SCUFFER. To 1 April.
Leeds
SCUFFER
by Mark Catley
West Yorkshire Playhouse (Courtyard Theatre) To 1 April 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 2.30pm & 30 March 2pm
Audio-described 23 March
BSL Signed 28 March
Captioned 31 March
Post-show discussion 22 March
Ruins 1hr 30min No interval
TICKETS: 0113 213 7700
www.wyp.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 March
All you need is love, luck and a baseball-bat.
It’s grim up Leeds, to believe Mark Catley’s growing catalogue of West Yorkshire Playhouse premieres. But, who’s it all for? Should tower-block dwellers like Danny (the scuffer) be flocking to enjoy these representations of their lives? Or is it a reverse social mission, letting affluent suburban theatregoers know what life’s like beyond the Playhouse car-park?
If it’s the first, the intended audience seemed in little supply. If the second, the message received is a strange one. Life here may be violent. But only feckless Danny’s threatened; it’s his money or his limbs as he faces payday with a local loanshark. And his response to trouble is to get others to sort it, his contribution being little beyond getting up and dressed in an emergency. All turns out well because Danny’s main antagonist is a woman, who goes gooey when there’s a child involved. Just as well the lad got his girlfriend pregnant.
There is a vicious male criminal, but he gets his comeuppance at the end of a pair of baseball bats. Who cares if that’s mob rule? He’s not someone we sympathise with. It’s a happy ending. That’s what fiction means.
But supposing Danny wasn’t played by such an engaging actor as Richard Glaves? Or that Hannah Storey didn’t make his ex-girlfriend an impassioned fireball on his behalf Wouldn’t we say it serves him right? Things aren’t helped by some unconvincing revelations as to how the debt was incurred. And Dominic Gately’s vicious-to-the-core Cauldron could have a point when Danny blithely tries borrowing money, having previously (somehow) taken Amy away from him. Or does dislike of Cauldron (who’d been pimping the girl underage in sex-films) wipe out Danny’s naivety?
This isn’t urban realism; it’s glossy comedy with a scuffed-up urban face (it goes badly awry when it veers into the conceptual-art scene). There’s an element of unreality all-round, apart from Gately’s unrelenting villain. No reason tower blocks like those projected onto the stage, with moving video-inserts, shouldn’t have their share of downbeat yet ultimately uplifting romantic comedy. But the story and characters remain as 2D as their visual surrounds.
Danny: Richard Glaves
Cathy: Lorraine Bruce
Amy: Hannah Storey
Jack: William Ilkley
Cauldron: Dominic Gately
Director: Alex Chisholm
Designer: Emma Williams
Lighting: Malcolm Rippeth
Sound/Video: Mic Pool
Dialect coach: Sally Hague
2006-03-21 01:05:00