The Bad One: Touring till 8 November.
Touring
The Bad One: Janice Connolly.
Women and Theatre at The Door, Birmingham Rep.
Touring till 8 November, 2008
Tel: 0121 235 4455: www.birmingham-rep.co.uk/
Runs: 2hr 30m, 20 m interval
Review: Ben Whitehouse, 28 September 2008
Are we sitting comfortably?
"Once upon a time in a not-so-far off land there lived a theatre reviewer. He lived alone in a high tower and would regularly descend and go to theatres and enjoy various shows. One day he followed a sign that led him to leave the path he was familiar with and he found himself deeper in the forest than he'd been before, he chanced upon a travelling troupe of players performing a show called "The Bad One", little did he know the effect this encounter would have on him."
Every good story begins by making a promise to the hearer, the promise is not to betray you, not to blind side you with something unexpected, and to thrill you without having to resort to the unacceptable. It's also a contract that everything you hear about in the first few minutes will be relevant, integral to the story and will be neatly resolved before the story finishes. I know that not every story follows this contract and some stories, shock horror, even have unhappy endings. We may come out of the story bloodied and bruised but we're always wiser, older and have seen something of the world.
Women and Theatre's production of "The Bad One", by Janice Connolly, plays with the idea of stories we know and love and offers a retelling of Stephenson's "The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". Jackie, Susie Riddell, lives with her overbearing grandmother (writer, Connolly) at the edge of the woods in a town that sounds something like Birmingham. (We later discover in the world of the play there's a Broad Street with bars and lap-dancing clubs that's very similar to the real world Broad Street.)
Jackie has never seen anything of the world, she's kept inside at her grandmothers' insistance due to a Terrible Event from the past and has grown up to be very restrained, reserved and innocent. She has free run of the house apart from one room in the attic. Laurence (Laurence Saunders), the local odd job man, visits Jackie and disturbs her with a story relating to the Terrible Event. Her explorations of the attic lead her to Disoveries which will have impacts on all the characters.
The action plays out in the claustrophobic atmosphere of Jackie's house which evokes an almost Pantomime-esque ramshackleness. Over-loud sound effects, unnecessary projections and music that sounds like it's been ripped from a Hammer Horror film try to force the emotions of the audience in a particular direction. Connolly collides humour and tragedy with good effect but there's only so many bum jokes I can take. Pants and naked bottoms have their place but I felt a little short changed by having my expectations raised by some delightful light witty humour in the first few minutes, to be disappointed as it slipped all too easily to excessive coarse humour.
The rest of the audience, on the other hand, only roared louder and louder with each successive joke.
The second half of the show seems to reject the tone established in the first, breaking the promises made to the audience in favour of further attempts at Jangling Horror and Spine Tingling Terror and doesn’t settle on what it wants to be: Is it a comedy show? Horror? Storytelling?
The denoument is profoundly disappointing, I felt my trust had been cheated by the storyteller.
Ben Whitehouse
ReviewsGate.com
(Credits to follow.)
Tour visits
Layard, Dorset; Lawrence Batley, Huddersfield; Capitol Studio, Horsham; Arena, Wolverhampton, Brewery, Kendal, Maltings, St Albans, Norden Farm, Maidenhead; Rotherham Arts Centre, Rotherham; Tara Studio, London; Rondo, Bath; Lowry, Salford Quays; Helmsley Arts Centre, Helmsley
(Details www.womenandtheatre.co.uk)
2008-09-29 09:43:18