FringeReview UK 2024
Bindweed
Arcola Theatre, Mercury Theatre, Rising Tide and the New Wolsey in Association with Royal exchange Theatre Manchester, present the Bruntwood Judges Prize 2022
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Arcola Theatre Studio 1
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
“That laugh she does when she’s nervous.” What Brian narrates after involves a kitchen island. How do you solve a problem like male domestic abuse? Talk it out? Martha Loader’s Bindweed directed by Jennifer Tang arrives at the Arcola Theatre Studio 1 on a limited week-long run till July 13th.
Laura Hanna is outstanding in a play that ought to establish itself and playwright Martha Loader; and should enjoy a much longer run.
Directed by Jennifer Tang, Designer Lulu Tam, Lighting Designer Ric Mountjoy, Sound Designer Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Movement Director Jennifer Jackson, Fight Director Ruth Cooper-Brown of Rc-Annie Ltd, Assistant Director Chani Mitchell
Till July 13th
Review
“That laugh she does when she’s nervous.” What Brian narrates after involves a kitchen island. How do you solve a problem like male domestic abuse? Talk it out? Martha Loader’s Bindweed directed by Jennifer Tang arrives at the Arcola Theatre Studio 1 on a limited week-long run till July 13th.
Ex-police officer Jen (Laura Hanna) wants to root out the bindweed of violence before it murderously chokes victims and perpetrators alike. She’s seen that and for reasons of her own she’s starting a new career facilitating a perpetrators programme. Four men convicted of domestic violence talk out their furies.
Winner of the Bruntwood Judges Prize 2022, Bindweed comes hard on the heels of the Papatango 2023 winner, Laura Waldren’s Some Demon, about an eating disorder unit, also staged here till last week. Certainly plays about closed communities and redemption throng the prizes: the results in both these works are spectacular.
Brian (Sean Kingsley) appears unnervingly normal uttering those opening words. Loader’s opening monologue is studded with hesitations and “yea” trails. A beautifully modelled, almost endearing awkwardness attends Brian till the almost literally killer line. “And leaving, I guess” he adds lamely as further excuse. It’s a masterly set-up for Brian and each character is introduced by different speech-rhythms.
There’s suave God-invoking Frank (Moray Treadwell) who doesn’t feel as a (still-garbed) former vicar he needs to be there, with his wife Belinda (a multi-roling Josie Brightwell) supporting him all the way, despite this time his breaking her jaw. She brings biscuits for all and Frank sails on unperturbed.
19-year-old Charlie (Shailan Gohil) hails from a dynasty of abusers, yet tries desperately to break this, even though he’s a perpetrator. Acutely vulnerable in Gohil’s gesturing, sometimes delicately frantic performance when he bursts to eloquence, he’s not in denial.
There’s obstreperous disrupter Mike (Simon Darwen), likely to strike someone: whom Darwen brings to dangerous life, with his triggering words. He has the longest “journey” a word brought up like other jargon, and mercilessly satirised throughout. Mike though surprises and Darwen simmers with biting trip-ups and retorts to another language.
Jen’s alertness can’t even clock off outside the unit when seeing her only friends. As Ed, partner to Nina (Brightwell’s main role) Darwen casually exhibits Ed’s sexism Nina puts up with and Jen doesn’t, even down to “women’s jobs”: but both parents are in denial about their son, which Jen can’t let go. Nina is Jen’s one real friend, yet doesn’t feel Jen needs to be what Jen essentially is.
And this is normality: being almost gaslit, reminded why you left the police. Worse, they encourage her to give attractive, bonehead-sexist estate agent Peter (Gohil’s other role) another chance.
Kingsley also plays Jen’s avuncular boss Alistair, supportive to a point, still needing to peel back assumptions. And he’s the most enlightened of all those Jen meets inside or outside.
When Brian’s ex Siobhan (Brightwell) appears to expose an order-breach things spiral at the end of Act One, though this production plays without a break.
Hanna telegraphs Jen’s guilt, her feeling (shared by no-one else, including former colleagues) that she’s compromised, needs to redeem herself as much as the perpetrators. It lends true depth of drama to this absorbing play.
Like the traditional flawed detective, only because Jen judges herself, Hanna tricks out Jen’s complexities: exasperations with dates like Peter (another offstage date makes even Peter shine); but above all her mix of ex-cop empathy and tough-talking.
It’s a combo she thinks can be fatal. Jen’s clearly first-rate yet judgement-calls outside her guesswork make her feel she’s repeating history when catastrophe calls. At this point Hanna’s reaction – a silent, shuddering howl – rises out of Greek tragedy.
And did I say the humour’s so charcoal-pitched it could shatter smoked glass?
Tang paces this 110-minute now straight through work with pace and amplitude where necessary: things speed up frighteningly or gulphs of silence and desolation waft over the intimate space. Lulu Tam’s gleaming black circle with a swirl of chairs is echoed above in a horseshoe of other chairs, previous incumbents perhaps, glowering or watching over processions of perpetrators.
Lit by Ric Mountjoy with just the right pitch of gloom and neon it’s punctuated by Jasmin Kent Rodgman’s sound composition, an ambivalent three-note rising chord. Jennifer Jackson’s movement means this encounter space never feels confined; inevitably Ruth Cooper-Brown’s fight direction punctuates the slow ballet of encounter.
The cast are exemplary, particularly the multi-roling, Hanna outstanding, in a play that ought to establish itself and Loader with it: and should enjoy a much longer run.
