WRESTLING MAD. To 30 July.
Hull
WRESTLING MAD
by John Godber
Hull Truck Theatre To 30 July 2005
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 27 July 2pm
Runs 2h 5min One interval
TICKETS: 01482 323638
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 July
Comedy that should have been knocked-out in the first round.For 21 years Hull's Spring Street theatre has been home to a flow of John Godber-style scripts, by the man himself and others in his mould. Many of Godber's own 50 plays have been written during these years an output rivalling Shakespeare's, admittedly longer, scripts. Godber's also directed and managed a large-scale touring operation. How's he done it?
Wrestling Mad suggests it's by giving up on dramatic character and construction. The new play has a hint of Godber's two early Up n' Under comedies, and a suggestion of Simon Beaufoy's Full Monty. Instead of unemployment leading steel-workers to strip, it's the (heartfelt?) refusal of a touring theatre grant that sends Jeff and Jack into the ring.
But whereas Beaufoy, and the young Godber, showed the effort of amateurs to improve their act, ending with a dramatic highlight (in Up n' Under the actors play both rugby teams simultaneously), Wrestling Mad is a series of desultory scenes, in which a lot is talked about and little shown.
Nor is much made credible. With such slack character-drawing how much can we believe the Yorkshire-coast tour of Jeff's musical Dracula was going to be innovative? Did Jeff believe this himself? Godber draws the sting of the grant's withdrawal by blaming it on Jack's negligence.
Years ago Godber's pub-team rugby-players had to suffer to improve; his amateur wrestlers of 2005 make money out of being simply bad. The sport may be fixed, but there's more than these vertical grapples to making a living. When Clare Luckham's TraffordTanzi portrayed a marriage in terms of a wrestling match the actors had to learn a range of realistic holds. Not here.
There's only, incredibly, Jack (an odiferous PhD) as a wrestling academic denouncing popular culture. It's a theme Arnold Wesker's explored in Roots. But Wesker dramatised the theme; Godber merely states it.
Neatly played, even by the women whose roles are nugatory (female wrestler Sapphire keeps making choric comments but is hardly indulged in the action), this is more an early sketch than a mapped-out play. Would any other director have let Godber get away with it?
Carrie/Sapphire: Kate Baines
Sandy/Zinc/Gloria/Annie: Amy Thompson
Jeff: Matthew Booth
Jack: Jack Brady
Director: John Godber
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Graham Kirk
Music: John Pattison
Costume: John Boddy
2005-07-18 12:14:06