkably unsubtle and the cast clearly find no depth in their characters and end up being unbelievable stereotypes: the stubborn work-is-life grandmother, the cynical urbane daughter, the Greek-godlike layabout grandson shouting at each other, although there is little evidence that the performers could have done much better. Might Ms Osborn’s usually imaginative direction invigorate this clunky script, maybe bring out some of the lyricism that appears now and then, find a style that would serve the old-fashioned narrative and characterisation, motivate these lost-looking ill-cast actors ? At times she tries, she really does, with one scene turned into a mini operetta, for example, but in general the production looks as dated as the script sounds. At root I’m not sure who this play is for – and, anyway, the best Hijinx shows (especially those written by Ms Evans) tend to transcend the idea of a target audience. It’s not helped by the staging in the Riverfront studio space, where the audience is far too close to the set, or by the design, with its mix of mandatory pseudo-realistic peasant knickknacks and impressionistic fabric fig tree. Both too fussy and too obvious, it leaves little to the imagination but misses being authentic. James Williams’s score offers some relief but I would like to have had more of it. The star of Ruling the Roost is probably the Goat, a lifelike puppet who offers words of wisdom from over the tumbling-down wall, and I’m sure Hijinx know as well as anyone that drama started thousands of years ago, probably not far from this fictional island, with rituals accompanied by “goat-song” (that’s what tragedy actually translates as). In some ways this is indeed a tragedy, to an extent the company would not want. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
This review has been read 2500 times There are 82 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
