Kurt & Sid
by Roy Smiles
Directed by Tim Stark
Trafalgar Studios
9 Sept - 3 Oct 09
A review by Owain Paciuzsko for EXTRA! EXTRA!
The premise of this rather peculiar production is high-concept in the extreme, and ultimately, perhaps, your enjoyment of the piece revolves around how you take to it's A Christmas Carol conceit in which Sid Vicious visits Kurt Cobain on the night of his suicide.
We are thrust straight into the action as Kurt - shotgun in his mouth - tries to talk himself into pulling the trigger. He is dressed in what has become the iconic 'grunge' attire of Cobain, and British actor Shaun Evans surprisingly looks the part with scruffy blonde hair and beard, his Seattle accent is also impeccable. Around Kurt in his attic are strewn records, pulp magazines and assorted children's toys - primarily dismembered dolls - in a smart reference to Cobain's own artistic projects. This maudlin scene is quickly, almost jarringly, interrupted by another familiarly dressed character, leathers, spiked hair and a swastika emblazoned t-shirt; Danny Dyer's Sid Vicious plays up the 'Great Rock n Roll Swindle' cartoonish persona - for which the text has its’ own excuses - though his performance ranges from pseudo-Jack Sparrow spaced out asides to the odd Cockney quip, and indeed, a lot of the play's humour comes - successfully - from Dyer, but as a portrayal of Vicious it feels decidedly off-key. However, as a foil to Evan's morose, depressed, bitter and angry Kurt it manages some kind of balance. The two actors play off of one another well and there is a strange chemistry on stage and an easy-going back and forth most explicitly in a ping pong scene.
To the play's credit it's not hard to overlook some of the more ludicrous aspects of its narrative and go with the flow, enjoying hearing the two musical 'legends' spar. Unfortunately this is where a lot of the play's problems lie, Kurt and Sid have very little of any real depth to say to one another; sure there's a lot of 'celebrity is bad' rhetoric and other pop-culture diatribes but it never gets beyond that or attempts to really understand what drove either man to their unfortunate ends, or, at the least, to take apart the nature of their own iconography. Each actor gives a lot to a script that ultimately holds them back and, contains one very misjudged sequence wherein Sid takes Kurt into space to look down upon the Earth - despite the nice touch of the illuminated doll's heads.
To be perfectly honest my expectations for Kurt & Sid were decidedly low, but thanks to restraint in direction, an intimate venue and the wonderful performance of Shaun Evans there is still enough to keep the production afloat during its meet-cute moments and pop-culture ramblings.
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Trafalgar Studios 2
14 Whitehall, London SW1A 2DY (Just off Trafalgar Square)
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