APOLLO'S NIGHT & TOM WEBB'S GOING STEADY. To 1 June.
London
APOLLO'S NIGHT & TOM WEBB'S GOING STEADY
by Lucy E. Lutzke by Tom Webb
Velvet Theatre Company at Barons Court Theatre To 1 June 2003
Tue-Sun 8pm
Runs 1hr 50min One interval
TICKETS: 020 8932 4747
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 May 2003
Variable performances in a contrasting double-bill.Love and desire and hate link these two contrasting short pieces. Tom Webb uses an idea Stoppard developed in Dirty Linen, one play wrapping round a different, but related one – though Webb is more pointed in contrast of form and subject interplay.
I Love the 266 gives us a young Lady and Fella who strike each other's fancy at a bus-stop then end up in bed. Its before-and-after mating rituals zing between the two in brief phrases. Being virtually all spoken thoughts, the way the two's dialogue coincides gives a neatly comic picture of similarities in what's going on behind smiles and glances across the great divide.
Webb offers us two post-sex versions, in which awkward body details, as spurred on by alcohol, mix with hope or confusion. Harriet Cobbold and Simon Yockney pace the quick-slice dialogue with perfect timing, and catch nuances of thought behind the brief lines. Bus companies should snap them up for an advertising campaign at once – they could do wonders for passenger numbers.
Between their instant-reaction scenes there's Girls Made Simple, a Lads' seminar on nine points of pulling , running from first base to fourth, and subsequent going steady or dumping - all carried out with the aid of a flip-chart and a female audience member. The script's wicked and skilful, the acting needs more focus and energy, while the seminar handout's essential reading for either sex.
Apollo's Night is a realistic conversation piece about relationship discontents. Lucy E. Lutzke keeps her five characters alive. She writes good, if at times slightly self-conscious, dialogue and has a sense of how long to let a situation breathe.
No director's credited though one's needed to shape the acting round this dialogue – it becomes over-clotted at times in performance. Characters and situation have further to go; in the end the play feels like the opening act of a traditional three-act drama.
It's valiantly acted by young performers handling characters older-seeming than their years. Everyone gives a clear outline of their character, but there's a sense of straining towards characters that keeps the action at arms'-length most of the time.
Tom Webb's Going Steady
Lady: Harriet Cobbold
Michael Stamen: David Kavoussi
Terry Burns: Thomas A. Webb
Fella: Simon Yockney
Director: Thomas A. Webb
Apollo's Night
Rose: Liz Bower
Jane: Alison Edmunds
Bianca: Lucy E. Lutzke
Arthur: Andrew Nussbaum
John: James Tweedy
2003-05-19 12:26:25