Sticks and Stones may or may not break your bones but words can certainly hurt you, if, that is, you are ambitious for promotion and happen to use what others see as an inappropriate one in a joke, which no-one understands, during an important meeting.
As life, and words, spiral out of control the shade of Kafka enters the workplace with your co-workers acting as your judges and the more effort you put into righting the situation the more tangled your problems seem to get.
All of which probably makes Vinay Patel's lively new play sound heavy but it isn't. It's often hilariously funny. For instance we never find out what the questionable word is, it's conveyed by gesture and light and sound. Equally other suspect words as they crop up.
I did find the somewhat robotic movements that intersperse the dialogue scenes quickly became irritating and tedious but generally this is a blistering production by Stef O'Driscoll. It's performed superbly, and often at breakneck speed by Charlotte O'Leary, Katherine Pearce and especially by Jack Wilkinson whose changes of character are brilliantly done.
Catch it if you can. It's going to the Edinburgh Fringe.
Theatr Clwyd
Mold, Flintshire, CH7 1YA
T. 01352 701521
E. box.office@theatrclwyd.com |