Groundswell Theatre’s Colin’s Head is a startlingly original play that had last night’s audience transfixed throughout. Writer/director Phil Booth has interwoven elements of Greek tragedy, romantic comedy and social commentary with great skill, and what could have been an ungainly mish-mash of disparate genres is instead entirely coherent and convincing. The high quality of the writing is matched by superb acting from Philippa Howard and Winston J. Pyke.
The play opens in the office of some anonymous bureaucratic organisation. Helen is typing with fierce efficiency. She answers the telephone, and we learn that her area of responsibility is ‘Customer Engagements’, though it quickly becomes clear that she is not the least bit interested in engaging with anyone. Brisk, brusque, and buttoned-up, she embodies the ‘unshakeable rigidity’ that she has adopted as her mantra. Into her securely predictable world comes Dennis, a fixer from ‘Maintenance’, clutching a bottle of bubbly and a couple of glasses. At first Dennis appears to be little more than some would-be seducer, whose plea to be trusted is met with a sharp response from Helen: ‘Trust you? You’re not even wearing a suit!’ But she does come to trust him, and he leads her on a fantastical voyage of self-discovery that breaks open her brittle exterior to reveal a woman tortured by guilt and shame.
Helen’s growing intimacy with the decidedly louche Dennis is the stuff of lightweight rom-com – prim and proper woman meets lovable rascal – but Colin’s Head is by no means a frothy play. When Helen suddenly experiences a shatteringly cathartic outpouring of grief we find ourselves in very serious territory indeed, though the mood swiftly brightens again. Philippa Howard charts Helen’s journey from uptight, repressed misery to joyous liberation with absolute clarity. Every telling gesture, every subtle shift in tone rings true.
Winston J. Pyke does not have to convey quite such a challengingly diverse range of emotions, but he does have to convince us that the Jack-the-laddish Dennis has hidden depths, and that he might even be other than human – and he does so, superbly. Dionysian Dennis proves to be a beguiling mix of hedonistic rogue, therapeutic counsellor and street-wise cynic. ‘There’s nothing human beings do, however awesome,’ he says, ‘that hasn’t got a load of bollocks mixed up in it.’ One moment he is adroitly uncovering the dark secrets that Helen has been busily hiding from herself, the next he is offering some pithy comment on consumerism: ‘People make themselves want things, all the time.’ Helen is dazzled, and so are we.
At times Phil Booth’s writing goes precariously far out on a limb; there is even a bizarre yet strangely touching interlude of song and dance, but both actors perform with such conviction that these flights of fancy are carried off with great aplomb. Amid all the fun some weighty themes are tackled, including the dilemma of weighing personal freedom against social obligation, and the question of how far we should allow our pasts to shape our futures.
I thoroughly enjoyed Colin’s Head. Who is Colin, and what has his head got to do with anything? You’ll have to see the play to find out. Catch it if you can. ★★★★★ Mike Whitton 22nd March 2017
