From Devon with Love at Bike Shed Theatre, Exeter
14th -31st January 2015
An offshoot of Framework, the Bike Shed Theatre’s artist
development arm, From Devon with Love continues to play an invaluable part in Exeter’s
thriving arts ecology, offering a safe space for county-based companies and
performers to put new work on its feet and in front of an audience. Some of the
pieces have previously been scratched at the Bike Shed, or been supported through
the use of rehearsal space, and work shown here for the first time often goes
on to bigger, more developed lives elsewhere. This year, for the first time, Plymouth’s
Barbican Theatre also hosted work under the banner, with the best work from
each city’s programme playing at the other venue and in a closing night
showcase at the Bike Shed.
As always, the programme was diverse, and the quality
variable, but there was some impressively accomplished work on show, not least
of which was Documental Theatre’s Score, a thoughtful, funny two-hander about friendship,
addiction and the restorative power of music. Basing the narrative on what must
have been hard-hitting conversations with women about their experiences of
parenthood while battling addiction, writer Lucinda Bell has crafted a moving
and engaging piece that navigates tricky terrain with candour and intelligence.
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| Settling scores: Lara Simpson as Kirsty |
Kirsty (Lara Simpson) and Hannah (Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Milton) have been friends since junior school, when Hannah’s family provided a
model of stability that Kirsty’s drug-addicted dealer father never could. As
time passes, we drop into episodes and experiences throughout their still
entwined lives, as babies arrive, difficulties mount, and their existence becomes
ever more focused on heroin.
The segues between different stages in their lives are subtly
handled and effective, pulling us from a childhood nativity through teenage
pregnancy to motherhood and darker times, always with drugs and music a
constant refrain. While the whistle-stop journey seems a little too pat at
times, what comes across most clearly is the strength of female friendship, its
rhythms, harmonies and counterpoints. Both actors have powerful, soulful voices
(musical arrangement courtesy of Verity Standen) that highlight beautifully the
capacity of music to raise us up, to heal and restore.
The linear structure hampers the credibility at times, and I
wonder if focusing on one part of the women’s lives, then pulling out and back
to reveal the hows and whys would overcome the occasional triteness. There is
great comedy here, too, most of which rings true, even if some of the lines are
clearly from the writer rather than the characters – possibly a result of
dialogue constructed from myriad conversations with different individuals. Ultimately,
though, this is a wonderfully assured piece from a company to watch.
Also using music to add texture and balance was Two Blind
Dogs, a show that gave space to an intense presentation of spoken word
performance from poets Alice and Peter Oswald alongside singer/songwriter Mae
Karthauser. All three presented character-driven pieces, which were intriguing
and detailed – with Alice Oswald a particularly mesmerising presence, utterly
still and irresistible to watch – but for me the highlight was Mae’s beautiful,
ephemeral voice and music, as if she was beaming in from somewhere else
entirely, somewhere as yet undiscovered but completely knowable.
Aminal’s Midnight. Dream. Sleep. created a similar effect in
its exploration of intimacy, in this instance through a one-to-one walking
performance that follows the contours of a relationship with the midnight city
as backdrop. Meeting by the cathedral as the clock strikes twelve, writer/performers
Kelly Miller and Jonny Rowden are each paired with one audience member, who
puts on headphones to hear the story unfold while walking the streets together,
sometimes hand in hand, sometimes in a near embrace. Poetic and lyrical, it maps
desire and distraction, connections and disconnections, that feeling of losing
yourself completely. It’s about knowing someone more than you know yourself,
about understanding – intuiting – their ways of seeing and doing, about being
inside their lives so completely that you feel part of their very pulse. And in
wandering the city at night – abandoned and star-lit – it conjures those any-hour
walks in which time and distance cease to matter, because this succession of
minutes and miles is just for you two, here, now. And how those minutes and
miles gape once love is gone. This is a quietly beautiful piece that might
prove a challenge for some audience members, in that it demands a certain level
of ease with proximity to the performers, but it absolutely reaches into the
intensity of emotional experience.
Also intense, in a decidedly more unsettling way, was Substance
and Shadow’s revival of Christie in Love, Howard Brenton’s 1969 three-hander
about serial killer John Christie, who was hanged in 1953 for the murders of eight
women, the bodies of which were found hidden around his house and garden in
West London. It’s a disturbing play, still powerful in its depiction of a
warped and dangerous mind, and this is a strong production, faithful to the
text, and a perfect fit for the Bike Shed’s subterranean space.
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| Tainted love: Midge Mullin as John Christie. Photo by Matt Austin |
A constable digs for bones in Christie’s garden,
discomforted by the crimes and the air of deviant sexuality that surrounds them;
to calm himself, he recites obscene limericks. Shovelling aside piles of
scrunched up newspaper, he eventually unearths Christie himself, who emerges as
if conjured by that strange combination of moral outrage and seedy titillation
so peculiar to the tabloid press. An inspector interrogates Christie about his
crimes, and although Brenton doesn’t offer us any answers to why he did what he
did, it is implied that the line between passion and perversion is anything but
straightforward.
As the constable and the inspector, Sam Pike and Nathan Simpson
convey that tension with real skill; and Pike’s manipulation of a mannequin to
play out one of Christie’s murders is particularly adept. As Christie, Midge
Mullin delivers just the right amount of sinister banality and repressed malevolence,
by turns meek and subservient, then furious, then gloating, so proud of his
ability to creep about in his ‘plims’, silently delivering his judgments on
women’s right to life. Chilling.
In complete contrast, Nuts & Volts’ Lucky Dip was a playful
piece of utter silliness based on the conceit that the company is suffering
artistic differences, its internal conflicts played out in two competing shows,
The Good One and The Rubish (sic) One. Audiences pick tickets out of a hat and
are then separated to either take an innuendo-soaked tour of the ‘back
passages’ of Exeter, or stay in the auditorium to witness the tricks of the
acting trade. Very funny, the show makes the most of the performers’ ability to
camp it up outrageously while poking fun at theatre’s potential for pretension.
Good, old-fashioned fun.
Also funny is Hugh McCann’s one-man show Ensuite, a gonzo
tour of the first year experiences of art student ‘Hugh McCann’ as he gets to
grips with living away from home, appreciating art and finding his way in the
world. Careening round the performance space in shorts, a sports jacket and woolly
hat, ‘Hugh’ is a credible mix of eager naïf and savvy bullshit-detector who
also harbours a semi-secret love of musical theatre. When he purchases 150 Russian
anti-depressants off the internet as a way of greasing the social wheels while
also earning some money, he pulls us along on a surreal journey of
self-discovery via pints of wine, Marcel Duchamp and the floral pleasures of
Kew Gardens. McCann is an incredibly likeable performer, and this piece reveals
that he is also a gifted writer adept at weaving numerous narrative strands
into an engaging whole. It needs some tightening up and further development,
but this is already an impressive piece of performance work demonstrating
considerable skill.
The festival wrapped up with a day of hosted conversations
and presentations that brought together the artists taking part in the festival,
other venues, producers, designers and arts organisations, and provided the
space to forge new connections, share ideas and advice, and generally start a dialogue.
Representatives from the Arts Council offered advice on funding applications, and
there were opportunities to talk to professionals about artist development,
press and marketing, festivals and touring, and working with a producer. It was
free to attend, and the Bike Shed stumped up for breakfast to get proceedings
going, then a delicious soup with bread and salad for lunch, and the room was
filled with a happy hubbub of conversation for the whole day. And a really
positive way to close the festival.
Reviewed for Exeunt
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