Reunion To 14th June.

Salisbury

REUNION
by John Godber

Hull Truck theatre company at Salisbury Playhouse To 14 June 2003

Tue-Weds 7.30 pm; Thur- Sat 8.00 p.m.
Mat 14th June at 2.30 pm.
Runs 2hr 5min One Interval

TICKETS: 01722 320333
www.salisburyplayhouse.com
Review Mark Courtice: 10 June

Unreality Theatre. What zeitgeist means changes with the times. In the past, John Godber has written about it, capturing contemporary culture without snobbery and with sympathy.

Currently, zeitgeist includes friends reunited, make-overs, reality TV, karaoke, salsa, telephone voting, and school dinner club nights. Sure enough all of these turn up in this surprisingly snobbish and unsympathetic play.

We are the audience for Reunion - TV's top rated reality show. This combines humiliation with the chance to win big money by replaying what really went on in the past.

It is almost impossible to fathom out what Godber is trying to get at as Jack revisits his past at Leeds University in the 70s. He and his dim wife are caricatures who come up against other, just as unlikely, people from past and present.

Why should we care about any of them? If we don't, then there is no point made about moral confusion (presumably, one of Godber's intentions) by the audience's vociferous participation. We join in simply because we must or there is no show.

The format is used to make the TV characters interject comments and to wrench the action forward. This does not work; often the comments are inaudible and the story is disjointed. Flabby direction makes it long, too.

The dull set, designed down to fulfil the bare minimum required, is tatty after a long tour. Lighting is dim and clunky. Audiences nowadays are TV-savvy enough to know that this show is utterly bogus; and an inept production with cynical production values means that we are expected to take a TV studio without a single camera seriously.

Godber's unsurprising conclusion about reality TV is that perfectly decent people end up looking bad as they try to milk their fifteen minutes of fame. This is one of those plays where perfectly decent actors end up looking dreadful as they try to salvage fifteen minutes of sense from parts that are cynical, disjointed and have no sense of character. Doubling is a matter of wearing improbable disguise, rather than acting.

Stephanie/Tina: Gill Jephcott
Anna/Heather: Kiki Hendrick
Jack: Gordon Kane
Martin: Zach Lee
Faye/Sally/Tishy/Jackie: Fiona Wass

Director: John Godber
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Graham Kirk
Music: John Pattison

2003-06-12 10:14:32