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In Company Theatre
Wild East
by April de Angelis
Director - Alex Purser
Brockley Jack Theatre
3 - 7 of November, 2009
A review by James Hogg for EXTRA! EXTRA!
This is an odd play, although a good one. It’s running as part of In Company’s ‘A Season of Unsettling Theatre’ at the Brockley Jack, billed as plays to make you laugh, cry and feel uneasy, and it certainly manages two out of three. In it, Frank, a hopelessly out-of-his-depth anthropology student has come to a marketing company for an important interview, which he begins by inadvertently offending one of the two suited doctors about to interview him, and it hurtles downhill from there. Dr Pitt and Dr Grey, the two women in question, turn out to have their own job security on the line, as well as their personal relationship in the spotlight. As their agenda shifts and turns, each trying to manipulate Frank to their own end, it seems Frank also has his own reasons for being there, and they aren’t quite what he’s put on his application. For a single job interview, it strains credulity a little to see the contortions the playwright has gone to in order to engineer moments where the characters are left in pairs, often for long minutes at a time. And the situation itself doesn’t quite sustain its early promise, although it is certainly very funny seeing Frank’s utter inability to get to grips with the interview questions. The play is much more than just a long sitcom scene, though, and is full of the characters’ tensions and longings, continually threatening to spring out of control and overthrow the constraints of the interview. It’s a look at the soulless world of corporations marching relentlessly into newly opening territory in Russia, caring more about short-term profit than about the long-term effects on the environment and the people who live there. It’s also about the consequences of working for such a company, and the inevitable strain it puts on employees who know their own jobs are less important than the profits they are there to make. Dr Pitt, played by Trudi Boatwright, is a woman returning from a recent trauma to discover her colleague and one-time lover Dr Grey (Helen Weaver) has been manoeuvring to protect her own job at whatever cost, and the two present strong, combative scenes together. Jack Donelly’s Frank is a wet-wristed, uncertain mess barely capable of stringing a sentence together, whose bizarre anecdotes I’m sure ring true with anyone whose mouth runs ahead of their brain in interviews. These are good characters, well portrayed through the comedy of the piece, and it certainly fulfils its promise to make you laugh. And I felt deeply uneasy at times too - the play is so full of weird stories and unpleasant anecdotes it’s impossible not to feel fascinated and revolted by the frequently insane things these people are doing to themselves to try and stay sane. But there’s slightly too much going on for it to sustain interest over the course of the evening - the play itself is mostly to blame, I think, as it never quite settles on one theme or topic, and sabotages itself with perhaps a few twists too many. Certain moments fail to convince - for example, someone whose wrists are supposed to be heavily bruised would be unlikely to use them to lean so confidently on the back of chairs at so many points - and some of the fits and faints that the characters are expected to produce emerge with very little warning and limited effect. By the time the end comes, I confess I was as lost as Frank had been amidst the ever-shifting allegiances, motives and hysteria, and the moments I was maybe expected to shed a tear didn’t quite hit home. Maybe it was the weirdness of the situation in the play, maybe that the direction goes for high drama early on that can’t quite be sustained, I’m not sure, but something didn’t quite keep me as held as I wanted to be. It’s a stalwart production of an interesting text, though, and the short run is worth catching for any lovers of clever, sinister writing.
0844 847 2454 £12 tickets, £9 concessions Brockley Jack Theatre
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