Barbarians - Review

Central St Martins School of Art, London

*****

Written by Barrie Keefe

Directed by Bill Buckhurst

Jake Davies, Thomas Coombes and Josh Williams

It has long been recognised that when writing about his world, Barrie Keefe’s finger is firmly on society’s pulse. With Barbarians however Keefe goes one step further, not just finding that pulse, but slicing it open in front of us, confronting his audience with those bloody, ugly realities that, skin-deep, continually surround us.

A 1970s trilogy of short plays, Barbarians follows three disaffected young men from their confused and sometimes angry adolescence into adulthood. Keefe’s deployment of irony is always a treat and the evening's opening play, Killing Time is peppered with his trademark black humour as the teenagers, not long out of school, contemplate an evening of petty crime.

Abide With Me sees the audience shepherded into holding pens to watch the three lads, all fans of Manchester United, spend the 1976 Cup Final ticketless outside Wembley Stadium and brimming with futile hopes to get in to see the game. Anger and frustrations bubble, as amidst the trio’s evolving dynamics, Keefe also exposes football's vicariously exploitative place in modern England. For young men with little else to believe in, their team offers a cause and a flag to rally behind, in later years a devotion often further exploited by the right wing National Front.

Barbarians ends with In The City, set against a backdrop of the Notting Hill Carnival. The boys are grown up now, yet still Keefe's scalpel mercilessly exposes further layers of pain and frustration.

Youth unemployment was (and is) rife when Keefe wrote the scripts and his prose remains a masterful and perceptive analysis of angst and inadequacy. Those of us who knew the era will relish the nods to Dickie Davis and adverts for Denim after shave, as well as recalling the days when a "tranny" meant a portable radio and a Rover 3500 signified some modest status. Alternatively, Barbarian’s younger audiences may perhaps consider a comparison with Green Day’s American Idiot, a show that speaks to and of an American wasted generation, as they observe Keefe’s characters walking their own boulevards of broken dreams.

Throughout, the three actors compel, no mean feat for a show that's nigh on three hours. Thomas Coombes plays Paul the wannabe alpha-male. He’s all mouth (or boot, or knife as circumstances dictate) and menace. Coombes explores his character’s machismo with an impressively thuggish sensitivity. Railing against a world that is passing him by bestowing him no favours, his ignorant hatred darkens with each chapter.

Josh Williams is Louis, the black kid. In Killing Time he’s the one of the trio that’s gone and got himself a skill as a refrigeration engineer. As he displays a decent commitment later to the army cadets and ultimately in landing himself a decent job, we see Keefe’s caustic vision expose the decay of friendships that were once strong, into an envious and racially fuelled contempt.

Completing the trio is Jake Davies’ Jan. The least impacting of the three in the first two plays though his subtly played reactions to his friends is critical, Jan dominates In The City. As a newly passed-out squaddie who's fearfully contemplating a posting to Belfast, Jan's terror and frustrations surge into a revelation that is as agonising as it is horrific.

Staging Barbarians in the starkly furnished former Central St Martins School of Art lends the tales an aura of frustrated bleakness and the fact that 40 years ago the venue hosted the first Sex Pistols gig, thus becoming the birthplace of punk, only adds to the evening’s zeitgeist. The site itself is a challenge. Three floors up, no lift and with a requirement to walk (or be herded) between the space’s auditoria, it’s a deliberately uncomfortable experience. Credit to Rob Youngson’s lighting and Josh Richardson’s sound design, both of which classily complement the location's complexities

Reprising Tooting Arts Club’s 2012 revival (although of that cast only Coombes remains), Bill Buckhurst - who recently directed the TAC's acclaimed pop-up Sweeney Todd - returns to the helm. Amidst spellbinding soliloquy and monologue, Buckhurst demonstrates a profound understanding of Keefe’s language and nuance, delivering a scorching, brilliant drama.

Runs until 7th November

The Father - Review

Trafalgar Studios, London

****

Written by August Strindberg
In a new version by Laurie Slade
Directed by Abbey Wright

Alex Ferns

Few go to a Strindberg play looking for an harmonious depiction of the sexes and this co-production between Emily Dobbs' Jagged Fence and Making Productions, while sharp in its execution, won’t do much to radicalise expectations. 

Written in 1887 by the deeply embittered Swedish playwright, on the brink of marital separation and in a fashion that has triggered many autobiographical interpretations, The Father pitches husband and wife into a dark custody battle that predates paternity tests and equal rights. Laurie Slade’s modern adaptation – requested by his friend, theatre director Joe Harmston for a 2012 production – is driven more by collaborative forces than real-life drama, but it retains the original’s antagonistic bite.

Director Abbey Wright takes the reins for this intimate production with great success. While the Captain’s last-minute attempt to break the fourth wall doesn’t sit well with the play’s largely naturalistic style, Wright’s depiction of conflict – whether that be between husband and wife, mother and daughter, or father and child – is as stylish as it is evocative. As the warring characters face each other in mirror image, Wright clouds the dialogue’s clear oppositions with vivid visual similarities.

Thomas Coombes is a treat as Nöjd, the playful trooper who, if rumour is to believed, has impregnated a member of the Captain’s staff. While Nöjd is unable to deny a certain degree of intimacy, it is beyond his power to prove whether or not the baby is his. Coombes excels at lacing Nöjd’s crude, pastoral expression - “no guarantee that a night in the hay means a bun in the oven” - with a cheeky, modern charm, furnishing Slade’s notion that this is “a modern play, which happens to be set in the C.19th”.

What seems like idle gossip transforms into psychologically taut obsession as the play pulls towards its inevitable conclusion. Just as Nöjd doubts his lover’s fidelity, Alex Ferns’s dazzling Captain ploughs his own memories, as he questions whether young Bertha, who calls him ‘Papa', is actually his issue or was in fact conceived by wife Laura (excellent on-stage work from Dobbs) during a lovers' tryst. Ferns is vibrantly volatile and while other characters are equally paired in their disputes, he retains a chilling control over the tempo of the piece. 

While the relationship between the Captain and his wife provides the thrust of this narrative, and the Captain and his Doctor (Barnaby Sax) are splendidly matched as rivals, it is the tender and trusting affinity between Captain and Nurse (June Watson) that brings the strongest emotional clout: “rest your breast on my chin”, the Captain commands his attendant, as a redundant Laura looks on jealously. This gentle, strikingly maternal relationship is complemented by James Turner's set and Gary Bowman lighting, all stripped-back, monochrome as a Gothic aesthetic gradually melts into warmer reds.

Husband and wife may be “black and white...different species” but there’s a faith in relationships and the power of one gender to sooth and complement another. While this production doesn’t fall far from Strindberg’s tree, it’s a well-designed and interrogative take on an unfashionable play.

Runs until 11th April 2015

Guest reviewer: Amelia Forsbrook