tHe dYsFUnCKshOnalZ! To 22 December.
London
tHe sYsFUnCKshOnalZ!
by Mike Packer.
Bush Theatre To 22 December 2007.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Fri & Sat 3pm.
Audio-described 17 Dec.
Video-captioned 18 Dec.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7610 4224.
www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 December.
Comic spleen served up with fine irony..
Ironic times at the Bush. Punk was a seventies cry of outrage, more a matter of spit than polish. Yet a suavely-dressed audience left Mike Packer’s new play after the auto-destructive punk band of the title have imploded upon reunion talking of carol services and engagements at Portcullis House.
Has ex-PM Tony Blair’s youthful rock-history had an impact in political circles? Or were anxious government agencies checking out a play where someone speaks the modern blasphemy of praising the Twin Towers attack?
They needn’t have worried. Arch-rebel Billy Abortion begins by refusing to let one of his songs be used for an American advertising campaign. But, approached by the band members who’d left him for dead years ago, Billy fires volleys of abuse, strips to his underwear to cast-off even second-hand designer labels, then gives way. Like sixties rebels whose anarchy turned to entrepreneurial market-freedom, Billy accepts times have changed.
Yet he keeps anarchy up his sleeve, turning against corporate capital and then the band. Amid the comedy, Rupert Procter’s Billy finds the play’s emotional dynamic, unleashing the unpredictability and ambiguity of motive in a person who’s been satisfying his sense of alienation for years with the downbeat modern version of dropping-out: stacking supermarket shelves.
Procter’s explosive performance is so intense you know there’s trouble when he drapes himself in the Stars-and-Stripes and smilingly jigs through Madison Avenue’s rewrite of his lyric. He’s countered by splendid performances from Ralph Brown’s sensible Marc Faeces, in it for the money, Pearce Quigley, whose Jon Smith stutters with potential significance while being spaced-out as any band’s drummer might become, and Julia Ford as the sardonic Merseysider who, then and now, does the real suffering. And Josephine Butler’s contrastingly positive US agency executive makes clear how far apart are the two worlds’ mindsets.
The play’s second act doesn’t entirely keep up the earlier momentum, but Tamara Harvey and her fine cast fizz electrically, right to the final big-venue concert recreated in a tiny space by James Farncombe’s lighting on Lucy Osborne’s set, which has aptly deconstructed to form the play’s several entrances and exits.
Billy Abortion: Rupert Procter.
Marc Faeces: Ralph Brown.
Jon Smith: Pearce Quigley.
Louise Gash: Julia Ford.
Gina: Josephine Butler.
Director: Tamara Harvey.
Designer: Lucy Osborne.
Lighting: James Farncombe.
Sound: Matt McKenzie.
Composer/Musical Director: Mia Soteriou.
Fight director: Alison de Burgh.
Assistant director: Michael Oakley.
Assistant designer: Sarah Barnett.
2007-12-06 11:17:56