ALASKA. To 23 June.
London
ALASKA
by D C Moore
Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 23 June 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm
Audio-described 23 June 4pm
BSL Signed 14 June
Post-show talk: 6 June
Runs 1hr 10min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 June
Racism that’s individual rather than institutional.
Like many Royal Court plays from ground-breaker Look Back in Anger on, D C Moore’s play is about a frustrated, furious youth. But his mass of anxieties lead Frank, whose qualities include frankness, one way.
His discontent towards the affluent background he rejects and the university he drops out from, the aggressive front that crumbles in the face of real violence, and his allegedly small penis, form a neurosis-clump that’s directed by some undefined religious instruction towards racism.
Frank seems unable to accept any responsibility, turning down even a low management position at the multiplex cinema where he and Emma work, only to see Asian Mamta come in new, gain quick promotion and put him on a Disciplinary charge. Even the advantage of being there first is lost to him when Mamta joins management.
Frank’s hardly competent at managing anything. Before promotion Mamta tells him she fancies him. As does Chris, while Emma has had her moments with him. But this magnetism stops working at close quarters when Frank’s uncertainty becomes less charming, and a need to establish power evident. The illusory brightness of his manner fades, isolating him in his own kind of Alaska.
Rafe Spall shows this brilliantly, his speech juddering with fits-and-starts nervous energy. Sometimes he seems to be speaking to himself, as if unable to form any relationship with voice or eyes. There’s a perpetual sense of someone darting out of a hiding-place then rushing back for protection before anyone can make contact.
Alaska’s less certain with the surrounding terrain, though Christine Bottomley’s Emma and Thomas Morrison’s Chris bring convincing happy energy and reflective hopefulness to their respective characters. Fiona Wade works hard with Mamta, but the character’s the most difficult for Maria Aberg’s production, being wreathed in good intentions. She admits to fancying Frank, is cool-headed and waiting to go to the university he couldn’t stick. Yet she’ll cover her one-ear deafness with mockery of the deaf and sees no harm in her brother bloodily bashing Frank. Her cool reason comes to seem cold-blooded and nervily less attractive than Frank’s troubled, if hardly harmless, bigotry.
Adam: Sebastian Armesto
Emma: Christine Bottomley
Russell: Harry Hepple
Chris: Thomas Morrison
Frank: Rafe Spall
Mamta: Fiona Wade
Director: Maria Aberg
Designer: Fred Meller
Lighting: David Holmes
Sound: Carolyn Downing
Dialect coach: Jan Hayden Rowles
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson
Assistant director: Gbolahan Obisesan
2007-06-03 11:22:11