LOST MONSTERS To 13 June.
Liverpool.
LOST MONSTERS
by Laurence Wilson.
Everyman Theatre To 13 June 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 13 June 2pm.
Audio-described 2 June.
Captioned 12 June.
Post-show discussion 2 June.
Runs 2hr 15min One interval.
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776.
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 May.
Large implications in a little space.
Sometimes a new play is mired in an inadequate production. At other times a spot-on production leaves a suspicion whether the script itself is as good as it seemed. There’s plenty to suggest the high quality of Laurence Wilson’s new play, but both the performances and Matt Wilde’s production are so precision-perfect, every part speaking in its own register, yet combining to form a rich harmony, there’s bound to be a question exactly how well Lost Monsters will play without these original contributors.
Yet the only real doubt lies in that dubious property, the over-arching metaphor. Wilson plays with it in his island-home setting. This island’s been created by modern society sending a motorway round both sides of Richard’s house. No-one visits until the younger trio of violent Mickey, pregnant teenage girlfriend Sian and autistic companion Jonesy break-in to hide out.
Mickey’s last act of violence, however, was in a protective strain, and the trio’s dream is of subsisting off their own land, while Sian establishes an artist’s studio. They plan to fund this through fruit-machine winnings based on Jonesy’s mental computational skills. He also has a knack of instant anagrams, fuelled, he believes, by eating sugar.
Alongside this is his love of small creatures, whose Latin names he reels-off from memory. Disrupted human society’s set-off against various co-operative insect societies, including ants. And bees.
Richard has a collection of these. And it’s not only his greater age, beard and a reference to Noah’s Ark that suggests a godlike status. Things suddenly work when he’s touched them. But he’s either physically vulnerable or willing to be pushed around. A God the Father and Jesus? Wilson, though, works through suggestion rather than statement, leaving doors open in this as in the histories of his characters.
What he shows brings a moral collision, not least in Richard finding Jonesy’s real name and treating him as an individual rather than an instrument for money-making. Suitably, then, even among the others’ fine performances Kevin Trainor’s mix of enthusiasm and innocence in Jonesy’s fantastic ability to spout facts while not thinking up ideas, is outstanding.
Richard: Joe McGann.
Mickey: Nick Moss.
Sian: Rebecca Ryan.
Jonesy: Kevin Trainor.
Director: Matt Wilde.
Designer: Simon Daw.
Lighting: Mark Doubleday.
Sound/Music: Street Furniture.
Dramaturg: Suzanne Bell.
2009-05-30 12:03:19