THE COLLECTION. To 27 May.

Tour

THE COLLECTION
by Mike Cullen

Rapture Theatre Tour to 27 May 2006
Runs 2hr One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 May at Brunton Theatre Musselburgh

Money, death and sex: an epitaph for an age.
From the fag-end of the post-Thatcher Tory era, The Collection is about debt-collecting and skilfully combines two of the dramatic profession's oldest and deepest concerns, sex and money. There's a ruthlessness to this world that's both deeply personal to Paul Thomas Hickey's sleek and briskly-played manager Cravis, and also an impersonal, oppressive force looming on the floors above his office.

In this cold society there's not a sympathetic person. Everyone's out to manipulate and to gain advantage over others. But in a self-conscious, image-laden age, each person pulls on some form of irony when they suspect they may have made themselves vulnerable. Tapes and microphones are the swords and daggers of their battle, one hidden in a bowl of apples - the chosen fruit of deception and betrayal from the first.

Cravis says anyone can sell; the skill lies in collecting the money. This is a world where debtors will sell themselves to avoid finding money to repay, where there's no answer to the question where the money went, and where lives are compartmentalised in the stress-laden task of keeping debt secret. Home becomes a prison. If anyone appears potentially sympathetic here it's ex-ace collector Bob Lawson. And his conscience emerges only through his breakdown, stung into action by the psycho-sexual guilt rising from a debtor's suicide.

The dead woman, Jany Hanratty, isn't seen but her suffering voice is heard in Lawson's mind. Jimmy Chisholm's Lawson is a reasoning body in a society where reason's out of sight from the viewpoint of the bottom line. The clash emerges in his edgy, Mamet-like dialogue (or non-dialogue) with debt-laden Elena Malcolm, and in his moral-based arguments with Cravis, where he might as well be talking a foreign language.

It's harder to believe Chisholm's Lawson used to be the ace-collector, and Michael Emans' otherwise pinpoint direction might probe further into Lawson's divided self. Hickey is every inch the greaseball kingpin, Stewart Porter the unmoveable operative. Fletcher Mathers makes clear Elena's position on the brink between middle-class liestyle and collapse int oindented desperation.

Like Simon Block's 1997 Chimps, about attempts to get people into debt, Cullen's examination of the destructive power of money forms a sour yet necessary epitaph for an age when materialism and acquisitiveness held near mystic status. It hardly needs the thrilleresque music pulsing between scenes; the energy is in the writing and it's captured in Rapture's revival.

Joe Cravis: Paul Thomas Hickey
Billy Shaw: Stewart Porter
Elena Malcolm: Fletcher Mathers
Bob Lawson: Jimmy Chisholm

Director: Michael Emans
Designer: Lyn McAndrew
Lighting: Robie Fraser

2006-05-13 13:19:28