Naima Khan is left shuddering after Leopoldville and utterly befuddled by My Balloon Beats Your Astronaut.
Jacqueline McCarrick's Leopoldville headlines Papatango's New Writing Festival at Tristan Bates Theatre, having won their 2010 New Writing Competition. Impossible to shake off, the effects of this show plaster themselves on its audience and serves Papatango well as a showcase of the talent imbued in their productions. Leopoldville follows a group of friends whose boredom leads them to a pub in an border town of strained 1990s Ireland.
Intending to drink and steal anything of worth, their ill-thought out crime spirals horrifically at the hands of their fierce assumed leader Devlin, played with frightening perturbation by Jack Ashton. Working with a stellar script occasionally garbled in thick Irish accents, the ensemble cast, playing a group of self-confessed scum, mesmerise their audience and make skin crawl. So much so, that they leave you unable to meet their eyes as they emerge smiling from the wings to take their bows.
McCarrick's main feats are honing in on the unsettling nature of this group's dynamic and revealing universal elements of vulnerability and class perception. More than egging each other on, the boys intimidate and threaten but also admire one another. They are strangely wary of each other but have found a way to belong together. Declaring every town like their own and blaming home for their hardened regard for the world, they are simultaneously protective, kind, and cruel. George Turvey's direction varies the pace and alludes to just the right amount of off-stage action to highlight the fragility amidst the brutality of what's happening on stage.
Played for the most part in real time, the cast succeed in sustaining tension. They fill the theatre with an impending sense of doom and hold their fixated audience in a perpetual state of quiet unease. Stand-out performances come from Drew Webb who highlights the multiple facets of Terry, the only boy with just enough aspiration to ease himself out from between his rock and hard place. Russell Simpson will catch your eye for the compelling delivery of his dialogue and for elucidating the heart in the group's fickle camaraderie. Expect to leave shaken.
My Balloon Beats Your Astronaut
Whoever Papatango puts in charge of its casting deserves praise. Though My Balloon Beats Your Astronaut features a far from gripping title and an even less gripping story line, it starts and ends well, with strong characters fortunate enough to be embodied by highly talented actors.
The timid Smyth and the talkative Crystal are finalists in a competition, which in order to win, they must both subject themselves to a questionnaire of the most futile order. Owen Roberts' physical comedy shines through as he gives his clumsy, unlucky, Smyth an endearing meekness that pairs up surprisingly well with Lizzy Watts' sweetly enthusiastic Crystal. A brilliant Christopher Saul plays the man behind the questionnaires, thrown into emotional crisis when he faces the people he's assessing.
All have to their advantage writer Kerry Hood's engaging dialogue, but in trying to explore multiple themes so abstractly, Hood allows her already tenuous storyline to lag further. To her credit she's cleverly steeped her script in wordplay, which makes for a strong start and finish but loses its way in the middle.
She's laid out a series of intriguing circumstances that address modern day loneliness and human worth, and in doing so has drawn attention to the timelessness of what we perceive to be 21st century problems. What she fails to do is establish a standpoint on them. Throwing up issues for contemplation is good and well if there is plot to hold the audience's attention. Failing this, Hood and director Elly Green have used an original way of considering specific dilemmas, like widespread overbearing bureaucracy. This is certainly theatre for the ponderous among us.
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