DUMMY. To 3 April.

Young People

DUMMY
by Michael Punter

Pop-Up Theatre Tour to 3 April 2004
Runs 1hr 10min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 February at Rotherham Arts Centre

For once, this company's flair has misfired in a dull and clumsy production of a lifeless piece.Aimed at over-7's, Michael Punter's new play for one of Britain's leading young people's theatre companies concerns dummies and people, twins and individuals. If I'm in two minds about it, that's an individual position, but the story doesn't seem fully worked-through and the production's dull - at times downright clumsy - surprisingly from a director whose work I've appreciated at York and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Punter uses the familiar idea of children - two far from identical twin sisters - 'evacuated' to an old relative when home life's disturbed by sickness. It's an idea Mike Kenny and Charles Way have used, more fruitfully, but it could still have life in it.

Pity Christopher Tajah, though, having to make something of the old anorak uncle, muttering on about train connections and ill-located old days, brought in only as plot necessity till, in the inconclusive finale, he lends a couple of feet in the twins' toe-tapping talent contest entry.

How this happens is a mystery, as one girl had entered as up-to-the-minute NY street-wise pop star Cassandra C, while the other made a belated contribution as untrained ventriloquist.

At first, Lucy - converted from up-to-the-minute boyband worshipper by some 3 seconds of Cassandra C on uncle's old wireless. Lucy instantly joins in the song, suggesting she already knew it, and therefore leaving the question why this Amerrican singer had never previously produced the instant devotion that suddenly springs to life at the plot's convenience.

Mysterious voices are heard through the floor in uncle's seaside hotel; a pair of ventriloquist's dummies put in their pennies' worth, one of them giving the more reflective, well-disposed Charlotte a new interest in life, sparking her imagination and voicing criticisms of Lucy, who sometimes seems possessed by Cass C - and sometimes not.

It could be fascinating, exploring how twins reaching the age of individuality and, thrown on their own resources away from home, with a relative who scarcely understands young people, develop individuality and resourcefulness through playing with imagination. Such play, as Ayckbourn showed years ago in Invisible Friends has its dangerous edge.

But despite an indication towards this - 'We can't be twins for ever,' declares Lucy - the script never leaves a somewhat confusing conceptual drawing-board, and the production (despite brave work by the capable women actors) fails to ignite, reaching its several nadirs in the scrappily-staged talent contest heats.

From Pop-Up it's right to expect - as, usually, we get - something considerably more thoughtful and entertaining.

Lucy: Nicola Herring
Charlotte: Polly Lister
Uncle Morty: Christopher Tajah

Director: Lucy Pitman-Wallace
Designer: Kerry Bradley
Musical Directors: James Hesford/Mark Pearson
Movement: Sue Nash
Puppetry consultant: Charlie Llewellyn-Smith

2004-02-18 15:11:03