At Sgript Cymru |
| Sgript Cymru- Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco , Lyric Studio | Soho Theatre , March 14, 2001 |
| I never thought an evening with Anne Robinson would be preferable to anything, but Sgript Cymru has changed my mind. This organisation commissions and produces Welsh plays, two of which have been showcased at fashionable London venues and published in Methuen and Oberon paperbacks. The actors, especially Ralph Arliss and Richard Mylan, are appealing, but the lines they have to deliver pretty much confine one's responses to commiseration, pity, and annoyance. Publication makes Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco seem even worse than it does on stage. Gary, we are told, "is an a-hole, oh yes he is", with "a greasy smile" who is "probably not the most giving or sensitive of lovers". It's a bad sign when a playwright encourages you to sneer at a character before he opens his mouth, and Gary's monologue, full of unhyphenated words, is indeed vile – an hour of boasting about the "major-league fuckable chick" he's pulled that night and the injuries he's inflicted on some smaller chaps. That Gary Owen, the playwright, may intend this portrayal as a mea culpa is suggested by his dedication, to "all the weapons-grade honeys who've been inappropriately handled, 1989-2001: you can take this as one great big hey look I'm really really sorry", an avowal that is not exactly pullulating with sincerity. Gary's long song to himself is followed by two more soliloquies, from a mentally disturbed lounge singer on the dole and a young man desperate to leave Wales but unable to leave his girlfriend. All three men strike, in different keys, the same note of angry frustration and pound it incessantly. There are flickers of talent here, but they are far outshone by Owen's arch dishonesty and by his confusion of egotism and narcissism. Art and Guff is not a debate about culture and nonsense but a demonstration of the latter. Catherine Tregenna's play about two Welsh would-be writers (the title is their nicknames) simply shows us that Guff is an optimist, Art a pessimist, and both no-hopers. The play's sole interest is provided by two neighbours who dub the pair "Bill and Ben", colonise their flat, and mesmerise the downcast Art, but this strand fades out before it amounts to much. It's great for local companies to nourish home-grown writers, but, on this showing, Sgript Cymru looks more like a forcing-house. |
Reviewed by: Rhoda Koenig |
This review has been read 3283 times There are 70 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
