TINDERBOX. To 24 May.

London.

TINDERBOX
by Lucy Kirkwood.

Bush Theatre To 24 May 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 3pm.
Audio-described 21 May.
BSL Signed 10 May.
Captioned 20 May.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.

TICKETS: 020 7610 4224.
www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 May.

Comic sense outruns thematic point.
Lucy Kirkwood has an interesting slant on the advice to young writers to use their own experience. Born in East London and at university in Edinburgh, she brings two characters from Barking and one from Inverness together in a Bradford butcher’s shop, roughly half-way between London and the Scottish border.

This is in a future when England is selling-off bits of itself to rich countries, provoking a backlash against foreigners. Scotland is divided from England by water; a passport being needed to cross.

Little’s clear about the rioting going on outside. The police can get through, as can meat suppliers, but young Scotsman on-the-run Perchik is warned against going out by old Saul’s young wife Vanessa, who’s streetwise enough to survive herself.

Violence, seen and suggested, runs free in the shop, where Saul, listening to Elgar’s more grandiose music, sees himself as running an empire; one he admits is flammable as a tinderbox. It’s an idea scarcely developed to the play’s full length by an author more interested in squeezing maximum, generally grisly, comedy out of the situation.

Saul’s power weakens; it’s suggested Perchik will become like him, trapping Vanessa from reaching her fantasy country-cottage. She keeps hiding in the meat-freezer before revealing she has more going on in her head than she lets on. So there’s no clear definition of her final action as a rebellion of the colonised or of a woman against male oppressors.

While it’s strange to see director Josie Rourke changing the Bush auditorium into something like a red-plush curtained proscenium arch to emphasise the guignol elements, there’s a sense some of the humour is lifted above its essential level by fine performances from Jamie Foreman, squeezing variety out of the lurid Saul, plus Bryan Dick as Perchik, whose quick wit is necessary for survival.

And from Sheridan Smith as Vanessa, her high-pitched voice seeming to bounce like a balloon several inches above the ground, even if she’s younger and less tired-looking than Kirkwood describes the character; something that’s as well, for Smith’s Vanessa is the play’s moral centre and main source of comic energy.

John/John Junior Junior/Dixon: Nigel Betts.
John Junior/Dock/Detective Prawn: Sartaj Garewal.
Perchik: Bryan Dick.
Vanessa: Sheridan Smith.
Saul: Jamie Foreman.

Director: Josie Rourke.
Designer: Lucy Osborne.
Lighting: James Farncombe.
Sound: Emma Laxton.
Assistant director: Tim Digby-Bell.

2008-05-06 01:43:20