Window On The Green
The lights are out but the show must go on at the Bush Theatre
After almost having its Arts Council funding cut earlier this year, the Bush Theatre now faces a new challenge, caused by a series of leaks in the building on Shepherd’s Bush Green: no theatre lights. The solution: a series of plays performed in near-darkness.
During the Broken Space season, a selection of three short plays are performed each night, including work by Simon Stephens, Lucy Kirkwood, and Ben Schiffer, as well as the Irish playwright Declan Feenan.
This week’s opening piece - a monologue by Simon Stephens called Sea Wall – was performed with the help of natural daylight from the Green, as the Bush Theatre’s windows were uncovered.
In just 25 minutes, Andrew Scott tells an engaging and moving story about an idyllic life torn apart by a tragic accident. With just one actor and an empty stage, Scott’s character Alex manages to keep the audience captivated throughout.
Shepherd’s Bush Green provides some of the light for the second piece too, with the help of a few household lamps. Declan Feenan’s St Petersburg, which is due to play each night during the season, is billed as “a masterpiece in miniature”. However, it was more confusing than masterful and seemed to have little in the way of storyline.
Although the title suggests that the play might be set in Russia, we find ourselves in Ireland; St Petersburg is a mere allusion to a time when the main character, John, used to drive to eastern Europe in his job as a lorry driver. We are also left to guess at the relationship between the three characters and it takes more than half an hour for the middle-aged Kate to finally address the old man John as “daddy”.
There are family secrets and frustrations beneath the small-talk and bickering that goes on between Kate and her father John, but the deeper issues are only briefly touched upon before the small-talk resumes. This may well be art mirroring life quite accurately but the pace was slow and it felt unsatisfying to never really get to the bottom of it all.
The silent grandson, played by schoolboy Zac Bann-Murray, has to be commended for his ability to stay so still and so silent for so long.
For the third piece, the audience were led back into the theatre to find that the floor had been covered in damp earth, the seats removed and the windows blacked out.
In Anthony Weigh’s captivating monologue, The Flooded Grave, the audience find themselves standing in a dark, windswept field, next to a flooded grave. A preacher, played by the superb John Ramm, tells a gripping tale of a possessed woman who was accidentally killed during an attempt at exorcism. With nothing but the light of a torch shining on his face, the preacher, hinting that the woman was his wife, reveals at the end why we are all standing by the graveside: he is waiting for the woman to rise from the dead.
The Broken Space season runs until 25 October 2008.
Yasmine Estaphanos
10 October 2008
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