FringeReview UK 2024
Jab
Free Run Productions in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.
Genre: Comedic, Contemporary, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Here’s an upper-cut to fading memories. James McDermott’s Jab directed by Scott Le Crass premieres at the Finborough Theatre till March 16th. The pandemic’s been airbrushed from public consciousness, except for most of us who remember it.
What we don’t usually see depicted is the pressure on relationships, how they fall apart, or resolve. To say McDermott spares us nothing is an understatement. The play’s based on what happens to his parents over a year.
After several scenes of silence there’s a final gesture which the Finborough uniquely provides. It’s the finest coup I’ve seen here or anywhere for a long time. Highly recommended, it’s also essential.
Written by James McDermott, Directed by Scott Le Crass, Set and Costume Designer Leah Kelly, Lighting Designer Jodie Underwood, Composer Adam Langston, Assistant Director Josie Rattigan, Associate Producer Kevin Nolan, Producer Free Run Productions in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.
Stage Manager Phoebe Francis and Production Manager Daniel Steward
Props Supervisor Deb Waters, Scenic artist Libby Monroe Photographer Hannah Patterson, Artwork Arsalan Sattari, Trailer Robert Boulton, PR Kate Morley PR
General Manager Ellie Renfrew and Caitlin Carr, Stage Manager Roel Fox, ASM Maddy D-Houston.
Till March 16th
Review
Here’s an upper-cut to fading memories. James McDermott’s Jab directed by Scott Le Crass premieres at the Finborough Theatre till March 16th. The pandemic’s been airbrushed from public consciousness, except for most of us who remember it.
What we don’t usually see depicted is the pressure on relationships, how they fall apart, or resolve. To say McDermott spares us nothing is an understatement. The play’s based on what happens to his parents over a year.
March 2020. With her 29th wedding anniversary approaching, Anne (Kacey Ainsworth) is exhausted at her front-line desk, fastened to a dying animal: the NHS. She has a grandstand view of what unfolds. At 58, she’s tired of menopause too. And terminally bored with carrying husband Don (Liam Tobin).
Don’s running a vintage shop. But it’s Anne who funds it since he makes nothing. It’s his hobby, and to be fair he brought up their two sons: but they’re adults now. Don’s always been as it were “non-essential”. But now he’s classified as such, since retail shuts down.
Anne’s “essential” and it polarises things. Don can go for government grants, but what does he do with the cash? He’s also a lazy Daily Fail-reading sexist. He wants control of the remote he never paid for: obsessed with Emmerdale when Anne wants The Durrells.
Micro-aggressions – a hunch, a scene of turned backs – morph into dances or silence across 80 minutes.
Slowly their ritualised home-life condenses to gloop. Things fall apart on the outside Anne visits: systems, government, bodies, and the NHS. Marriages too. Though it’s usually Don who mordantly intones at the end of every other scene the number of dead.
Not that it starts like this. McDermott’s play though in 75 short scenes is increasingly non-verbal, and that space is initially one of joyous movement as Ainsworth and Tobin dance for just too long to the Eurythmics, the backbeat to the deadbeat days of lockdown. And there’s later small bursts, tired reaffirmation, distraction desperation. It’s clear they’ve loved exuberantly.
But as Anne says, her body’s changing and Don’s body is well out of shape (Tobin’s isn’t but we get the point). Basically Anne’s out of lust and maybe love: Don’s aggressive advances are just one displacement too many.
Ainsworth – who’s only just finished her part in a memorable revival of Philip Ridley’s 2007 Leaves of Glass at Park Theatre – seems again ideally-cast as a woman with pressure-confronting family boil-overs. In the Ridley, it was of a woman largely in denial. Here, it’s dealing with a husband’s.
Tobin brings brio, hurt, desperation, love and a touch of danger to a truly superfluous man whose points ended when the boys left home. It never occurs to Don to do what friends are trying: volunteering. But he’s safe. For now.
Don’s and Anne’s relationship polarise terminally when the long-prayed-for vaccine arrives. Full of mild conspiracy theories, Don refuses, even tears up invitations to be vaccinated. Anne of course gets hers and is soon vaccinating others.
The last third harrows – and widens – to gesture. The award-winning McDermott’s particularly effective at orchestrating the great sunk silences of lockdown, of non-communication as elder sibling of a devastated world, patched with ghosts.
Ainsworth and Tobin, both of whom communicate offstage at key moments, convey the coiled dynamism of frustration, despair, anger and visceral love-hate. As well as the ubiquitous torpor most of us remember at least occasionally.
It’s a two-hander unlike most others, where tiny scenes explode with meaning, and Jodie Underwood’s lighting rings 30-seocond changes. It’s also where Leah Kelly (making her stage debut as set designer) engages with an elegant minimum: four chairs side by side, unmatched and mobile.
Behind, the upstage is wrapped in light grey, save for a closed mullioned window space. Adam Langston’s music surrounds the Eurythmics and other hits, and a (shrewdly) near-inaudible drone from Boris Johnson and others on occasion.
After several scenes of silence there’s a final gesture which the Finborough uniquely provides. It’s the finest coup I’ve seen here or anywhere for a long time. Highly recommended, it’s also essential.
