THE PULL OF NEGATIVE GRAVITY. To 11 September.
Colchester
THE PULL OF NEGATIVE GRAVITY
by Jonathan Lichtenstein
Mercury Theatre Studio To 11 September 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 11 Sept 9 & 11 September
Talkback 8 September
Runs 1hr 30min No interval
TICKETS: 01206 573948
boxoffice@mercurytheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 September
Welsh winner in Eastern England production.Though author Jonathan Lichtenstein lectures at Essex University he's from Wales, where his new play is set. During 2004's Edinburgh Fringe Festival it showed at the Traverse Theatre it recalls past Traverse shows exploring the human predicament in rural Scottish life as this does among Welsh farmers. There's simultaneously staged interior and exterior, the struggle indoors to survive financially set against a sense of mountain freedom outside. And the intensity of desire and love (distinguished in rough and tender language) in an isolated place.
The play's also very contemporary, set against the Iraq conflict. Lichtenstein avoids the danger of issue drama' by developing his themes, particularly the pull of grief (negative gravity), through a fully-realised quartet of characters: Vi struggling with an ill-paid home job to bring in money after her farmer-husband's death, her sons Rhys the farmer and Dai the soldier, plus Dai's girlfriend Bethan.
The brothers spin a coin to see who will run a farm that can't support both; the other will join the army. The outcome mixes chance and choice, a duality that courses through the drama. As does the way events, especially war, change people. News of Dai's injury leads Bethan to fantasise his return, increasing the shock when he actually arrives. He's changed and so will she; chance has altered her choice in life. Undying love and undying loyalty to generations of family farming are tested, as is the desire even to live. The survivor is the person who recognises the need to move on, avoiding ghosts of the past (one scene harrowingly echoes the end of Ibsen's Ghosts).
These themes are seamlessly, and richly, interwoven as past and present, reality and fantasy, intertwine revealing character strengths and flaws through both script and Gregory Thompson's flawlessly-acted production. Only one moment seems unclear; whether movement-impaired Dai deliberately or accidentally spills drink ruining the envelopes his mother's painstakingly stuffed. The discovery of what he's done is strangely muted too.
Elsewhere, Lichenstein's script is kept flying, up to a final, fatal, airborne image which brings the play's themes of love, hope, grief and gravity powerfully together.
Bethan: Louise Collins
Vi: Joanne Howarth
Dai: Lee Haven-Jones
Rhys: Daniel Hawksford
Director: Gregory Thompson
Designer: Ellen Cairns
Lighting: Robin Carter
Sound: Andrea J Cox
2004-09-02 10:21:41