| Loves Steals Us from Loneliness |
At National Theatre Wales |
| National Theatre of Wales in association with Sherman Cymru , Hobos – Bridgend , October 13, 2010 |
It has been an exciting privilege to follow Gary Owen from his debut play Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco to his present award winning status as one of, if not the leading playwright in Wales today.His magician-like ability with words and language becomes more and more adept. Again and again he is able to invest the most banal and vulgar colloquialisms with fascinating significance. His insight into the patois of present day Bridgend teenagers is extraordinary. In the opening act of the play starting in the heady atmosphere of the Hobo bar things get off to a good start with a song but are interrupted as a sexy Halloween witch storms out in a strop and the singer chases after her. (We are in Bridgend as it’s Owen’s own town and the company commissioned him to go there to reflect on his heritage and the town’s present day environment.) We move to another auditorium-like room behind the bar and are able to sit down. Our two departing teenagers are in the centre between us and the rest of the audience on the other side of the floor-level stage. Owen along with director John E McGrath and cast members Mark Sumner as Scott and Kaite Elin-Salt as Catrin reveal to us in a beguiling almost poetic manner the inner lives of these two Bridgend partygoers. They both present us with very engaging characters and play with good touches of both humour and poignancy. Sumner portrays Scott’s inner isolation well and gains our sympathy. Elin-Salt relishes the way she gets her mouth around the accent but loses clarity at times but soon recovers. Despite a slightly rushed start the first act moves at a good pace and is well focused. In the second act a good rapport is established between all the players; Remy Beasley as sister of Catrin’s deceased boy friend Lee does ‘local girl’ very well, and the bitter tones of Nia Robert’s Mags ring very true. Matthew Trevannion as Mikey, a passing squeeze for Catrin, stays cool while the others fight their way through the tensions of Lee’s memory. There’s a lot of throwing around of compelling dialogue but the focus of this act is not quite as sharp as the first. We needed to be more engaged with the story. The lines gave us all the sadness, anger, and bitterness that death brings but the atmosphere needed better establishing. At times cast members seem to be concentrating so much on the authenticity of their characters that they are not quite able to project them to the audience. Nevertheless we were all very sensitive to the vulnerabilities of this sad group of people. Satisfying though much of the performance was director and cast failed to embrace the full significance of the human dilemmas so well expressed in the script. The complex set of designers Neil Davies and Anna-Marie Hainsworth with its interwoven looping bars might have looked good in a Turner exhibition or the Venice Biennale but here I felt they were a distraction. Had there been a bit more room the play could have worked very in well Hobos bar itself. Once again the National Theatre of Wales has taken us to an exciting alternative site that gives added value to the drama. |
Reviewed by: Michael Kelligan |
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