I see quite a few plays, for some of which I have high expectations and they disappoint. Others I don’t fancy at all and I enjoy them. Some are plays I have seen before, some are with actors with whom I am familiar. But the best ones are when I have no expectations, no previous knowledge of a show and it turns out to be something special, something really worthwhile.
Garden is a case in point. I knew nothing about it apart from the bit of blurb in the Everyman brochure and there was no programme available at the door. I gathered it was a single-hander and that a plant was involved, but that was it. What it turned out to be was a beautifully crafted, beautifully acted little play.
Garden was at times funny, often well observed, usually perceptive but always sad. Presented by How Small How Far, a theatre company consisting of Lucy Grace and Chrissy Angus, it is a play that deserves more than the fairly meagre audience it attracted last night. Performed by Ms Grace, the show was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival last year where it was nominated for the Brighton Fringe Award for Theatrical Excellence and the Fringe Sustainable Practice Award.
It tells the story of a sad young lady who has no friends and whose only responsibility, apart from the photocopier, is to the plants in the office in which she works. She rescues one that is being mistreated and takes it home to her dreary little flat on the twenty-fifth floor where she also befriends a passing pigeon. She dreams of the sky and fields of swaying grass which is always greener than her dull, boring life with its daily commute to the City. Her constant cheeriness hides an emptiness for which she compensates with her desire to build a garden in which she perhaps hopes to grow a new life. She paints the ceiling of her flat sky blue but still the emptiness prevails.
It’s a simple story, but the best ones often are. Lucy Grace’s performance also had simplicity to it but, more than that, it had a depth and sincerity that managed to convey the loneliness and despair behind an exterior that always tried to be bright and cheery. I was impressed and it is not often I am so pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed Garden very much. ★★★★☆ Michael Hasted 14th September 2016
