BEAR HUG. To 16 October.

London

BEAR HUG
by Robin French

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 16 October 2004
Mon-Sat 9.30pm
BSL Signed 14 Oct
Runs 25min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7565 5000/020 7565 5100
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 October

A brief roar of pain with a central image worked out in increasingly grotesque terms.Robin French's brief debut play, in the Royal Court's Genesis season of young playwrights, is played on the same set as The Weather with some of its cast and the same production team. It harks back to the early days of the theatre's long-resident English Stage Company and the absurdity of N.F. Simpson, with a slight nod to the Kafka of Metamorphosis.

Yet it has its own grotesque flavour (Pick up my pancreas for me, would you, darling, David asks Linda after he's been mauled and his innards fall outwards). A linear piece, its metaphor contains a youthful cry of pain to match the onstage sufferings of parents Linda and David, who find their son changing between youth and bear.

The child who transforms into a bear gets hurt too, like the one who is what's the term: bad-tempered, maladjusted, psychotic, sociopathic? Or misunderstood? Repressed? Confined? Or confused, as Michael might be, seeing that the parents who put up with bleeding stumps and torn organs go screaming mad when the Volvo's totalled. What's the value system here? And what's the impact, as youth rages upstairs, of knowing that parents are discussing whether you'd be better off if they sent you back to the zoo?

Add the sheer shock and comic effect of seeing a figure with bear-head, and furry limb extremities sitting at the table, and there's enough to show a theatrical sense at work, with a fierce roar behind the words and images. Like Simpson and other fifties Absurdists, this play exists on one dimension, but it's forceful, sometimes comic and coherently worked-through with production and performances good enough to ensure the audience does not tire of a single metaphor being worked through its stage-life.

Linda: Helen Schlesinger
David: Jonathan Coy
Michael: Alex Robertson

Director: Ramin Gray
Designer: Ultz
Lighting: Ultz, Gavin Owen
Sound: Emma Laxton
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
Assistant designer: Jeremy Daker

2004-10-13 10:59:32