Very occasionally, you can look up and down your row at the
end of a play, and everyone will have exactly the same expression. Exactly the
same reaction. And so it was on Friday after ‘Pastoral’ at the Soho Theatre.
The lights came up and I swear that every single one of my companions had a
great big ‘WTF’ written all over their faces.
The single problem with this extraordinary new piece of
theatre is that it doesn’t know what it’s trying to be; is it funny? Is it
bleak? Is it a dark reflection of the consumerist society we live in, or a
message to tell us to embrace the natural world? I genuinely have no idea,
because it had elements of all these things. Moll (by far and away the star of
the show, Anna Calder-Marshall) had a wonderful 5 minute monologue to the audience, (lamenting the
rise of ‘the fat’, seen on her long days people-watching) but as soon as other
characters come into play, this lovely relationship with the audience is
squashed, as is Moll’s own brilliantly quirky character.
Other characters, periphery next to Moll and Arthur (played very
well by a woman, Polly Frame, but an odd choice of casting) were somewhat
two-dimensional, and the script became soft in places, leaving you dreaming of
another Moll-ologue (would two Northern city boys really know an array of
obscure plant names? And can they really see them all through a pretty pathetic
pair of binoculars?)
Aside from the character of Moll, the point of true genius
in this production was Michael Vale’s set. All controlled by magnets, a forest blossomed
out of the flat before our eyes – flowers, pointed like darts, dropped down
from the ceiling to stick in the ground.
The idea of having the Ocado man (beset by wild beasts and
jungle on his trip) deliver an epic tale of danger and bravery, backed up by a
full string ensemble through the speakers, was a good one, but writer Thomas Eccleshare egged
it out just that little bit too long – and so it was with the whole thing.
Where are you going to go with this plot? How does an essentially apocalyptic storyline keep up the humour seen in the first section? You can't have man (once
again) reclaim the world from the plants, because surely that isn’t the point... so where's the end point?
EDIT:
This evening was immeasurably improved by bumping into Anna Calder-Marshall herself on the stairs. Totally unprovoked, she had this to say:
'It is odd, isn't it?'
EDIT:
This evening was immeasurably improved by bumping into Anna Calder-Marshall herself on the stairs. Totally unprovoked, she had this to say:
'It is odd, isn't it?'
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