Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness at Soho Theatre

Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness at Soho Theatre

02 April, 2009
by: Longboy

Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness at the Soho Theatre transports us back to the dying days of vaudeville, to 1881, when companies as small as five or six people transported their entire production from town to town plying their trade. 

This production of Anthony Neilson's play reproduces the show of a small band of players utterly convincingly, pretty much building an exact replica of the set, costumes, props and effects that were in use at the time.  The grandeur and the grime of the impresario Gant's show is shown to us in equal measure with devilishly incorrect and grotesque humour running throughout the play.  This play delights in provoking a League of Gentlemen kind of revulsion but leavens it with a Boosh-like weirdness (a particular highlight being a chorus of singing pustules) that helps everyone to share the joke.   

What is particularly delightful is the amount of energy given to showing us the rough edges of the show, the preposterously caricatured costumes, the wobbling descent of props, even deliberately bad jokes.  Whether it be the over-abundance of dry ice at the start of the show which left those of us in the front two rows coughing and spluttering or the appropriately cramped setting of the small theatre this production has successfully given us not just the appearance but the experience of Edward Gant's freak-show.  More than half of the front row must at some point have been flecked with some of the spit projected by the actors and at one stage a fragment of half masticated doughnut was coughed out from some 10ft away, landing on my arm.  Gross as this may sound, it is this proximity to the action that draws one into Gant's world exorcising the whole beast, not just the pretty bits.

Just four actors appear in this play as was typical of the period and all have the job of caricature, even when playing the actors rather then the parts they play.  Not as simple as it sounds of course, but well supported by brilliant costume, every one of them achieves this without hamming it up at any stage.

The director, Steve Marmion, had a big job with this script as whilst Gant's play is all there on paper, the elaborate staging is what made this play such a unique experience.  It would be possible to produce this play without everything being so beautifully crafted and to bring to the fore the flea-bitten impoverished nature of vaudevillian life.  Marmion's loving recreation still gives one this flavour, but the craft of his production adds a dimension of magic to it.

It is possible to criticise this play for it's flimsiness, as we are given Gant's last show and nothing more in this play and fans of carefully scripted, issues based drama will feel short changed.  No meaning is disguised or buried, but that meaning which is conveyed (little more than the homilies presented by Gant's theatre) is synthesised through the entire production. As long as you desire a feast for the senses and not for the brain, this show will not disappoint you.  The play presents an alternative to what we now regards as staples in entertainment and without the spectacular effects and psychological realism we are left with laughs aplenty and the kind of visceral experience even the IMAX can't deliver.

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Longboy