| Inspired Production Choice For Venue Finale |
At the Other Room |
| Idle, They Yammer , The Other Room , May 25, 2023 |
In 2022 Ralph Fiennes played Robert Moses in “Straight Line Crazy” by David Hare. His decades-long remaking of New York City eventually ran up against writer, theorist and activist Jane Jacobs. She championed urban variation and localism with the same intensity as he was for gigantism and concrete. A poignancy overhangs the gathering of audience and actors for the final performance of “Idle, They Yammer.” Rhys Parry Jones' Len and Lowri Jenkins' Pritchard talk of bricks laid upon bricks. In reality the stones of Harlech Court- which has housed Porter's and the Other Room since 2014- are set to be rubble; thirty storeys of tower block are to take their place. Theatre, company and the unique bar ambience will rise again but a venue is a keeper of memories. Matthew Trevannion's play is an inspired choice for a finale. It is very different from both his startling debut “Bruised” and “All But Gone” at the Other Room in 2018. Simin Ma's set of scaffolding and planks occupies a lot of space in what is a tight venue. It is the peak of a building project of immense height. Len and Pritchard can see the curvature of the earth from their perspective. They are high enough to be above thunderclouds. Far below them is a world of increasing mayhem. Riot has occurred, an airstrike is mentioned, a waterway has burst its banks to make a great lake. Dean Rehman completes the cast as Ash. Get your audience from the first second is the most useful of writerly precepts. “Ash”, writes Matthew Trevannion, “appears, suspended in darkness with a noose taut around their neck, bulging eyes are crimson with pressure. They challenge the audience with a rictus.” That is what we see. The dramatist comes with the advantage of being an actor. Actors know it, that theatre is a visual art. This instinct for the markedly visual is repeated in the stage directions. “Pritchard, at first glance, is a twitching dervish of a woman, all limbs and fizzing twitch, which contrasts with Len's sheer weight and lumbering size. They are first and sixth in a line of Russian dolls. Similar whilst being nothing alike.” Ash, ostensibly lost to life, makes a surprise return late on as a corporate manager but naming himself as “Captain Coleridge.” In that voice he cites verses from the ultimate poem of human desolation “the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” His return provokes in the others a response of violence. Matthew Trevannion in “Bruised” played with a daring theatrical trope. Ash and Pritchard deviate from naturalistic expectation. David Storey this is not. She is a philosopher, she reveals, with books to her name. She drops in observations like “the scramble for normalcy makes liars of the eyes.” “Idle, They Yammer”- a title itself to be treasured- is ripe in cadences from elsewhere: Babel, Gwenlyn Parry’s “Y Tŵr”, Ibsen's “Master Builder”. As with Ibsen it is best understood as an unfolding metaphor for the bursting power of creativity itself. These builders are close to the material with which they work. “Never thought I'd miss the texture of a brick” says Len. They have an eye for form. “The pile we had to begin with, eh?”/ “”Structure in itself.”/ “So big you could remove bricks to sculpt a building.” If the script at times keeps its secrets it has what the years of 2020-2021 took away: the present energy of human actors animated from expressiveness of face to eloquence of hands. Dan Jones is that exemplar of a director, both unobtrusive but coursing through every second of the eighty minutes of action. “Brick follows brick” says Len. There are millions of bricks already laid but that is the fact of making. And nothing is ever made easily. Len and Pritchard circle each other in their sky-high eyrie in crescendos and diminuendos of contest and collaboration. It is human truth, surface difference masking deep co-operation. That surface of difference matters. For any new thing to emerge there must be variation. But underneath “I value connection” says Len. “Idle, They Yammer” is a cunning piece of programming. It can be seen as a riposte to the felling of Harlech Court itself. Thirty storeys of tower block are judged by power to be better joining the flock that are all around. Jane Jacobs would have assented with power in Cardiff as little as she she did in Manhattan. Wales lacks architectural critics as much as critics across the field. But it has the blessing of independent-minded artists. Every workplace has an accompanying melody that is its own. Johnny Edwards' sound design includes a distant tune of clanking scaffolding. The omnipresent Kevin McCurdy is fight director. Garrin Clarke is lighting director. Theodore Hung is stage manager and Carli de'La Hughes assistant director. The production marks the debut of Jafar Iqbal as a freelance producer. The founding of the Other Room is recounted in the link below 19th January 2015 in an interview with Kate Wasserberg. A guide to past productions and reviews of the Other Room can be read below 4th April 2021. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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