THE FAR SIDE by Courttia Newland. Tricycle Theatre/ Tabernacle Community Centre.
London
THE FAR SIDE
By Courttia Newland
Tricycle Theatre to 25 August 2001, then Tabernacle Community Centre, W11 22-27 October 2001
Runs 1hr 45mins One interval
TICKETS 020 7328 1000 (Tricycle), 020 7565 7890 (Tabernacle)
Review Timothy Ramsden 21 August
Rough edged performances with some sharp points.
This new play is given by The Post Office Theatre, so criticism could aptly label it first or second class and move on. However, the name applies to the company's base, a former post office now run as a theatre by the show's director Riggs O'Hara.
Courttia Newland is a black West London writer in his late twenties. His play looks at racism, street murder and revenge. Its ideas are strong if not fully digested by the dramatic form.
Some mystery organisation run by unseen Bosses has summoned a group of citizens to hear the unofficial trial of a white youth accused of stabbing a black youth forty times. It's not just a matter of guilt, but deciding the punishment.We see little of the actual trial apart from confused argument. The situation's intensified as both victim's and accused's mothers are present and ready for war. The jury do not know till late that the accused is bound and gagged in the warehouse and their Chairman seems set to shoot him.
The play's stronger moments are hampered by two major factors. Its first act takes too long to focus the action; not enough's happened by the interval. And the whole notion of the shadowy justice-dispensing agency, apparently offering £1,000 per juror, then using them as hostages, is ludicrous.
The better moments include the white youth's defence, putting the death in the wider street crime context and the two mothers' outbursts. But there are some flat moments in the writing and the use of the dead lad as a moralising spirit is unconvincing.
The generally young company are raw, to good and ill effect. They cannot disguise the weaker moments but some, especially Sasha Oakley as the killer's dysfunctional mum, achieve moments of stark reality.
2001-08-22 00:04:32