At Sgript Cymru |
| Sgript Cymru- Past Away , Chapter Arts Centre , September 13, 2002 |
| To say that Welsh theatre is in the doldrums is like saying we've had an indifferent summer. We are in desperate need of new talent, new ideas and financial support that isn't rooted in bureaucracy or in patronising ideas about accessibility. Full marks, then, to Sgript Cymru, Wales's new writing company, for taking a massive risk with the first play from a 22-year old fledgling playwright and playing it at Chapter for nearly three weeks and then taking it on a month-long tour. I suspect, however, that Swansea-born Tracy Harris will write many better plays than past away and, one hopes, get better productions than this, at least on the evidence of its official opening night where, despite an enthusiastic and supportive sell-out audience determined to find comedy in every scene, it came across as an agreeably offbeat but unfinished work . There is no clear storyline, not that it matters, and no cogent argument about anything as its four characters explore their sexualities and live in dread of a seemingly very over-zealous bank manager- but, hell, this is the 21st century. However the set-up here, of a dysfunctional family frightened of the world outside their front door, an outsider female, the death of a father, a constant simmering sexuality and a young brother with mental health problems, is all familiar to anyone who has sat in a theatre anytime during the past fifty years especially those familiar with, say, Harold Pinter and Ed Thomas. It may well intelligently express the arbitrary and fragmentary nature of contemporary experience in this age of uncertainty and mistrust of memory, and I found it engaging and often funny, but while Sgript Cymru may have found a new voice I fear they have not as yet helped her find a particularly convincing way of talking. It's a play full of promise but unless the 'flu-induced high temperature I was suffering radically affected my judgement it's one that I feel doesn't live up to expectations. The performances were of varied quality, with Shane Attwool reprising his portrayal of a paranoid bully in Franco's Bastard as the irrational jealous husband and violence-obsessed eldest brother, Oliver Ryan playing it remarkably cool as the sexually ambivalent lodger Eddie and Nia Roberts most effective as the manipulative Suze. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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