CATCH. To 22 December.

London

CATCH
by April de Angelis, Stella Feehily, Tanika Gupta, Chloe Moss, Laura Wade

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 22 December 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 1hr 50min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 December

Who knows what about whom, and who is who anyway? Modern life’s so complicated.
If it takes 5 playwrights to examine one issue, and no designer to provide a setting, what do these numbers mean added together? Does a new, super-identity emerge, or is there a loss of identity, if not of plot? It’s a relevant question, for identity and the ownership of identity in the age of surveillance and databases, is the subject here.

Whether or not the 5 established women playwrights involved followed the method of their male predecessors 35 years ago with Lay By, writing on rolls of wallpaper to make the process as collaboratively non-egotistical as possible isn’t stated (nor is it likely). Lay By was the model Royal Court director Ian Rickson gave as these writers’ starting-point.

They’ve left it far behind. In an age of provocation, that script was deliberately provocative (one Catholic girls’ school cancelled their subscription to a theatre magazine which printed the script). Now it’s the issue that provokes. The response is measured, considered and many-faceted.

Allusion and upfront micro-realism co-exist. There’s irony; no bag is worth a life says Claire to a mugging victim, then hangs on to hers in a subway attack. Claire makes money restoring a sense of identity to victims, either through state-paid police referrals or, more speedily and thoroughly, on a private basis. But Claire builds up a databank about clients. When that’s stolen and misused, she clams up at complaints when one of them is harassed.

The risk is that all these thematic strands knot together, the issues strangling story and characters. It’s only Kathryn Drysdale’s persuasive performance as Claire’s work-experience girl, matching sudden articulacy with a sense of inner shrewdness, that prevents her diatribe against ID Cards seeming preachy.

Discovering Claire isn’t really Claire is intriguing, but shifts the play’s focus towards her. The men are shadowy, evasive, predictable; an identity crisis in the writing? Often the best points come in action: Claire’s bag, or streetwise Maya passing safely where others are attacked.

Catch captures an uncanny sense of alienation in the age of rampant surveillance, while suggesting multi-authored plays tend to be good rather than sizzlingly great.

Andrea/Carol: Lucy Briers
Dean/Graham: Alexi Kaye Campbell
Maya: Kathryn Drysdale
Fatima/Jade: Farzana Dua Elahe
Ree: Ricci Mcleod
Claire: Tanya Moodie
DN: Kyle Summercorn
Casey: Niamh Webb

Director: Polly Teale
Lighting: Chris Davey
Sound: Emma Laxton
Composer: Peter Salem
Movement: Liz Ranken
Dialect coach: Majella Hurley

2006-12-14 02:11:56