A visit to Coffee @ Brick Lane for some fun.
Last night was very strange. I arrived and saw a disembodied Simeon sitting at a table. I thought he was drugged up to the eyeballs but he later showed that he was sober. I was very surprised at his team members. It became obvious that one of them was Ian, who looked like a school caretaker. It was hard to imagine that he would be able to get anyone's attention, when I spoke to him.
The other one was David. When they had shifted and watered everybody (and locked the door of the cafe), there was a hugely embarrassing initial song 'resistance is useless'. I enjoyed this as they were obviously amateurs who had just taken over some square feet of the cafe. I could hardly say 'they were crap' when I didn't have the guts to do it myself. Had I not spoken to them and been aware they were just ordinary guys I'd have been appalled at the low production values and headed off elsewhere. But it was nice and edgy. When they sang later they were more musical and co-ordinated.
Ian put a lot of emotional energy into everything he did, not apologising for any of the scenes, and as a consequence didn't have to worry about being funny, he was a natural oddball character who the audience liked. Politer people would have shied away from lambasting two girls who had departed in the middle of a poem. Who among us has not walked away from Covent Garden street performers in mid act? But politeness was not seen as a virtue. Anger, on the other hand, was celebrated. I liked that. Be angry at work they'll sack you, at home you'll get a divorce, anywhere else they'll cart you off to a loony bin - or I might add, beat you up.
People liked the play. I saw their grins and heard their comments in the street afterward. It was clear the actors had great fun battering this stupid village over the head by sending-up our own conservative behaviour to an insane level. The idea of being disturbed while reading the newspaper 'actually, I am reading the paper'! Borrowing heavily from the league of gentlemen, the constant references to sherry ('you can taste the Portuguese mens' feet' or whatever) and indictment of Lower Dubford from the inside was a joy to watch and to perform. A nice slow pace with manic overtones.
The character of Doris was wafer-thin, this was poor and entirely dependent on the costume. The things she said were funny because they were odd but were curiously unconvincing in the context of a married couple, e.g. 'I likes to keep myself to myself' or similar. Doris needn't have worried if she'd lost herwig had she had some mannerism to distinguish herself from the other characters. She had her back to the audience for most of the time. We learnt about her from the dialogue, her performance added nothing to the play. It would have been funnier if she hadn't been on stage at all, merely been a bulbous great dress at the corner of the room.
Sound effects would have been nice to accompany the darker moments of the plot. Mr Malliabore (helibore is an occult herb I think) sounded fun when first mentioned but I was disappointed when I saw him. The other characters swamped him. Had they shown some respect for his house and not made straightaway for the obviously plastic chairs. This was followed by three men chatting standing up (yawn). I was expecting to see newts wriggling across the guests and black cats being brushed out of the way. Horror at the bats lingering on the wall. He was too chatty for a 'dark' character - but was suitably chilly and matter-of-fact when dealing with the pentagram. A good job was made of making the environment real through mime, particularly in lighting the candles in the church and one could imagine the common nearby where the nude WI'ing went on. It was also easy to keep track of the characters. I'd like to hear more about the nocturnal meanderings of this delightful English village.
I was excited to be in an atmosphere where friends/like-minded people get up do their thing and watch each other. Taking the preserve of 'acting, darling' away from the lifeless luvvies and into the hands of those who charm us like snakes with what nature gave them.
A guy plonked himself on stage, he was an ingenuous plastic contrast to the real life experiences of the previous performer. Wanking into a camera. He rose to the challenge, which was encouraging.
