Drama
Eric is a blocker. Oscar is a pusher who tries to hit. Tony would be a hitter - if he ever turns up. Welcome to Simon Block's raucous burlesque of ping-pong playing minicab drivers. Eric is desperate to win this match because if the team loses, they will be relegated to the table tennis backwoods of "Div 2". If only they could keep their minds on the game.
Eric (Mark Grimmer) is on the phone to his wife, who seems to be having trouble at home with his senile mother who cannot stop laughing. His bipolar personality mimics the two colours of the rubber bat that sits in front of him. His forehand side is harsh and fiercely competitive; yet his backhand shows more finesse and sensitivity as a caring husband. Across from him sits Oscar (Sam Brown), an independent-minded player who does not like to interfere in other people's affairs. He changes from his smart suit into sports gear, seemingly at ease with himself as he sits in his underpants reading the paper. He sets the record straight about how Fat Derek died during a league match, disapproving of how Eric conducts his relationships by proxy - over the phone or through rumour and gossip. They both await the arrival of the team's best player, Tony (Himanshu Ojha), who at twenty-nine and three quarters is too young to think about settling down in a relationship.
Simon Block's dialogue is snappy but admirably controlled by the all-male cast. They speak cockney, but with a more recognizable fluency than the cool aloofness of a Guy Ritchie film.
Grimmer in particular has improved his timing and delivery since his initiation in the walk-out turkey that The Oxford Revue over-cooked last summer. Block certainly provides better material. At one point Eric despairs that he only ever has "One, two, three, fourty five minutes" to himself. Oscar sees table tennis as just a "game" that people "play" for "fun", and vows, "I am not going to die in shorts." Ojha's character is more enigmatic. He confesses his compulsive infidelity as if it is an off-the-cuff white lie. The plaster on his nose looks at first like one of those designer sports breathing aids; it turns out he was beaten up by a nine-year-old. The play's tragicomic tension is finely tuned by Hungerford. Table tennis turns out to be not just a game for boys, but a metaphor for life.
James Bounds, director of The Rising Generation, is one hell of a twisted guy. This play will make you laugh at the darkest of moments, and then ask yourself how you could have found such an intensely black play so funny. The Rising Generation is undoubtedly a brilliant piece of comedy, but it is also poignant and moving. Bounds juxtaposes comedy and tragedy to guide, and shock, the audience through a tale of rape, revolution and Armageddon.
The play's plot tells us of a world in which women stage a rebellion against the oppression of men and take over the world; children are taught that 'man + love = rape' and that Shakespeare was a woman, and all this occurs under the watchful eye of Mother: an authoritarian and reminiscent of a character from Nineteen Eighty-Four who would rather destroy the world than lose control of it.
But do not be put off by this warped and surreal storyline because the play itself is slick, smooth and watchable. Maybe watchable is the wrong way to describe it though; the play is performed as promenade theatre, so the audience are fully immersed in the action and become in effect another character within the work.
This creates a vivid, and at times brutal, element to the play as the boundaries between reality and fiction become somewhat blurred. However, the promenade aspect of Generation is only one of a multitude of elements that make the play innovative - the piece uses mime, improvised scenes, dance and different theatrical styles to create an exciting and absorbing production.
Viewing the The Rising Generation is an intense experi-ence; the cast have reworked the original but sought, and managed, to retain the spirit of the piece. It will make you laugh, it will make you think and above all it will provoke a reaction. Don't let the label of 'experimental theatre' put you off, because whether you love it or hate it, this show is definitely worth seeing. This is a challenging piece but in all the right ways.
John Pielmeier's Agnes of God seems to have acquired something of a cult following over the last couple of decades. Indeed, Kieran Pugh, the director of this production, says that he chose the play because it changed the lives of many of his friends. Friends, it must be said, who were acting in the play - not watching it. For at the end of the day, this is an actor's play, not an audience's.
Agnes of God tells the story of a young nun called Agnes (Tanya Tillet) who is discovered unconscious in her room with a dead baby beside her. Is the baby hers? Did she kill it? A psychiatrist, Martha Livingstone (Caroline Brown), is called in to investigate the case, but the Mother Superior (Kaffy Rice-Oxley) seems determined at every turn to obstruct her. The play becomes an argument between faith and science: can miracles happen? Is it possible that Agnes, who seems to have received the stigmata, might actually have conceived a child without sleeping with a man?
The acting is impressive throughout but it is Tillet's beautifully simple, sincere, touching portrayal of Agnes that stands out. In a play that can seem overly intellectual and discursive at times, the pathos with which she invests lines like 'I wake up and I just can't get hold of the world' is particularly moving.
So with three such intelligent performances, why do I have doubts about Agnes of God? The script is at times a theological discussion - all very well if you are an actor, and can talk about it in rehearsals, but less fun for the audience. At other times it slides into melodrama. Pugh has created a fluent production, and in this he is much helped by the beautiful singing of Kirsty Anderson, who has written music to interlink the short scenes.
This is an interesting and provocative play. It might not have any answers, but it certainly asks us a lot of questions.
23rd Oct 2003