Theatre Review
The Bush Theatre presents Tinderbox
A new play by Lucy Kirkwood directed by Josie Rourke
Bush Theatre
23 April - 24 May
A review by David Hermann for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Woody Allen’s Sleeper - wrack your brains and you’ll find that not much headway has been made in the subgenre of dystopian comedy. Hurrah for Lucy Kirkwood, then, whose first full-length play and professional production Tinderbox is a dark but farcical vision of Britain in the negligibly near future. Global warming has submerged some parts of Britain in the ocean and reinforced the geographical divide between England and Scotland in the form of ‘Hadrian’s Channel’ while other parts have fallen prey to international commerce. Cornwall, for example, has been sold to what used to be the USA. In politics, a fascisto-Thatcherite aversion to the arts has led to the outlawry of painters, such as rip-snorting young Scot Perchik - so named, presumably, after the iconic student revolutionary in Fiddler on the Roof and played with zest and gumption by Bryan Dick. On the run from the authorities, Perchik has crossed Hadrian’s Channel swimming and seeks refuge among the festering offal of a grimy Bradford butcher-shop. Its owner, refugee Londoner Saul Everard, has moved business to Bradford in order to preserve what he refers to as his ‘Empire’. Evereard (Jamie Foreman) is an outspoken enemy of progress, a conservative in the true sense of the word, who rules as monarch over a single subject, his porcine, browbeaten wife Vanessa (Sheridan Smith). Lucy Osborne’s design provides a deliciously disgusting atmosphere with its yellowing wallpaper, the putrid meat-counter and the rich, neo-Dickensian costumes. Lit by James Farncombe to an appropriately claustrophobic effect and cleverly seasoned with the odd waft of riotous clamour by Sound Designer Emma Laxton, the production settles into what is essentially a happy blend of 1984 and Sweeney Todd when it becomes apparent that Saul’s primary source of meat is pretty much anyone who happens to trespass on his beleaguered ‘Empire’. The Bush’s artistic director Josie Rourke presents a serendipitously assembled cast and proves a fine sense for dramatic undulance in this engaging and macabre two and a half hour romp. The most outstanding and consistently delightful performance is given by Sheridan Smith, who betrays her professional experience in comedy (She appears in the BBC’s Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and The Royle Family) at every turn. Her timing and use of comedic cadence are immaculate. The only reservation one may have lies with the merit of Kirkwood’s allegory. I can’t help thinking that this picture of England as a waistcoat-wearing, walking-stick-brandishing, auto-aggressive, blindly conservative quasi-dictatorship suffering from post-Empire-amputation phantom pain is a little out of date as far as socio-political criticism goes. Then again, perhaps this is what it continues to look like from the outside; from, say, Scotland, where Lucy Kirkwood, though born in Leytonstone, has spent much of her life. I suggest you go and make up your own mind. Whatever the shortcomings of the play may or may not be, this is a flawless, funny and unusual production well worth your time and money.
Bush Theatre www.bushtheatre.co.uk Box Office: 020 7610 4224 23 April - 24 May Saturday Matinees 3, 10, 17, 24 May - 3pm - £10 All other performances 8pm - £15, £10 concessions Closed Sundays
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