HOW TO CURSE. To 10 November.
London
HOW TO CURSE
by Ian McHugh
Bush Theatre To 10 November 2007.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 3pm.
Audio-described 5 Nov.
BSL Signed 20 Oct 3pm.
Video-captioned 6 Nov.
Runs 1hr 25min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7610 4224.
www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 October.
Undercurrents of desire don’t raise a storm.
Distantly, the sea is heard washing on the Norfolk coastline. Between scenes, Josie Rourke’s first production as Bush supremo borrows from neighbouring Suffolk with Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes Sea Interludes. But what Norfolk-born Ian McHugh shows in his first play is a scruffy squat-like room that could as easily be tucked behind Shepherd’s Bush Green as ranged somewhere in Great Yarmouth.
It’s Nick’s home, where he’s first seen indulging in quotation-swapping with fellow 17-year old Miranda, mere foreplay to their indulgence in rampant extracts from Virginia Woolf and strings of baroque, literary-tinged curses. When the third 17-year old, streetwise Will, is introduced to the place, he has more immediate wishes, like sleep, drink and, actually, sex.
Life isn’t easy; you have to navigate your way. Will does so when it comes to self-harm, having a kaleidoscope of scars across his torso to prove it. Nick’s imitative attempt is disastrous. The body, like life, has to be treated carefully.
Miranda? Will? The nearby sea has its relevance, with the room standing in for an imagined island, from where characters go out and, by the magic of shoplifting, acquire their needs: if life’s necessities include a stockpile of Crunchie bars, acquired apparently for ritual rather than alimentary purposes.
Shakespeare’s Tempest underlies the two literary teenagers’ behaviour (McHugh’s previous writing credits both have Shakespearean links). But they use their literary sophistication as a substitute for real involvement, parading fine words as cursing competitions of the emotionally dissatisfied, cloaking their lack of real involvement in the world, in their hideaway-room. McHugh could have called the piece ‘Get A Life’.
It’s not the first Bush play to present a delicate lace-network of words (however indelicate some of those words, in this case, are), implying rather than stating; the anti-John Osborne approach to new drama. Here, though, the holes become more apparent than the patterns. McHugh successfully shows how adolescent idealising and romanticising cloaks unacknowledged physical impulses. But he introduces late, unexplained magical phenomena. And he takes all the play to make his point, with characters who, however aptly played, remain mere ciphers of his theme.
Miranda: Emily Beecham.
Will: Rob Boulter.
Nick: Al Weaver.
Director: Josie Rourke.
Designer: Christopher Oram.
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp.
Sound: Jack C Arnold.
Make up: Rosemary Swinfield.
Voice coach: Penny Dyer.
Assistant director: Sam Yates.
2007-10-20 11:49:54