I AM MONTANA To 27 June.
I AM MONTANA
by Samuel D Hunter.
Arcola Theatre (Arcola 2) 27 Arcola Street E8 2DJ To 27 June 2009.
Mon-Sat 8.15pm.
Runs 1hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7503 1646
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 June.
Troubled lives and corporate culture craftily combined.
It’s not for me, a native non-American, to say whether chain superstore Valumart, employer of the characters in Samuel D Hunter’s play, and its uniform, in any way resemble an actual US supermarket. “Savings and Satisfaction” is Valumart’s motto, but things look different in the blank world of storage shelves and cardboard boxes where Hunter’s young minimum-wage workers toil.
Then they drive together to a company convention with ideas for promoting profit. Focus for honest-to-God Tommy and manipulative Dirk is Eben, but neither can reach him. For Eben has a two-layer dark secret. One level goes back to a traumatic experience fighting in Israel, the other reaches back to why he enlisted.
As a result, Eben’s innovation is the most unconventional. And it links to his reason for working in Valumart’s plant section. Just as Tommy stays to be near Eben, he is obsessed with his bitterroot plant.
It’s in the specifics that Hunter’s play scores; in outline it’s a familiar story of triangulated relationships, a young man looking back with fury, and a critique of corporate America. But plays work through their particulars (there’s plenty of local detail in the script) and Hunter sticks close to experience – he’s from neighbouring Idaho, which borders Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, and taught in Ramallah and Hebron.
It’s all some distance from this world premiere, tucked into the Arcola’s basement studio in Dalston. Yet Yaller Skunk serve Hunter’s play well. The young cast might need more detail or vocal authority at times, but there’s fine conviction to the acting, particularly Kevin Watt’s Eben, intensity burning in features and tense upright bearing.
David Ames gives Tommy apt openness in manner as he attempts to connect with his friend, while Christopher Berry’s Dirk is insinuatingly sly and calculating. As corporate management exploiting the ex-soldier’s fame Mark Curtis (also, in blacked-out sections, Eben’s fellow prisoner) shows how lived experience can be reduced to promotional soundbites.
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Sherri Kronfeld’s production moves these people’s journey (accompanied by easy-listening ‘Away in a Manger’ and militant Christianity on the van radio) swiftly along, expertly accommodating outer realities and Eben’s interior nightmare.
Eben: Kevin Watt.
Valumart Valupig: Mark Curtis.
Tommy: David Ames.
Dirk: Christopher Berry.
Director: Sherri Kronfeld.
Designer: Georgia Lowe.
Lighting: Richard Williamson.
Sound: Damian Reynolds.
Costume: Sarah Ferdinando.
Dramaturg: John M Baker.
Assistant director: Katie Lewis.
2009-06-16 22:47:41