FUTURE ME. To 7 July.
London
FUTURE ME
by Stephen Brown
Theatre 503 Latchmere Pub 503 Battersea Park Road SW11 3BW To 7 July 2007
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 5pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7978 7040
www.theatre503.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 June
Dark secrets brought to light and their human consequences illuminated.
Once a wrongly-pressed button could trigger nuclear devastation. Now, an inadvertently-pressed computer key can destroy lives, here ripping-apart the smooth existence of rising barrister Peter and his journalist girlfriend Jenny.
Playwright Stephen Brown uses the image of a dead deer in a swimming-pool to suggest the incongruity and disorientation that follows Peter inadvertently sending an email to all in his electronic address-book. By the time details are filled-in, audience imaginations have created something monstrous from the semi-defined shape of the mail’s content.
Neither exploiting nor diminishing the crime he’s committed, the play can then look more calmly at the consequences for Peter’s “future me”. A term from prison therapy, it follows him as he re-establishes relationships in the outside world. One quiet scene’s sufficient to show the constant pressure of unacceptable desires. And his path crosses old Harry, whose recovery falters close to a disastrous edge, and Tim, who openly advocates the unacceptable and tells Peter he’s succumbing to social pressure.
On the other side, there’s the consequence for his fragmented relationship with Jenny, and rejection by his family. Both move through various stages, the shifting proportions of surface politeness and anger through time, the difficult moving on, all convincingly paced.
Guy Retallack’s sympathetic production helps. Retallack doesn’t so much have scene-changes as inter-scene inserts, characters maintaining the mood of the just-ended scene, before the quiet setting-up of the next. Backed by varied forms of Leo Chadburn’s slow, brief musical phrases, this creates a continuum for the multi-scened action.
Retallack allows an aptly deliberate, but never ponderous, pace, varied when Peter helps Harry or fights Tim’s arguments. The end of privacy is suggested in the translucent plastic chairs and curtains of Dan Potra’s set, and its reflective foil that finally throws his distorted image back at Peter, the “me” who must determine his future.
Stronger acting could have explored the characters further; there is a lack of economy to some performances, and of definition. But this play, by an author who knows he must create people rather than discuss issues, forms a fine end to a strong season at 503.
Peter: David Sturzaker
Jenny: Kelly Williams
Mike/Patrick: Stefan Butler
Harry: Philip Fox
Ellen: Sara Griffiths
Tim: David Benson
Director: Guy Retallack
Designer: Dan Potra
Lighting: Mark Truebridge
Composer: Leo Chadburn
2007-06-27 10:11:09