FELT EFFECTS. To 15 April.
London
FELT EFFECTS
by Joy Wilkinson
Theatre 503 Latchmere Pub 503 Battersea Park Road SW11 To 15 April 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 5pm
Runs 1hr 30min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7978 7040
www.theatre503.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 April
Strangely, the felt effects of Joy Wilkinson's 2002 play begin by not being felt. The title refers to the 12-point scale for calibrating earthquakes, and the first point is lack of impact. Things build steadily, then, in the second half of the scale, mount terrifyingly to 'Catastrophic'. That's pretty muich how emotional matters go for hospital nurse Nicola when first a girl resembling her dead sister, then her mother, arrive as emergency patients.
A range of frozen images before the action gets under way indicate the power, confidence, pain and fear of hospital scenarios for medical staff and patients. But the upheaval of events takes the ever-patient Nicola beyond routine physical injuries. Playwright Joy Wilkinson throws just about everything up to and including the meaning of life into her play with the narrative freedom and edge-of-scientific speculation that inhabits such workd as Kieslowski's recently-reissued film The Double Life of Veronique.
She might succeeed, but would need something better than the variable acting in Helen Eastman's production. Though Wilkinson herself hardly helps with her use of racism as a red card for some of her characters. She went on to use that theme much more integrally in herFair (about to return to London following its revival on tour), and it's unfortunate this earlier, more superficial and over-obvious use of it is now seen in Fair's light.
Anna McAuley, working through her puzzlement at the lookalike girl's mysterious arrival (dumped anonymously at the hospital's doors) and troubled by her mother's noisy advent on the ward, is the character who explains the seismograhic scale and comments directly to the audience, imbuing spectators with a sense of how disturbing events are. There's good work too from Claire Redcliffe, particularly in flashback scenes where she plays the elder, favoured and spiteful sister who eventually crosses the racist barrier into love and death in an Indian earthquake.
Nicola Cussons makes an impact in the pain and anger of her hospital scenes; the trouble is, there's been no light and shade in her unmaternal mother's drunk and self-centered home life. Just a few moments of shading, some flecks of something to contrast the eternal shouting and laying about would have intensified the crisis for (the character) Nicola, and made the present-day Liz less of a write-off.
Felt Effects certainly indicates Wilkinson's an ambitious, sophisticated playwright. If this had been her first production, the 'promising' labels would have been out all round. If it had stayed in her bottom drawer a few more years, we could have looked at it as rediscovered early work and said, "Ah, that's how the ideas started...". At the moment, this is too much early stuff too soon. What's needed is to see her range broaden in more new material.
Nicola: Anna McAuley
Mo/Krishna: Muzz Khan
Angela/Girl: Claire Redcliffe
Liz: Nicola Cussons
Phil/Man: John Fairfou
Director: Helen Eastman
Lighting: Douglas Bonallack
Sound: Fergus Mount/Robert Wells
Assistatn director: Arnaud Mugglestone
2006-04-05 19:22:38