PROPER CLEVER. To 25 October.
Liverpool.
PROPER CLEVER
by Frank Cottrell-Boyce.
Liverpool Playhouse To 25 October 2005.
Mon-Sat 7pm Mat Thu 1.30pm & Sat 2pm.
Audio-described 23 October 7pm.
Captioned 24 Oct.
Runs 1hr 30min No interval.
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776.
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 October.
A streetwise, virtual world judgment of Paris.
From the moment they’re first seen, five bodies in their own spaces, at different heights, connecting through a chat-room, almost all the teenagers in Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s play are what it says in the title of this young person’s slice of Year of Culture theatre from the Everyman and Playhouse.
Subject of the day is how Riley threw Bex’s bra across the school dining-room. Riley’s the fashion-victim dimwit kept afloat in school by Bex’s intensive help with her homework. At least, she’s “Bex” to Riley. To the others she’s Becky. The tension between them and Riley is at the play’s heart, but Becky/Bex becomes its centre.
She’s finding it hard to cast-off her old friend from younger days whom her new friends say she’s now growing away from. And Riley provides her with access to the invites-only nightclub party for her professional footballer boyfriend.
Cottrell-Boyce’s characters (more interesting than the things they do) emphasise positive aspects of youth. Theatre seems past the point where urban disaffection and aggravation was the only way to display the young. These are book-readers who can joke about loving novels as if it were an addiction (a genuinely funny speech); one seriously presents a friend with The Brothers Karamazov.
Serdar Bilis’s inventive production moves through virtually every piece of technology known to early 21st century youth, parts of it, like the bra incident and Riley’s eventual come-uppance, being shown on screen. Doubtless the virtual world presented here will be more accessibly to the 14s than most 40s, a range all within the production’s view.
But onstage, events become increasingly difficult to believe. Theatre, of all media, isn’t going to persuade us Bex could pass herself off as her Riley, or that her bookish friends would line-up in the cold outside a club (alien territory for them) to see what happens when she tries.
The boys have obvious problems; Patrick won’t speak, till induced by Riley, while Matthew obsesses over bras. The girls are more mature, unsurprising as two of them turn out to be rival Greek goddesses in disguise (no dumbing-down here). All are well played.
Rachel: Rhian Jayne Bull.
Patrick: Adetomiwa Edun.
Matthew: Adam Gillen.
Claire: Sarah Ozeke.
Bex: Samantha Robinson.
Riley: Ellena Stacey.
School Children: Jonathan Ashton, Anthony Dowling, Julie Evans, Amy Lever, Rebecca McEvilly.
Keisha Mangaroo, Robyn Mather, Anthony Richardson, Mico Simonde, Michelle Spooner.
Voice of Headmaster: Steve Coogan.
Director: Serdar Bilis.
Designer: Hannah Clark.
Lighting: Ian Scott.
Sound: Dan Jones, Jenny Tallon Cahill.
Video: Ian Galloway for Mesmer.
Illustrator: Jamie Galliford.
Movement: Tom Roiden.
Assistant director: Eli Johnson.
2008-10-21 16:07:11