At Sgript Cymru |
| Sgript Cymru- Ghost City , Chapter Arts Centre , March 10, 2004 |
| MORE often than not the characters in Gary Owen’s plays speak in monologues. They may share in the same experience — school bullying in Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco, mob cruelty in The Drowned World — and may even appear to direct their words at one another. But what they say still comes across as internal commentary, where they account for the pain of the world to themselves alone. In the award-winning Shadow of a Boy, seen at the National Theatre Loft season two years ago, the characters truly engaged with each other, though even here the figure of Captain Shadow, conjured from a comic book, served as the boy’s alter id. Ghost City returns to the monologue form, and rather too generously gives us 24 of them, one for every hour of a day lived in various corners of Cardiff. The cast of four get to play about six characters each, starting off with Celyn Jones’s all-night radio DJ and continuing through tales told by housewives, school kids, chancers and abandoned lovers to reach an almost happy end. The progress is from a man abandoned by his listeners to a runaway braving himself to listen to his mother (Jonathan Floyd, Nia Gwynne), by which time the initial monologue form has been tapped into by other voices, at first only slightly, with the odd grunt or expletive, but gradually introducing words, entire sentences and at last the conversation — a halting one, yes, but true dialogue. Though sometimes confessional, the stories mostly recall some recent encounter, often sexual, and in every case are interrupted when the speakers feel a sudden, never explained pain. In one case this attack is endured with a brief, Zen-taught grimace but in others the speaker doubles up, even writhes on the ground. The tone of the monologue shifts afterwards, sometimes towards greater sincerity but not always, so that no clear pattern emerges. What does emerge is a portrait of a city peopled with sexually lively though seldom contented citizens. Rachel Isaac’s wife and mother surprised by joy is a rare exception to lives that more often suggest minefields. Nor is elsewhere any better. London is where good Welshwomen go to die. And Soutra Gilmour’s setting of grey hollow squares, though ingeniously flexible, keeps cheerfulness at bay. Yet the director Simon Harris introduces enough physical variation between the one-character scenes to hold back too great a sense of repetition. Added to which, Owen respects his characters by letting them preserve their central mysteries. What drives them? We only nearly know. |
Reviewed by: Jeremy Kingston, The Times |
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