22 – 27 April
Conceived and written back in 1977, very post Sixties, post flower power, the nostalgia in Bouncers is not a pretty one. Getting pissed while in the pursuit of dire sexual encounters seems to be the definition of a lad’s good night out in this, John Godber’s most successful production that first appeared at the Edinburgh Festival.
In this dystopian world where young men prey on the opposite sex in a scene decorated with jettisoned empty pizza boxes, vomit and discarded condoms, Godber pulls few punches as he reveals the desperate draw of a night out at the weekend – when confined lives can briefly be set loose to find expression to a disco beat at a downtown club.
Loosely ‘policed’ by our four toughie protagonists working on security, ‘Lucky’ Eric (Frazer Hammill), Judd (Nick Figgis), Les (George Reid) and Ralph (Tom Whittaker), are the testosterone-fuelled gatekeepers of the seedy night club, Mr Cinders. Our tux-wearing quartet quickly gets the audience onside with some funny disco moves of their own to sampled tracks such as I Just Can’t Get Enough, Night to Remember, Get Down on It and Disco Inferno.
Life in the club is pretty raw. The overt sexism and crude male banter shocks, but Godber injects something of a brake on proceeding with four ‘speeches’ he puts in the mouth of ‘Lucky’ Eric in which he steps back from the festering pile of humanity before him to consider the wider implications of what he is witnessing. The women being groped are, after all, someone’s friend, sister, or possibly, mum. Eric seems to be looking out from an abyss in which he himself has been deserted by his nearest and dearest, looking for a reconnection of sorts. Frazer Hammill powerfully conveys an Eric that is seething with pent-up fury and frustration, a lost soul with a brotherhood, at least, of his fellow bouncers.
On a simple set, a neon-lit club sign hanging above a glittering foil curtain, and with just the four guys to look at for the evening, there was pressure on how they might sustain everyone’s interest for an hour and a half. But with Jane Thornton’s fluid direction there were enough changes of pace and injections of much-needed humour to help proceedings along; no better than in one hilarious sequence when the boys are watching a porn film post shift and suddenly hit reverse by mistake. But there was a sense of repeated themes in the script that could have been edited to better effect. We never really get to know more about the boys’ backgrounds, apart from Eric’s briefly, or their aspirations, and there was a danger of them coming across as cardboard cut-outs of themselves.
Hammill, Figgis, Reid and Whittaker were successful at keeping the audience onside despite the sordid details of their tale – and were always animated as they took on multiple roles as female club-goers, their hairdressers or drunk posh boys craving more champagne. But somehow the grand setting of the Theatre Royal seemed at odds with what Bouncers is, a more claustrophobic, darker version of Saturday Night Fever, UK style. A smaller, more intimate venue might have helped bring something more visceral to the overall effect.
★★★☆☆ Simon Bishop, 23 April 2024
Photo credit: Ian Hodgson
