GBS. To 9 December.
London.
GBS
by Jason Hall.
Theatre 503 Latchmere Pub 503 Battersea Park Road SW11 3BW To 9 December 2006.
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 5pm.
Runs 1hr 30min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7978 7040.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 November.
Class act in writing and production.
Playwright Jason Hall’s from Toronto but lives in London. Both feature in his new play, with slim, tidy-minded Sam returning from work in London, fixed-term at the BBC then in a bar, to brother Rich, the casual form of his name suggesting his more sprawling way of life, as well as physique.
Sam’s returned as their father’s in hospital with the rare, mysterious, eponymously acronymed Gullain-Barre Syndrome. Here the immune system, victim in HIV, goes on the offensive attacking nerves and paralysing muscles. Not usually fatal, it’s certainly serious.
Both Hall’s writing and Anna Ledwich’s alert, pinpoint production show how far theatre-writing and production have come in recent years. On Helen Goddard’s set, evoking a trampoline, the brothers whiz around Toronto, visiting the hospital, while Rich also drags Stewart into his broken marriage and attempts to see his daughter.
In a script switching between narration and dialogue, on the 2 stools that are the entire stage furniture, the brothers question, argue and describe events. The impact’s sometimes comic, at other times creating a battle between probing questions and answers that shield the truth. It’s fast-paced but never glib, their gradual movement towards understanding taking place in a world where numbers and letters, with the many acronyms they can form, both confuse.
Both performers are ideal. Daniel Fine has Sam’s neat, logical manner from the start; it never changes in the situations his brother hauls him through. And Kristian Bruun expresses Rich’s chaotic lifestyle in his puzzled, surging manner. Literally knocked to the floor by one domestic encounter, he’s full of explanations that never quite explain, always one step behind because he often needs to help to sort himself out.
This is a classy act all round, a drama of family trauma where not a moment’s wasted, yet where every nuance of desire or frustration strikes home with the swiftness of modern city life. Its characters’ lives and relationship are strong and vivid enough to bear the symbols of letters, numbers and the disease where an organism attacks itself with the forces that should be its protection. Fine stuff.
Rich: Kristian Bruun.
Sam: Daniel Fine.
Director: Anna Ledwich.
Designer: Helen Goddard.
Lighting: Phil Hewitt.
Sound: Mark Easter.
Voice coach: Helena Easton.
Assistant director: Katharine Monaghan.
2006-11-27 17:33:35