WHEN DO WE START FIGHTING? To 1 March.
London.
WHEN DO WE START FIGHTING?
by Charlie Shand.
Courtyard Theatre (Main House) Bowling Green Walk 40 Pitfield Street N1 6EU To 1 March 2009.
Tue-Sun 8pm.
Runs 1hr 25min No interval.
TICKETS: 0870 163 0717,
www.thecourtyard.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 February.
Ever-active revolutionaries skilfully shown not taking much action.
From Peter Brook’s US to Sarah Kane’s Blasted, theatre’s imagined modern warfare’s devastation brought home. So, in America, and outside theatre, did the Weathermen in 1969 Chicago.
‘Bring the War home’ said the radical students whose attitude is summarised in the title of Charlie Shand’s play, moved to Hoxton after last year’s premiere at Rose Bruford College. It’s an impressive piece, capably – sometimes very capably – acted on a stage resembling a large-scale squat, all old sofas and beds, backed by wire-fences.
For all the accurate period recreation in script, costume and make-up, this is undoubtedly a modern reflection on days of hopeful activity. In its dramatic method time isn’t linear, the dead speak, alive in their companions’ consciousness. Short scenes create a kaleidoscope of sex, drugs and some rock ‘n’ roll, though that’s incorporated into Shand’s sound design, a device of modern theatre distancing events from style in a productive way. Taken straight, as they might have been written forty years ago, the scenes could have seemed naïve. The present-day dramaturgy and theatre technology give a focus and a satisfying complexity to that age of comparative innocence.
These young people are more skilled in chemistry than physics. They can’t get a typewriter, let alone a ‘phone, to work but easily create explosive cocktails; the formula for one is recited during love-making on top of a dead body, giving a new meaning to sexual chemistry.
Everything in the post flower-power garden’s not entirely lovely. The title suggests an urgency at odds with the play’s lack of evenements; “When?” can express immediacy or impatience. There’s death, stupidity and callousness. And brutal state response; virtually the only direct action – certainly the only effective action – comes from a CIA agent torturing information from one of the group while others seem to carry on inconsequentially around. Only seem; there are multiple locations here, but the visual impression’s strong and suggests why the state’s so hard to beat.
Complex yet coherent, maintaining the interest in, and tension between, its several cells of action, this enterprising piece from theatre company The Kamichi Plan well-deserves its renewed lifespan.
Kit: Keranjit Gumtali.
Brink: Rebecca Killick.
Rae: Amanda McLaren.
Mark: Matthew Judd.
Die: Lucy Wallace.
Terry: Fingal McKiernan.
Cyke: Michael Morrison.
Mai: Kelsey Cameron.
Director: Charlie Shand.
Designers: Kirsty Henderson, Niki Riggs, Anna Kirwan.
Lighting: Nicole Smith.
Sound: Charlie Shand.
2009-02-11 11:30:58