BLUE CROSS XMAS. To 19 January.
Hull.
BLUE CROSS XMAS
by Nick Lane.
Hull Truck Theatre To 19 January 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 19 Jan 2pm.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS: 01482 3323638.
www.hulltruck.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 December.
Drama behind scenes at the sales offers a limited bargain.
Nick Lane’s play goes right to the heart of the modern British Christmas, its core and climax: the Sales. What used to belong to January now plugs directly into the few days of Christmas. And it’s a battleground, as viewed by the defending side. These are the shop staff, who work from pre-dawn to arrange stock and then cope with bargain-seeking hordes throughout the day.
It’s a true Hull Truck play, a feelgood show that bothers itself only with the situation of the moment. Attempts to link parts of the play, such as a sinister answerphone message, don’t really work, while the device of exploring what happened in last year’s sales through a frame set against this year’s impending spending mania, is a tiresomely over-familiar device.
Things go better when they focus on relationships and the difficulty of expressing them, from instant to instant. The acting infuses these things with characters’ warmth and anxiety, Robert Angell and Meriel Scholfield conveying the awkwardness of attempting to take a working relationship into personal territory, especially with middle-age’s baggage hanging round them. She’s smilingly hopeful, he gruffly shields his feelings.
Around them there’s a variety of comedy, with a mindless shop assistant or embarrassing colleague in the backstore area which Pip Leckenby’s set delineates. Its uniform, cold-coloured emptiness is in implied contrast to what must be the smooth-operating, warm department store with its colourful stock and crowded, hurrying aisles.
Not that there’s any visible change when the action flashes for moments into the public arena, with the airhead perfume demonstrator or a young couple placing their relationship under strain in a shopping expedition. Lane’s runaround dramatic method hardly allows for any.
And there’s a kind of karaoke effect to the humour. A few good laughs apart (these, like the staff’s imagined defence against the crowds, tend to have a visual element) it’s repeatedly suggesting something very funny but doesn’t come up with the top-line of wit.
The cast works hard to suggest there’s more to what they’re saying, with Rebecca Clay and Thea Rowland shaping sentences and expressions to make what impact’s possible.
Des: Robert Angell.
Sue: Rebecca Clay.
Barry: Christopher Lazenby.
Jen: Thea Rowland.
Wendy: Meriel Scholfield.
Director: Nick Lane.
Designer: Pip Leckenby.
Lighting: Graham Kirk.
2007-12-25 13:59:05