JOHNOTHAN PRAM. To 30 August.
Edinburgh
JOHNOTHAN PRAM
by Ben Faulks
Pleasance Below To 30 August 2004
2.15pm alternate days: Johnothan's Cassettessac and Johnothan's Living Room
Runs 40 min (each) No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23,24 August
Pictures of an interesting individual, who does not make it to be the claimed everyman of our times.This two-part show (due to be joined by a third section touring North West England in autumn 2004) looks at an alleged victim of the 21st century. Quite what the last three and a half years have done in particular to a character born in the later 1970s remains unclear. There again, so do a number of things about Johnothan.
They start with his name, with its hint he may not have grown up, or at least be independent. Why, is unexplained. The two sections are roughly divided between his office-working (Cassettessac') and home (Living Room') life. In both, objects condition his existence. With one, it's the cassettes that cascade from his locker. Placed in the cassette player strapped to his front, they issue instructions by which his routine-filled life is bound. In Living Room there are a series of cases, fitting Russian-doll like one in another, that represent the stages of his life.
But who is Johnothan? At times, movement and speech suggests physical impediments. But this does not appear consistently. Then again passages of repetition and explanation of detail suggest a little-developed mind. But, with deviser and performer Ben Faulks being described as performance artist as well as actor, it could be that limpid limb movements and deliberate speech are not characterisation, but expressionistic devices - to tell about the character's inner state rather than for realistic conveying of physical or mental detail.
Faulks is an accomplished performer and each piece maintains its consistency of mood. But I'm left unconvinced Johnothan is an essential or archetypal victim of any time. The dulling work routine, the life lived between neighbours he speaks to only through the walls, could have come from virtually any point in the 20th century.
And the pieces don't establish this character as representative. Perhaps it's a tribute to Faulks' affecting persona but the two existing shows work as portraits of an unassertive individual, whose problems could lie in personality or upbringing as much as in the times.
Performer: Ben Faulks
2004-09-01 05:30:02