Brighton Year-Round 2024
Gareth Strachan Project M.E. The Rock Inn Pub
Blisstopia Productions
Genre: Adaptation, Biographical Drama, Comedic, Contemporary, Drama, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Scratch Performance, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: The Rock Inn Pub
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Written by Gareth Strachan and directed by Sorcha Brooks with a cast of five including Strachan. Strachan’s Project M.E. The Rock Inn Pub performed on September 20th 2024
With snappy stagecraft and lighting cues by Dominic Assirati, equally deft directing from Sorcha Brooks and this quality of actors, Strachan proves he can pull together serious talent who believe in his work. It’s a step up in all directions
Review
British/Canadian writer and all-round Mercury, Gareth Strachan of Blisstopia Productions is well-known to Brighton and the Fringe. Also a novelist, offbeat poet and filmmaker, he’s a writer in love with language, jokes, and the farce of extremes. His Project M.E. is a TV script based on Strachan’s own experiences as a youth worker. It’s performed as a rehearsed reading with five actors and narrator (all co-ordinated black attire) at The Rock Inn Pub directed by Sorcha Brooks.
Noted for puckish comedies, Strachan started out with the format suited to his own aesthetic: a linked series of sketches close to some Radio 4 models. Since then he’s moved to fully-developed dystopias: hence his company name. And it chimes with what Strachan in interviews has talked about as his real ambition: to distil lived experience into his work.
An experience quite at odds with the larky sketch-prone earlier self you’d think. Quite how Strachan and his team balance that determines how he can develop as a dramatist. No pressure.
Strachan introduces a three-minute trailer in the Rock Inn’s upper room, better-appointed than many, which packs in over 40 audience-members facing a raised corner-platform. Real youth social workers identify themselves in the audience: Strachan’s engaging preamble is nonetheless both safe (they’re clearly invited) and not.
Narrator Thomas Grant links sections of two interlinked stories. First is hapless Strachan as social worker Martin arrested by security (Emma Cole, Pete Walsh) for relabelling a large avocado with a small one’s price tag, and a secret weapon: the light-fingered boy who did a runner and has (accidentally) snaffled a bag of avocados is Martin’s own son (Jack Kristiansen). And there’s a dog: always a dog with Strachan.
Strachan’s in his element as hapless befuddled anti-hero, in one of his most recognisable personas. There’s running critiques of both institutionalized care work, and bureaucratic culture that stifles what progress raises its head above the digital parapet.
Elsewhere Alexander (Jack Kristiansen again) first apparates as a rising star in 1982 on the NT stage performing Shakespeare sonnets. Fast-forward and how did this famous charismatic actor end up 40 years on running a company of inspiring young people, and from which he wants to retire? Kristiansen exudes rucked-up old theatrical lion, a Burton on the skids who forgot where he put them. There’s plenty of jibes from younger colleague Rod (Walsh again in cocky mode). And why does Alexander go on? He can’t go off at half-cock as it were when his much younger wife Miranda (Cole again) is so inspired. She’s bolstered by shy, super-efficient Felicity (Natalie Roles) and “salubrious” hippie staffer India (Cole in a second role).
So how does that dovetail? Clearly these are Martin’s bosses but we don’t end there. Martin’s adventures take him to meet Cassandra (Roles relishing her prime role as ambiguous siren working out with Pilates) and her troubled autistic son Michael (Pete Walsh in his main role). Whilst Michael won’t open the door to anything but correct paperwork, Martin fixates on glamorous single Cassandra. There’s a double-take sequence and we’re back with Alexander.
The final sequence (another flashback) has Kristiansen ramp up an out-of-control persona, floundering between that NT young lion and latter mangy director. Here with all five actors onstage, Alexander’s being abusive to (as he sees her) AA leader, former substance abuser and future wife Miranda (Cole); who enjoys another life as a taekwondo expert when required.
This is clearly a work-in-progress, and at 65 minutes I wonder if it could have been slightly extended to tie up the knots where Martin and Alexander meet, or at least cross paths? As it is, the material is engaging, and Strachan refuses to let up on jokes. If this is serious, then it’s seriously funny and plays to Strachan’s own deep sense of trouble beneath the one-liners. You can see the aesthetic settle.
What is needed is a closing sequence that doesn’t have to resolve everything but joins the implied narratives of second chances and last gasps. Above all perhaps, there’s a need to transgress from felicity awhile: to highlight, even briefly, what Strachan hints at, in the exploration of what impact care-work has, what challenges it faces.
With snappy stagecraft and lighting cues by Dominic Assirati, equally deft directing from Sorcha Brooks and this quality of actors, Strachan proves he can pull together serious talent who believe in his work. It’s a step up in all directions. We can look forward to a fuller drama where Strachan can fillet his more personal message through slapstick scenarios. His muse is comedic and happily will never tame. Based on tonight’s production, the ever-youthful Strachan can afford to relax into the rhythms of loss and grief a little more now.
The Rock Inn Pub’s upstairs room has been specially adapted by the enthusiastic manager. So it’s sad to report the space is being sold off by the end of the year. Plans to create a hub here fall with that. Strachan and other performers seek a new home. Blisstopia’s own site is worth following.
