| Questions of class and gender are explored |
At Hijinx Theatre |
| Hijiinx Theatre- Seize the Day , Riverfront Newport , May 29, 2006 |
Glenys Evans’s plays for Hijinx Theatre to date have been rather gentle, well-observed, sympathetic studies of relationships within families and friends of people with learning disabilities, issue-based dramas with characters drawn from Ms Evans’s own close contact with that specific community during and since her time as a Hijinx company member.Her latest for that admirable company in its silver jubilee year, which opened at Newport’s Riverfront prior to a tour of England Wales, is in some ways a departure – a kind of 1930s upstairs-downstairs social romantic drama. You know the kind of thing: new maid falls for handsome young groom, while young groom fancies the wilful daughter of the master, who, of course, leads him on only to cast him aside, whereupon maid declares love, he realises he loves her too, and so on. But Ms Evans is too clever and Hijinx too committed to rehash this kind of nonsense. So it gets tweaked. In terms of Gaynor Lougher’s production, it’s hardly clunky costume drama: a simple set from Emma Caines, essentially of steps and moveable doorways, signifying the two main themes of class difference and status and progress and opportunity – obvious but effective. James Williams’s music does a similar job: a mix of Michael Nyman-style cod classical and pop. At the heart of it is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, because it’s in rehearsing for a house-party production that the young miss enlists the help of Mary, the new maid, and Harry, the groom – she to hold the script open for her, he to read Romeo’s lines. And the amusing spin on this is that intertwined into the Romeo and Juliet love scenes is another passionate love story – that of Miss Julie (for that is the name of the sexy heiress), Strindberg’s startling nineteenth-century play about a mistress and her servant and the sex-games they play. The reference isn’t stretched, but it’s there enough to make theatregoers chuckle at the incongruity of Swedish sexual conflict erupting in a staid British stately home. All quite fun as questions of class and gender are explored – Harry is also a gypsy and his Romany origins are an important part of his character – and the ambiguous romance is played out with its inevitable conclusion. It could be Hijinx’s annual community play, often marked out for its wit and politics – but it isn’t, it’s the company’s annual play for audiences with learning disabilities and their carers. Because the most important twist is in the casting. We have familiar faces like Jack Reynolds (Harry), Cler Stephens (Mrs Chambers) and Zoe Davies (Miss Julie), all putting in good performances, but the central role of Mary – or Rose, the name she has to assume because the maid is always called Rose (and hence “A rose by any other name…”, of course) – is played by Sarah Gordy. That’s a name you’re not likely to know, not just because she comes from London, but because she is an actor with learning disabilities. Ms Gordy is an actress who has apparently always loved Shakespeare, just as Mary knows Juliet’s words off by heart in this play. The script, in fact, is “disability-blind” - in other words, the fact that Sarah has Down’s syndrome was deemed irrelevant. She may play an illiterate servant girl who is seen by most of the household as not very bright, but she plays it as an actor and the part she plays is a romantic heroine of sorts, a girl who falls in love. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to react when the love story climaxes, as it must, in a passionate kiss. It would be silly to pretend that the lump in the throat at the end of Seize the Day is simply because Harry and Mary are about to set off in a new life together (Ms Evans has decided to give it a happy ending, which may or may not be a necessary compromise) but that kiss is a real coup de théâtre |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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