FringeReview UK 2024
23.5 Hours
Park Theatre
Genre: American Theater, Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Park Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Leigh and Tom’s friends Bruce and Jayne are gathered to toast Tom’s triumph in directing his school Romeo and Juliet. It’s dialogue rinsed with wine, then the phone rings. Katherine Farmer directs Carey Crim‘s 23.5 Hours at the Park Theatre till October 5th.
A worthy successor to Never Not Once, almost from the other side of the glass, it makes Crim one of the most visible and exciting of US dramatists.
Writer Carey Crim Director Katherine Farmer, Producer Paul O’Leary Set and Costume Designer Carla Goodman, Lighting Designer Jamie Platt, Sound Designer & Composer Julian Starr,
Casting Director Ellie Colyer-Bristow CDG, Fight Director Alison De Burgh, Stage Manager Nell Thomas, ASM Zoe Mackinnon, Assistant Director Meaghan Martin,
Wardrobe Supervisor Bet Qualter Buncall, Production Manager Lewis Champney for e-Stage, Marketing Manager Anne Dillow Juliet Barry for Mobius Industries PR Emma Berge and Elaine Jones for Mobius Industries, Additional PR Cliona Roberts, Special Thanks to Adam Kenwright and Simon Ruddick
Artwork Design Rebecca Pitt, Artwork Design Rebecca Pitt, Artwork Photography Richard Lakos, Production Photography Charles Flint
Till October 5th
Review
Leigh and Tom’s friends Bruce and Jayne are gathered to toast Tom’s triumph in directing his school Romeo and Juliet. It’s dialogue rinsed with wine, then the phone rings. Katherine Farmer directs Carey Crim‘s 23.5 Hours at the Park Theatre till October 5th.
In 2022 Park mounted Crim’s gripping Never Not Once about the of aftermath of sexual assault. Similarly, this play jump-cuts to the outfall of Tom’s conviction and two-year incarceration, picking up with his return. ER nurse Leigh (Lisa Dwon) and Tom (David Sturzaker), when they meet again, are shadowed with the weight of where they’ve been.
Inevitably his family have served two years along with Tom; most friends have fallen away. Jayne (Allyson Ava-Brown) and Bruce (Jonathan Nyati) who we see again first after the narrative break, preparing the house for return, take opposing sides.
Even though Crim refuses a definitive answer, she adds enough doubt each way for us to guess at some of it. Polymath Tom’s been adored by his pupils, other teachers like Bruce and parents admire him this side idolatry too. So the resultant crash is catastrophic. Tom clearly loves his job, inspires pupils and colleagues. But the clue to Tom’s own hubris, his almost inviolable sense of right, lies both far back and in other moments both women here provide: very differently, even reluctantly too.
This neither monsters Tom nor casts doubt on the sincerity of his alleged victim. Perhaps even Tom’s sincere. His arrogance, overstepping boundaries with entitlement might be reprehensible, but not culpable. Doubt though remains. Initially entitled Conviction, the new title is subtle and worth the two hours 20 to discover.
Dwon dominates: from the adoring, sexy wife through a shudder each time she’s touched, lies a path that isn’t in fact straight. There’s moments here of almost-normal resumption of love and affirmation; and of a look of haunted betrayal as Leigh revolves and revolves events, even resorting to a hidden scrapbook.
Dwon’s Leigh, reunited nominally with Tom, begins to break apart as the tension of waiting gives way to newly-released doubt that disrupts any attempts to restart their marriage. Dwon’s expressive power is the lodestar of this production.
Tom gets a menial job, but everything’s precarious, including neighbourhood rocks through the window, Jayne’s estrangement and the gradual re-shadowing of what happens. Dwon’s Leigh palpably takes on emotions she both feels and the remorse she might feel Tom ought to feel. Whereas Tom never doubts himself, never questions his own actions that might be misconstrued at best.
Sturzaker’s performance moves from easy command and grace to anxious desire to please through a steely denial. One consequence of suffering like this is that you become to a degree what people think of you.
Nyati’s Jonathan gradually reveals the indebtedness he feels to Tom: his very foundations as a teacher, even though he hasn’t the same vocational urge, owe everything to him. Jonathan might indeed inhabit a similar, if far slighter moral blindness. Ava-Brown’s Jayne first comes across as someone oversharing, over-anxious and inappropriate. She talks too much. But she judges absolutely if quickly, and finally surprises.
Leigh’s and Tom’s son Nicholas (Jem Matthews) is both starved of his father (who initially doesn’t want to see him) then alienated, and spirals downwards with all the peer pressure. The end though isn’t predictable, and the play isn’t unremittingly bleak. Matthews is achingly believable in his role.
Carla Goodman’s realist kitchen set and costume suit the almost naturalist play. It’s Jamie Platt’s lighting that shows where Farmer intends moments to blue-freeze an emotional, even existential shift, with slow-motion sequences. They don’t jar but add to the alien state of protagonists. There’s discreet sound and music by Julian Starr.
A worthy successor to Never Not Once, almost from the other side of the glass, it makes Crim one of the most visible and exciting of US dramatists.
