Brighton Fringe 2009
Low Down
HomeGrown New Writing Theatre, are a collective of Brighton-based writers. In Future Tense they show us three differing dystopian visions of the future.
Review
HomeGrown New Writing Theatre, are a collective of Brighton-based writers. In Future Tense they show us three differing dystopian visions of the future.
Ex-Ray by Shawn Baldwin and Tim Leopard kicked off the triple-bill, a monologue depicting a 1984-esque future in which the government are monitoring everybody’s actions. We meet Ray a cheery everyman figure, imprisoned for unknown reasons. Ex-Ray was performed with subtlety and range by Baldwin who stammered and stumbled convincingly as he was interrupted by the sounds of torture and by Phil Collins’ music (another kind of torture) piped into his cell at deafening volume to prevent him sleeping. In spite of the heavy-handed nature of the script, the parallels drawn between the imagined future and the present day were laboured to the audience repeatedly, Baldwin did illicit real pathos as he struggled to make sense of his situation.
The second play, All we Have is Now by Martin Malone, was a meandering piece in which the world has been overtaken by wars prompted by social networking websites like Facebook and Myspace all mixed in with shades of the Matrix. The production values were slick with some particularly unsettling masks in use. While the acting had purpose and commitment, Mark Leftkovich impressing as the venomous Milton, narratively the piece didn’t seem to match up to the grand level of social comment it was making. By the time the final play, Cold Call by Clive Ford began, I confess I was craving some light relief. Thankfully, I was satisfied by this rye take on empty hedonism and celebrity culture. Two door-to-door evangelists stumble across a twisted mother and daughter, Alice and Eve, prompting a seriously comic conflict of beliefs. The acting was uniformly delightful, Sam Kidd (Alice) and Stephanie Prince (Eve), clearly relished their roles taking their Absolutely Fabulous infused characters in shocking new directions.
Sarah Mann and Jim Madden occasionally verged on cliché as religious nuts, but they got the biggest laughs of the night with some fine physical comedy. As an evening of theatre Future Tense could have benefited from some variance in tone. Although, the three plays were likely commissioned around the same theme it would have been easier to reflect on their relative merits if they weren’t shown back-to-back. You can – as they say – have too much of a good thing. In the case of Future Tense, you can have too many bleak visions of the future! That said, I look forward to seeing what HomeGrown have to offer in the future as they seem to be a company with an admirable sense of ambition and direction.