| “Our Job is to Make People Feel” |
At the Sherman |
| Housemates- Sherman Theatre & Hijinx , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , April 17, 2025 |
Four actors stand side by side. Lindsay Spellman, Matthew Mullins, Gareth John and Peter Mooney walk forward together. It is a movement of only a few metres. But it is a dramatic movement of significant feeling. The emotional reaction from the audience is audible. It is an emotional point that has been worked for. It comes seventy minutes into the action of “Housemates”, the Sherman's acclaimed 2024 production brought back in 2025 to be seen more widely. It is also a moment where theatre is doing what only theatre can do, human beings in their own scale moving in physical space. Joe Murphy left his aesthetic credo in an interview in 2020 with the late Wales Arts Review. “Theatres are there to serve”, he said. “Paid for by the taxpayer, our job is to make people feel.” Too right. The Sherman's production is out on the road in a week where the awfulness of disease five years ago is being remembered. Five years ago every community hall, gallery, church, chapel, sports pitch, swimming pool, auditorium and stadium were sealed and padlocked. Every place for communal expression and common feeling was taken away. To be in the full public space of Theatr y Werin is to be reminded, with enhanced appreciation, of what was lost. The sheer theatricality that fuels “Housemates” has an irony to it. It is a common observation that writers are too frequently over-steeped in screen-writing and lesser exposed to theatre. Dramatist Tom Green is an experienced writer for screen which makes his fizzing stream of live real action all the more creditable. Big things in history kick off with the small. Tim Green has pulled out a small item from Cardiff's past which was to be of huge import. In itself the action is not of huge dramatic charge. A group walks in a park. A long-stay patient in an Ely hospital resists his medication. A zoology student writes a petition. It is rejected and he writes again, and again. A board member gives advice to calm his tone. The inspiration in the production, co-directed by Joe Murphy and Ben Pettit-Wade, is to bring in a band. “Housemates” is not musical theatre but it is theatre with music. As in “Operation Julie” and the “Benjamin Button” adaptation musicians segue seamlessly between stage and instruments. Caitlin Lavagna and James Ifan move from percussion and keyboard to a span of roles. Emily Ivana Hawkins, a luminous first appearance on an Aberystwyth stage, blends guitar with the role of Sally. Good plotting needs a core and Tim Green gives it to the relationship between Peter Mooney's Jim Mansell and Gareth John's Alan Duncan, two performances of effervescent contrast. The songs from the era are many, dominated by Slade, and include Marc Bolan's “The Children of the Revolution.” A small revolution was underway; its resisters are Richard Newman's Doctor Cooper and Eveangeleis Tudball's Julie. James Ifan is musical director. Other company members are names that are well-known. Carl Davies is designer. Rachel Mortimer is lighting designer. Tic Ashfield does sound design. Chris Laurich is sound engineer. Writers are often over-valued. They have but one function. That is to reach for the words that are right, for the right place and the right time. Adjectives should be used sparely. So here we have it. “Housemates” is a fabulous production. The production continues at the Torch with more dates to be announced in the autumn. (Afterword: The band plays for twenty minutes before the show begins. The songs include Caitlin Lavagna at the drum kit belting out “Twist and Shout.” “Has anyone seen a woman drummer who sings?” asks James Ifan. There is a small connection to the culture of Wales in the question. In 1963 a musician from the Amman Valley went to the United States to study classical music on a Leonard Bernstein scholarship. Sixty years ago, in 1965, John Cale and fellow musicians were joined by a new drummer, a New Yorker from Queens. Maureen Tucker was rock's first woman drummer of note.) |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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