RED. To 24 June.

London

RED
by Chris Fittock

Theatre 503 Latchmere Pub 503 Battersea Park Road SW11 3BW To 24 June 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 5pm
Runs 1hr 20min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7978 7040
www.theatre503.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 June

Angry young man in a void.
Here is an angry young man, 50 years on from John Osborne’s original in Look Back in Anger. But gone here is any social context or reality of character. Red just rages in some apparent war, or post-war, void where the sole sustenance seems a semi-impenetrable fruit.

The play’s 2 women still look to Red as a kind of hero maudit whose emotional needs require their attention, much as the 2 women in Look Back dance attendance on Jimmy Porter’s emotional whims. But, deprived of specific context, Red himself merely seems emotionally self-indulgent.

Repeatedly, another play title comes to mind, J B Priestley’s I Have Been Here Before. Not because there’s any similarity with a play that has shape, humanity and purpose, and works to create a believable world, but because every aspect of this play is derivative from the fashionable apocalyptic drama of the 60s and 70s.

The language mixes the kind of expression Ealing scriptwriters thought the less quick-witted countryman might come up with, with the stylised manner of David Rudkin or Edward Bond. (“ ‘S been a godsend, these months, boy. When the rains stayed down, these months, ‘s been a bounty. Y’know? A godsend to stave away the drought”). You can spend an awful lot of lines saying little in dialogue like that.

Red encounters 2 young women friends, whom he roundly abuses. One seems a mother substitute. As soon as the other appears, the first retreats to a corner of the anonymously-earthy set for a long period. This really is Red’s show.

It may be Chris Fittock can work through such derivative material and move on to produce something with the strength he indicates, yet with more suppleness than the tonally-unvaried violence of language here. For now, I find myself surprisingly lining up with Garry Essendine’s advice to aspirant dramatist Roland Maule. You’ll find it in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. And you won’t find much of that here either.

The actors work valiantly, 2 of them to quite good effect.

Red: Mark Wood
Val: Lucia Cox
Amy: Simone Holmes

Director: Graeme Maley
Lighting: Phil Hewitt

2006-06-22 16:43:05