MOJO MICKYBO. To 21 July.
London
MOJO MICKYBO
by Owen McCafferty
Trafalgar Studios (Studio 2) To 21 July 2007
Mon-Thu; Sat 7.45pm Fri 6.30pm & 9pm Mat Sat 3pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval
TICKETS: 0870 060 6632 (booking fee)
www.theambassadors.com/trafalgarstudios
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 July
Childhood games overcast by adult Troubles in strong revival of an impressive play.
“Mojo. Mickybo. Mojo Mickybo.” The two names chime happily as one when they’re repeated at the opening of Owen McCafferty’s 1997 play. From an apparently chance meeting of the two 9-year old boys, their friendship cements; it’s an apparently unalterable part of their childhoods. As they meet, Mickybo’s showing himself champion at heading a ball. He’s confident; Mojo admires him; both share the unselfconscious acceptance of childhood friendship.
As friends they have enemies, and stand together against them. They meet with each other’s parents. And so it would go on till something divides them down the long years. But here it’s very sudden, for this is Belfast, 1970, sectarianism spreading with renewed virulence through its soul.
McCafferty’s brief scenes capture the sense of childhood’s short attention spans and quick responses to new interests, its intense friendships and hatreds, its unabashed playing-out of stories or films. This pair love re-enacting the escapes of the title outlaws in the era’s popular cine-Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Childhood’s mercurial quality is seen as the actors’ weave in-and-out of roles, including parents and hard-faced childhood enemies, caricatured as the two Ms’ view of them, but still plainly mean-going-on-vicious. Then it all suddenly ends when The Troubles bring death, stopping time in a quiet moment between son and murdered father.
A new insult, “Orange”, slices heavily between the two. Friendships re-form along sectarian lines, Mickybo and the old enemies now allying, his mother curling in near-speechless hate away from the uncomprehending Mojo.
Both Martin Brody’s ever-willing Mojo and Benjamin Davies’ more self-contained Mickybo catch the childhood moods and the final transition finely, while Jonathan Humphreys’ production is alert to the humour and pacing, as well as the eventual tragedy of McCafferty’s play.
First seen in the small space of Dalston’s Arcola, this production works beautifully in the small space at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios. McCafferty’s forceful use of repetition is intense in the small space; the “Mojo, Mickybo” litany eventually sounding like a tolling bell, while Butch and Sundance finally mirror the boys’ predicament in the image of two doomed figures huddled desperately together.
Mojo: Martin Brody
Mickybo: Benjamin Davies
Director: Jonathan Humphreys
Designer: Mark Friend
Lighting: Richard Williamson
Composer/Musical Director: Chris Trueman
Movement: Giuliana Majo
Associate lighting: Dave Glover
2007-07-08 13:07:50