ABOUT TOMMY. To 25 April.
London.
ABOUT TOMMY
by Thor Bjorn Krebs translated by David Duchin.
Southwark Playhouse Shipwright Yard corner of Tooley Street & Bermondsey Street SE1 2TF To 25 April 2009.
M on-Sat 7.30pm Mat 18, 25 April 3pm.
Post-show Talk 8 April.
Runs 1hr 20min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7407 0234.
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 April.
War where you can’t shoot back..
Title and design combine to mislead. In English, the prime military association of ‘Tommy’ is as generic name for a private soldier, especially from the First World War. And the high-pile of sandbags backing Signe Beckmann’s set reinforces the 1914-18 connotations.
But it’s not so for Danish writer playwright Thor Bjorn Krebs. His Tommy is a more contemporary individual, a member of the Danish International Brigade, a blue beret outfit formed from Denmark’s contingent in the United Nations Protection Force assigned to keep Balkan tensions cooled in the early 1990s. The Danes went to Croatia, including its lengthy Bosnian border.
Keeping the peace means doing everything possible not to shoot back, to keep your nerve when the response to someone pointing a gun at you is an instruction through an earpiece to take no action, spoken with the confidence of a voice not in the immediate firing-line.
About Tommy is built in small, documentary-like sections, including a close-up video home and the remote small-screen conversation of parents at once concerned and distant, their images perched high in a corner. TV images occasionally play across the set, though mainly in fast-forward mode that adds little, except possibly by giving time to help the minimal costume-changes.
The multi-scene, multi-media approach of play and production muffle the main point, the shock to the system of this job, seeking to remain calm when snipers and others don’t respect the peace-keeping insignia of men or motors. Despite the conflict-zone setting, scenes often describe or discuss, rather than showing what’s happening in the streets.
Of all things international, burgers play a big role. There’s money to be made auctioning off ones bought on sorties to junk-food hungry men in the military compound, while back in Denmark, it’s in a queue that suppressed reactions break-out, causing an incident that has its effect on Tommy’s hoped-for military career.
Director and translator are part of production company Brother Tongue, dedicated to “immediate and dynamic translations” of European work. About Tommy is certainly new territory, but next time a more focussed staging would help create the dynamism the company seek.
Tommy: Gwilym Lee.
Charlotte Carting/Jette/Nurse/Chaplain/Girl: Beatrice Curnew.
Captain Overguard/Niels/French Soldier/Major: Hywel Morgan.
Mum: Rachel Atkins.
Dad: Roger Ringrose.
Director: Elly Green.
Designer: Signe Beckmann.
Lighting: Anna Watson.
Sound: Matt Downing.
Composer: Bridget Samuels.
Video: Hywel Morgan.
2009-04-06 00:38:45