EVERYBODY has a dream. Or several. But how many of us live them out?
Willy Russell’s ‘One For The Road’ takes a long hard look at one man’s desire to leave his life behind and hit the open road with nothing but a rucksack. It sounds simple, but in practice …
Would-be wanderer Dennis lives with his wife, Pauline, and their heard-but-not-seen child in a house on an estate that looks like … every other house on the estate.
Pauline believes she is living the modern suburban dream, but for Dennis life is a nightmare featuring the music of Chris de Burgh, social clubs of every conceivable variety and ‘friends’ – Roger and Jane, who take social climbing to such levels that ‘social mountaineering’ is perhaps more apt.
As Dennis’s desire to join the queue of hitchhikers on the motorway slip road grows, the smiley ‘isn’t this what we’ve always wanted, isn’t it perfect’ veneer the other characters have glued down over their lives begins to peel away. And you wouldn’t believe what is underneath.
‘One For The Road’ is the dramatic equivalent of having a blood sample taken by a heavy-handed but genial nurse. Using some brilliantly observed comedy as a distraction, Mr Russell grabs a needle and rams it straight into the vein of unrealised dreams that runs through most human psyches.
While you laugh, in goes the needle. You may not have felt it, but a bruise will come up later when you think about the dreams you have to let go in order to do something more ‘worthwhile’.
Funny. Tragic. Painful. Eye-opening. Take a deep breath and go to see it. |
