M.A.D. To 22 May.

London

M.A.D.
by David Eldridge

Bush Theatre To 22 May 2004
Mon-Sat 8pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7610 4224
www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 April

Slow-burning family drama builds to fine full force.Mutually assured destruction an hygienic, detached way to describe governments blowing us all to kingdom come - carries its own subversive acronym. But in this play attrition and explosions at home make the prime destructive force.

David Eldridge's new play gathers impact as it proceeds. It's mostly set in 1984, when Mrs Thatcher was in Downing Street. In Romford, Essex the lives of market-trader Kelly, his wife Alice and, possibly, their son John are being wasted. A long, angry elegy concludes the play in the present day, defining the impact on John of his parents' unhappy marriage.

Young John tries to keep the home intact by bargaining whether he'll go for a scholarship (possibly an assisted place at a private school, an early eighties government plan to cherry-pick bright students) or follow dad into the market-place. This inward struggle's reflected by an outer childhood world of competition John moves from Subbuteo football to war-gaming between NATO and Warsaw Pact tanks, one of these toys reappearing with symbolic force.

This attempt to yoke the family world of knocked-off dodgy videos and traded insults with politics is awkward, even if home life does catapult 11-year old John into a precocious interest in world events not shared by the adults.

In Hettie Macdonald's seamless production, acted with skill and understanding, sympathies flow as fluidly as John's attachment to whichever parent at the moment seems hard done by or most likely to hold the family structure together.

Lewis Chase brings apt childhood intensity to John, reflecting a melancholy tinge onto Daniel Mays' portrayal of his adult self. Gerald Lepkowski as Lee's help on the market, useful for attracting women customers, is adept, both in eighties laconic mode and trying to express his feelings in 2004.

The parental battle, mutually destructive and corrosive along the way, is enacted with searingly persistent brutality and pain by Jo McInnes and Lee Ross, even through the brief attempts at rapprochement, McInnes' shattered sense of aspiration and Ross's snarling attempts to reach back to love through a deep sense of failure forcefully defining the nature of Eldridge's dramatic conflict.

John: Lewis Chase
Alice: Jo McInnes
Kelly: Lee Ross
Luigi: Gerald Lepkowski
John: Daniel Mays

Director: Hettie Macdonald
Designer: Jonathan Fensom
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: David Benke
Assistant director: Lucy Foster
Assistant designer: Alistair Turner
Video editor/programmer: Matt Kirby
Fight director: Jeff Thompson

2004-04-28 08:39:35