UP ON ROOF. To 25 March

Hull

UP ON ROOF
by Richard Bean

Hull Truck Theatre To 25 March 2006
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 22 March 2pm
BSL Signed 24 March
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 01482 323638
www.hulltruck.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 March

Plenty of comedy and an air of mystery.
It’s intriguing to speculate what kind of play Shakespeare would have come up with if Hull Truck had asked him for a new script (more Comedy of Errors than Hamlet probably). Of course the chance of bardic Bill returning to take up the commission’s at least as unlikely as Jesus Christ reappearing in anything like original form. There again, playwright Richard Bean raises that possibility in his new comedy set during the 1976 Hull Prison riot.

Grim realism’s filtered through the rosy-specs of comedy. Bean sees Hull and its prisoners through a minor-league criminal, a bank-robber with a toy gun who’s hardly scary when given the emBarrassing treatment of a Hull Truck regular who turns threat to marshmallow and is the embodiment of spluttering reason. Martin Barrass’s Singe (short for St John; his working-class parents had aspirations) sits out the 4-day riot on a rooftop, hanging up a declaration he’s not involved in events that could cost him his remission.

His problem is Mad Hatchet Jack, inadvertently freed from his cell by over-zealous IRA inmates (energetically represented by Michael Glenn Murphy) and determined to collect, at improvised spear-point, the money Singe owes him. Head covered by a spider-web tattoo, Jack’s acclimatised to Hull, the best prison he’s come across; Chris Connel offers his familiar aggression edged by unselfconscious charm.

Meanwhile, in the nearest physical equivalent a rooftop prison play can provide to a cliffhanger, paranoid schizophrenic Yebsley (Matt Sutton, well in the comic spirit) is caught between suicide and love of Rachel Helen’s cheery girl in the flats next door.

Neighbourly chat did happen during the riot. And Hull Prison did contain the criminal variety shown here. Following a generous starter of local comic references, Bean introduces the mysterious, teasingly-named Christopher Hoffman - the toughest (if meekest) character to play, with whom James Weaver copes manfully.

Gareth Tudor Price ensures Truck’s usual vigorous style alongside Bean’s undertow of mysterious significance. It’s still different from his recent Royal Court drama Harvest as could be – much less of a rich harvest, maybe, but apt enough to raise the roof in Hull.

Mad Hatchet Jack: Chris Connel
Singe: Martin Barrass
Yebsley: Matt Sutton
Kath: Rachel Helen
Christopher: James Weaver
Declan: Michael Glenn Myrphy

Director: Gareth Tudor Price
Designer: Richard Foxton
Lighting: Graham Kirk
Fight arranger: Ian Stapleton

2006-03-17 12:10:06