In a city tortured by dire call centre conversations, and the perpetually rising intonation of students, why put them on stage?
In The Man at Finborough Theatre playwright James Graham has successfully created minimally interactive production that has his audience unfailingly engaged throughout. Using a simple idea with great effect, Graham takes his audience through the ups and downs, mostly the downs of life of Ben Edwards, the self-employed owner of a small nameless business is trying to fill out his tax return.
As Graham demonstrates with awkward nervous energy, tax returns upset Ben. Shockingly incompetent for a 25 year-old PGCE holder, he has trouble finding reference numbers and isn't entirely sure of which form he's filling out or what expenses he can claim for. Graham, whose previous works include the impressive The Whiskey Taster at Bush Theatre can claim as his chief success here, a well crafted story that by no means lacks structure but is flexible enough to reveal in random order the sad back-story of a warm, funny character after the hardest tax year of his life. Punctuating Ben's reminiscence are his interactions with Lisa at the Inland Revenue. Her endless patience and comforting humour is sweet but never takes away from the harsh reality of helpline conversations being ultimately the forced meeting of desperate strangers via pseudo-anonymous phone lines
Every member of the audience is given a receipt as they enter, most of these are from Sainsbury's, some are train tickets, oyster top-up receipts, i-tunes print-outs and cinema tickets. Each prop prompts a memory from our new friend Ben, and as he collects them in and sorts them into boxes, he reveals with amusing familiarity stories of shopping when broke, journeys to his parents home, dates with a fit blonde and a quirky red-head, getting together and breaking up. Graham has cleverly covered funerals and weddings, hospital visits, theatre outings and the array of music that provided the soundtrack. His concept and script is faultless and ideal for an intimate theatre like Finborough. It's execution on the other hand is lacking.
The audience interaction is a huge success. As Graham walks into the audience to collect the receipts, people eagerly raise their hands and lean forward intrigued to find out what story lies behind their seemingly mundane monetary record. But Graham fails to utilise the range of activities and displays a surprising limited range of emotion, making the perpetually apologetic Ben seem flat. When a playwright performs in his own play there' s huge investment in the character and a focus on portraying their most precious aspects most prominently. To his credit Graham nails Ben's nervousness and articulates brilliantly his realisation that where he was once the generation of the future, he is now the present and failing miserably to keep up. But there is also a painful failure to change pace and tone making The Man an hour and twenty minutes of that annoying rising intonation that makes everything sound like a question. Hopefully the rotating team of actors including Samuel Bennet, Leander Deeny and George Rainsford will combat this.
The Man runs at Finborough Theatre until 19th June
Photo Credit: Elyse Marks
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