BROOKLYN To 26 September.

London.

BROOKLYN
by Rose Martula.

Cooc kTavern Theatre 125 Kilburn High Road NW6 6JH To 26 September 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 5pm.
Runs 1hr 10min No interval.

TICKETS: 08444 771000
www.cocktaverntheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 September.

<>Forceful blast from a new writer.
It’s clearly a coup for this theatre to stage the world premiere of a play by someone compared favourably by a Yale academic to Eugene O’Neill. In practice, it’s likely dialogue as good could be claimed for a string of Royal Court and Bush plays over the years. Still, it was the Bush gave British theatre American playwright Beth Henley. Why shouldn’t Kilburn’s new venue do likewise for Rose Martula?

Especially as she’s also been hailed as the Chekhov of our time, though it’d be hard to mistake her high-octane-plus dialogue for the good doctor’s more measured pace.

Brooklyn, location of the action, opens with sister and brother Lindsay and Brian psyching each other up to an all-out attack on a brown box. Her rolling-pin and his two sink-plungers are weapons less of choice than necessity in attacking the rat trapped therein. But they never manage it.

It’s a super-fast scene in which the sibling relationship works through orders given and also brings up guilt and religion. After all this, a year goes by – though there’s only the script to make it clear – and the two seem calmer with their father Saul present. He gives the sense of a past-it hippy some decades too late, an exercise in aging cool, and evident disaster of a parent for two children just peeking above the mid-teens.

Saul’s memories of time spent overcoming grief in Italy, which they don’t want to hear about, leads into an attack on the foreigners who don’t match American expectations of how things are done, or understanding Brooklyners. His colour-clash bath-robe and splurges of speech seem at one with his manner for brash self-assurance, and it’s not long before Brian’s following the same line of thought.

It’s Lindsay who feels guilt and has much less here than the men to say. Yet she’s the one who’s finally seen packed-up and departing the stage, towards the stairs by which we too will shortly leave. She rejects her father’s world, his money and the men’s arguing. Whether this makes Martula another Ibsen, Chekhov or O’Neill remains to be seen. Meanwhile director Russ Hope’s cast give this play an energetic airing.

Lindsay: Jessica Ashworth.
Saul: Jud Charlton.
Brian: Michael Goldsmith.

Director: Russ Hope.
Designer: Malwina Chabocka.
Lighting: Steve Lowe.

2009-09-25 17:13:18