SHOOT THE CROW To 10 December.
London.
SHOOT THE CROW
by Owen McCafferty.
Trafalgar Studios (Studio 1) To 10 December 2005.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 40min No interval.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6632.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 October 2005.
Quick—fire wit in routine-laden working lives.
This isn’t a play about poor men’s grouse-hunting, though there are plenty of grouches along the way. It shows a segment of the mass of men living lives of quiet – occasionally not so quiet – desperation. These are the hired men, dependent for their livelihoods on the whims of a boss who holds them bound from the other end of a mobile as they tile other people’s walls. Their only self-protection lies in group cohesion – ‘covering’ when one briefly slips the leash.
It’s like that from beginning - young Randolph, learning the way of things - to end, seen in Ding-Ding, on his last working day, planning a self-employed future as a window-cleaner. And for mid-lifers Socrates and Petesy – like Beckett’s Godot tramps Vladimir and Estragon, one thoughtfully speculative, the other practically materialistic.
What passes this quartet’s time is not existence-plugging talk but a lunchtime scam, bringing its own secrets, lies and comedy. The money and the thieving itself both offer a little independence, though the men end up more than ever under the boss’s thumb. When young Randolph finally sips from Ding-Ding’s personal tea-mug it’s as if he’s inheriting a burden of subjugation for the next generation.
If this gives the play serious weight, the surface is all comedy and speed. McCafferty’s plotting and dialogue whiz along, filled with the dynamism and direct emotional responses of the men’s speech and reactions to each other, especially at lunchtime, where each pair tries to clear the other away. After this things grow darker under the comic surface which Robert Delamere’s production retains as events swing on Simon Higlett’s revolving stage between private confessionals when 2 are gathered together, and public show among all 4.
Aggression can break out, but there’s more usually a casual camaraderie, between the youthful openness of Packy Lee’s novice Randolph and Jim Norton’s powerfully contained knower-of-ropes Ding-Ding. Or, as neatly contrasted, Conleth Hill’s intense Petesy, concentrating on the near-at-hand with a sense of suppressed, misery-born fury and James Nesbitt’s often semi-abstracted Socrates, considering the middle distance, working issues through in this quick-fire, terse and finely-constructed comic drama.
Randolph: Packy Lee.
Ding-Ding: Jim Norton.
Petesy: Conleth Hill.
Socrates: James Nesbitt.
Director: Robert Delamere.
Designer: Simon Higlett.
Lighting: Chris Davey.
Sound: Martyn Davies.
Assistant director: Roisin McBrinn.
2005-10-17 09:40:09