New Season Productions presents
Waiting for What
Written and directed by Sam Rice
Humble Theatre
4– 26 February 2009
A review by Colette Gunn-Graffy for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Waiting for What opens with an intriguing scene: four people sitting in opposite corners of a brightly-lit waiting room. One of them, a girl in ragged clothes, sobs hysterically, whilst the others – an elderly woman, a tense young man, and a vicar – look on, growing more and more tense and uncomfortable. To the audience, sitting only a few feet away, there is something about the characters’ anxiety and the claustrophobic setting that feels right out of Sartre’s No Exit. The fact that the play is being shown in the tiny basement theatre of the Prince Edward pub only reinforces the hellish atmosphere. Eventually, the girl’s crying becomes intolerable and the other characters begin to interact. It turns out that they are in a hospital waiting room. There has been an accident. Finn – the tense young man – is here because his fifteen-year-old son Jack is fighting for his life and it seems the girl, Jill, may have been the cause. Amid Finn’s fist-clenching accusations and Jill’s tears and screams, Mark, the vicar, and Betty, the elderly woman, gently attempt to intervene. Betty tells the story of the time she met her husband, a sweet and innocent encounter on the beach during the Second World War. Jill, who has never been in love, responds that she doesn’t believe things like that happen anymore. This sparks a discussion about love – with Finn describing his broken heart after the death of his wife, and Mark nearly, but not quite, revealing the name of the one person he loved. The immediate situation, however, cannot be avoided, with Finn’s son alternately flat-lining and being resuscitated, and the conversation heads into darker territory. As the characters continue to wait, each reveals a hidden side, born out of tragedy, need and fear. None is sure exactly what they are waiting for, but all are frightened of the outcome. Despite its atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty Waiting for What is decidedly more hopeful than No Exit. Amid such queries as whether true love and romance are still possible in today’s world – a question that is never actually answered – lies the more insistent question of what it is that keeps us here, living in this world. Rice seems to be probing this question with some passion, tying this great mystery of the universe into the individual dramas and tragedies of people’s lives that typically lie buried out of sight, and thus uniting them. Yet although Rice sets up our expectations nicely with a cryptic and claustrophobic opening, the remainder of the play is all too often predictable. The script is bogged down with clichés, from the characters’ descriptions of grief to their thoughts on the afterlife; even some of the ‘dirty secrets’ that are supposed to emerge as complete surprises seem to have been plundered from day-time television. This is not to say that interesting and unusual ideas do not emerge: the Vicar’s inner struggle with identity, for instance, seems to be leading somewhere quite powerful and Finn and Betty’s relationships to both love and death are startling. It is disappointing however, that Rice seems to shy away from delving into these themes more fully. The play is further hindered by the complete miscasting of Mark Stanway as Finn, a role that requires a desperate fury and burly resentment that Stanway, who possesses more than a hint of camp, simply cannot deliver. This is too bad, as the rest of the cast is well-suited to their roles, and Alim Jayda as young Jack in the play’s final extended monologue is particularly endearing in his earnestness. Although there are clearly some fine instincts at work here, Waiting for What is a play that feels like it never quite gets to the heart of what it is trying to say.
Sun – Thurs @ 7:30pm Tickets £5 (includes 20% off pub meals) Box Office: 0870 80 50 156; boxoffice@humbletheatre.com Venue: Humble Theatre (downstairs of Prince Edward pub)
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y Couzen