A CELLULOID INVASION
This was at first a startling choice: Eastern Angles’ tradition is generally, as it heroically tours night-by-night across the eastern counties, to programme plays about our region, past or present. But here’s its new CEO Jake Smith picking up this quirky little modern classic by Marie Jones, set a long way west. In it two players evoke a moment when a major film company is shooting in rural County Kerry. But why not? our own rural counties have had their fair share of similar unsettling, thrilling invasions (the last Curtis one round Gorleston way) , so it has enough to say to us as well. And nice to launch it in Oscars week..
At its centre are two local lads, enrolled in a big gang of turf-cutting extras at a very welcome £ 40 a day, willing for that to put on special “dispossessed” faces or gaze in awe at the hero on his horse, as represented by the floor manager holding up a hand at the correct eyeline. Charlie (Lorcan Strain) is recovering from his video-shop’s business failure, and clutching his own film script treatment which he vainly hopes to thrust on the visiting director. . Jake (Cathal Ryan) is back from trying for a better life in America.
Between them, in front of some beautiful simply evoked projections sketching interiors or distant Blasket Islands by Amy Watts, the pair neatly move between other characters – director, bossy floor manager, other villagers, the poutingly glamorous female star . They adjust the odd hat or garment, switching often almost within a sentence.
Ryan from Tipperary most memorably becomes bent old Mickey, keen on the drink and anxious everyone should remember he’s a seasoned extra, the last surviving one from “The Quiet Man”, (John Wayne once spoke to him, he insists) . Strain , a seasoned drag artist from Donegal, evokes the gormless optimist Charlie splendidly but has most fun in his moments as Caroline di Giovanni, the star. She picks up Jake in the pub and has, the crew murmur, “a habit of going..er..ethnic” in her relationships. At one stage Jake is summoned to her Winnebago to find her standing yogically on her head. Both performers are good comedians and mostly the demanding character-switches are fast and clear: this was the start of the tour and they will only become even more so. They also perform a startlingly spirited Irish dance at one point.
But it is when the tragedy inside the comedy flowers that the play properly grips. A younger lad, Sean (briefly evoked, drunk and angry) tries to get an extra part and is not only turned down but snubbed and removed from the pub for “bothering” the star. “Kicked outta the pub in his own town”. He is it who after this reportedly fills his pockets with stones and walks into the lake. Briefly the film crew, anxious about light and timing and costs, even try to stop the extras from going to the funeral. The sense of outrageously unbalanced, invasive power is harsh. And when Charlie and Jake start wondering how this real story could and should be told, there’s a redemptive heart to the play’s ending.Though as the haughty director observes, turning down Charlie’s earlier script, “People don’t go to the movies to get depressed. That’s what the theatre’s for”.
One of those ironic in-jokes every audience of this play enjoys. Every time. We certainly did.
TOURING: halls to 18th May: 4 nights in Ipswich Sir John Mills in early May, but a good spread across the region.
DATES – see easternangles.co.uk As ever, the Angles are awarded a touring mouse alongside raw .. it’s tough going, the one-night village hall circuit, the regime Shakespeare trained on, and few theatre companies achieve it..
rating. 4
theatreCat 