NATURAL BREAKS AND RHYTHMS. To 6 May.
Midlands
NATURAL BREAKS AND RHYTHMS
by Julius Ayodeji
Royal Theatre Company Northampton Tour to 6 May 2006
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 April
If music be the food of love, it produces discordant dinners here.
Few things are theatrically further from Northampton’s Victorian Royal Theatre than the sparse Isham Studio at the University of Northampton, out on St George’s Avenue, where Julius Ayodeji’s play about fathers and sons, and the relationships within each generation, premieres. If the closure of the Royal/Derngate complex for rebuilding has done nothing else, it’s put this new play, rich in themes, on the road.
Race and Will remember their birthplace Trinidad; calypso plays when they meet for a meal in either’s home. Upstairs, their sons plan life as the Stone Cold Beats. Success comes for the young, but their musically winning combination of beats, breaks and rhythms smashes their friendship.
Food and music run throughout as each generation’s music tries the other’s ears. Individually, the relaxed, outgoing Will might be Beats’ (or Michael’s) father, while Michael’s actual dad, Race, has the anxious intensity of his friend’s son Cold (aka James).
Ayodeji captures his characters’ positives and dark sides. As their fortune fluctuates, Beats sits with laptop talking figures to the moneymen while Cold’s upstairs sampling new sounds. Yet there’s a joyful side to Beats lacking in Cold’s intensity and artistic ruthlessness. Ibsen said the strong are lonely, and Cold’s the one who ends alone.
Meanwhile, the older men quarrel over the rice and how much salt to use. Race guards every penny to buy a dream-house back home, while Will prospers happily in England. With one wife dead, one departed and the unseen Annabelle giving up on Beats then Cold, a side of life stays unfulfilled, whether in Race’s pernickety insistence on the use of coasters, or Cold’s devotion to his music.
There’s a bare, cramped, split-level set, livened-up by Arnim Friess’s video panels, their colourful motifs reflecting the characters’ lives from Silver Jubilee Mug to youth clubbing. Jim Findley and Tyrone Huggins easily command their parts. The younger actors work well, but there’s too much internalising in Dani Parr’s production. The lads’ early scenes need more fizz, their confrontations need to be more pulverisingly pacy. Maybe this will come. Meanwhile, if the play’s the thing, this one’s worth a look.
Beats: Vinta Morgan
Cold: Alexis Rodney
Race: Jim Findley
Will: Tyrone Huggins
Director: Dani Parr
Designer: Helen Fownes-Davies
Lighting/Video: Arnim Friess
Composers: B-Boy J/David Soden
Esther Richardson: Dramaturg
2006-04-22 12:51:33