At Sgript Cymru |
| Sgript Cymru | Paines Plough- Art and Guff , Soho Theatre , March 9, 2001 |
| The last time Art and Guff, two self-confessed dull Welsh lads from Kidwelly, came to London to find fame and fortune as writers they had to be rescued by their families after they were down to their last pack of Jammy Dodgers. Now they are back, older, not necessarily wiser and, in the case of Art, who has suffered some kind of minor breakdown that makes social interaction impossible, much more fragile. In their poky bedsit, neurotic Art and outgoing, chirpy Guff spar like the odd couple as the rejection slips arrive in every post, dreams turns to ashes, the drink flows and the sinister hippies downstairs invade their lives. Catherine Tregenna's first play doesn't really hang together, but it is an honourable failure with its curious hybrid of sitcom and Pinteresque menace that boasts some sparky passages of writing. Tregenna is undoubtedly a talent. The central quirky relationship is given real credibility through superb performances from Richard Harrington as Art and Roger Evans as Guff, and Tregenna plays cleverly with ideas of Welsh identity. Over its final image of drunken poetry hangs the legacy of Dylan Thomas, the dead, sozzled cultural icon that no Welsh writer seems able to escape even in the current climate of cool Cymru. The self-doubt central to both Art and Guff's image of themselves is neatly pointed up by the arrival of Nicky and Sues, the lying , light-fingered hippies who produce nothing and take everything and yet still make Art and Gruff feel inadequate and provincial. The point of these sequences is clear, but they don't work in the dramatic scheme of things with Nicky and Sues seeming less organic to the play and more like escapees from a trippy version of The Caretaker. Once again, though, the performances are spot-on with Ralph Arliss and Glenna Morrison making the flesh creep as the game-playing failures who try to feel superior. Bethan Jones' production slightly panders to the sitcom element of the play, particularly in the opening scenes. But then maybe that's deliberate because, for all its raggedness and swooping sentimentality, Tregenna's play knows exactly what it is doing when it passes a tragedy off as comedy. |
Reviewed by: Lyn Gardner, The Guardian |
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