6 – 7 May

I love a good metaphor. To watch it slowly flowering in a crafted performance is one of the pleasures of ‘highbrow’ theatre. The self congratulatory pat on the back when the penny drops is, I’m guessing, akin to finishing a cryptic crossword by a fiendish setter. Last night’s offering at the Ustinov – a theatre rightly famed for it’s theatrical heft – had all the hallmarks of a play that points to something beyond itself. Amy Jane Cook’s geometric set, made up of squares and circles, takes us away from the everyday and the circular pit of shiny chippings hinted at some kind of metamorphic change brought about by the cataclysmic meteor impact which we are led to believe had centred on London.

The central character, Vin (Dan Parr) appears to be traumatized or on a spectrum of some kind (it turned out to be the former) and spends the entirety of the play mute bar one two-word sentence at the end. To begin with I wasn’t sure if his dumbness was the result of stubbornness or trauma although as I say it did become clear. He seemed like a mime artist who had lost his mojo, sullenly swaying to and fro and shaking his hands in a convincing portrayal of some form of mental disorder.

His vivacious, energetic and long suffering mum (Kacey Ainsworth) repeatedly attempted to get through to him, cajoling him with love and diminishing patience, but ultimately failing to break through. James Fritz’s script is more about effects than causes and thereby leaves it to the audience to grapple with possible psychological triggers for Vin’s condition. In a similar vein I found myself wondering why his delightful and caring friend, Rach (Bethany Antonia) would spend so much time and effort trying to communicate with someone who, despite the odd rage against his condition, nevertheless seemed determined to ‘keep mum’. And then it wasn’t clear how he’d managed to create the (false) impression with Rach that his father had died in the impact or indeed when the silence had fallen upon him. The hint, in Louise Rhoades-Brown’s video projection, came in the form of a digital text – Vin’s only means of communication. Was he after more sympathy than was his due? Again we were on our own.

Attempting to sing his way out of trauma and simultaneously into the affections of Rach was her friend Jamie (Oli Higginson) who was a little more forthright in his reasons for massaging the truth about his mother’s passing. His edgily humorous empathy offered the possibility of an unlocking of Vin’s imprisoned voice, but that was not to be. Why was he finally moved to voice a thanks to Rach? I wasn’t sure beyond her sheer persistence.

Having waited patiently for a metaphor to be cashed-in I was, I’m afraid to say, ultimately disappointed and the play remained no more than the sum of its, entertaining, parts.

★★★☆☆  Graham Wyles  7th May 2022

Photo credit: Robert Day