IDOL POP. To 13 December
Young People
IDOL POP
by Nona Shepphard
Quicksilver Theatre Tour to 13 December 2003
Runs 1hr 25min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 December at Royal Exchange Studio Manchester
Keenly-targeted satire muffled by simplistic plotting and character.Fame - worse, celebrity - for its own sake's nothing new. One of Anton Chekhov's first, shortest stories shows a young man wildly excited his name's in the paper, though it's only for a court conviction. TV, and proliferating cheap-in-all-sense channelling's, multiplied the sensation to the point it easily obsesses screen-directed youth. So a mix of reality TV and pop-sensation competition's a suitable setting for Nona Shepphard's probe into the phenomenon.
Four young people are gathered to write a pop song - lyrics and melody - in an hour. They buy minutes by performing forfeits - though, if they fail they find time's taken away. The no-hope quartet assembled by Karen Stally's glossily facile presenter take time to realise they're being had. Only then do they become a team and realise the audience that really matters is the studio audience (ie, us) who've taken the trouble to come and see them, rather than the remote-flicking couch-potatoes they'd focused their hopes on before.
Having assembled, it's disappointing to find Nona Shepphard's script can't provide something more complex than the obvious points made here. Tone-deaf Frank, Sonali who enters a dance for a song contest, racially-stereotyping Merseyside Melody, are an unbelievable trio. Only Jerome, the churchgoing chorister who - as a mercifully brief cliched moment shows - wants to thank his mother via TV in a way he cannot do directly, has any dignity, refusing the humiliating forfeit the others have been willing, if not always able, to carry out.
A strong sense of the TV studio's created pre-show and during the action, though Stally's Josie soon starts sending her character up (though you'd think that'd be hard to do) by signalling insincerity rather than letting conviction of her duplicity grow. The victims' realisation they're being tricked comes late, largely explained by one character, rather than through the kind of joint revelation that might have made it more credible.
This all has the advantage that the main points aren't going to be missed by anyone, but the cost is loss of the sense of reality needed to anchor these shenanigans in the already tenuously real world of much TV. The piece ends up more contrived and simpllistic than it might have been.
Still, it ends on a strong note as the group get real about their individual selves and gain a solidarity that brings sudden inspiration (and a tuning-up of Frank's voice) for the manipulative Josie to be given her come-uppance - and sudden salvation as she joins the band.
The end's happy for the audience too. At last acknowledged by the hopeless hopefuls, we're treated to an upbeat number which brings the energy and cohesion Guy Holland's production, in its search for the puzzled confusion the characters initially experience, has often lacked.
Josie: Karen Stally
Mo: Janiner Bardsley
Runner: Eriko Takatsuka
Sonali: Seema Bowri
Jerome: Kenny Thompson
Frank: Craig Adams
Melody: Michelle Long
Director: Guy Holland
Lighting/Puppet: Emily Laurens
Sound consultant: Annette Loose
Composer: Andrew Dodge
Choreographer: Jeanefer Jean-Charles
Camera Consultant: Adrian Hart
Accent coach: Charmian Hoare
2003-12-13 16:19:06