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| Mess Up the Mess- I’m Spilling My Heart Out Here , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , May 11, 2016 |
Mess Up the Mess arrives in Aberystwyth with a good pedigree. Bethan Marlow’s “Hidden”, performed at Penweddig School February 2012, was about children scarred by parental alcoholism. “I’m Spilling My Heart Out Here” is closer to Dafydd James’ “Click” which toured in September 2011. Stacey Gregg’s fifty-five minute play is also a composite tale of a teenage group making the most of a confusing, exhilarating world. Tech and phones are of course present but Stacey Gregg keeps them in their place. Among the characters are Sean, a new boy with allure, despite the fact that he says little beyond “mega”. At sixteen this world is one of soft drinks and ice cream. Alcopops are enough to send their young drinkers over the edge. Younger siblings are around but more likely than not a pest. A twelve-year old brother nags his older sister in all innocence to explain an item of sex shorthand. The relationships between women ascend to levels of animosity way beyond the men-in-forming. One insult in Gregg’s writing is unrepeatable on an open-access site. This world is at the same time huge but circumscribed. Conversation may on occasion meander onto a topic like cellular memory but more likely it is the Youth Club, a place “where fun goes to die.” Elation is hand in hand with despair. “I’ll never get a boyfriend. I’ll die on benefits.” Of course sex hovers. An offstage adult Creepy Martin may be handing over cash for favours. Gregg gives her gay character Wilson an assurance and confidence that is not necessarily common. The writers for “Skins” did much the same with their lesbian in season three. One of the men admits that they wonder over sex but “no-one actually does it.” There is heart and accuracy in Stacey Gregg’s script. It does not wrap its material into a finale but then teenage life does not have a finale. It rushes along and then one day it is all over. Mess Up the Mess director Sarah Jones has a honed talent for working with her teenage casts. She intersperses her scenes of speech with confident and gripping ensemble sequences of physical theatre. The performers for 2016 are Sougri Abugre, Charles Griffiths, Joshua Kelleher, Rachel John, Dylan Gibson, Nikita Beadle, Sian James, Carmen Smith, Callum Bruce Phillips, Niamh Moulton, Becca Smith, Maddison Thomas and Adam Williams. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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