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Picture
Motortown
Triple Helix Productions
Dixon Studio, Palace Theatre, Westcliff on Sea
29th July 2017

It didn’t take long before Triple Helix got back together to produce another piece of theatre.  For three guys (Josh Picton, Sam Thomas and Harry Neal) who have only just completed their first year of drama school and university, their back catalogue already includes two excellent and competently performed plays with Dennis Kelly’s D.N.A and also with another Simon Stephens gritty drama, Punk Rock.

Punk Rock certainly provided some great theatre with its ‘in your face’ storyline, however, Motortown, takes things to a whole new level.  

Written by the same man who adapted Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Simon Stephens, you could be forgiven for thinking that this play would have similar sentiments - you would be very, very wrong.

Motortown is Dagenham, Essex, so called as it used to be home to the Ford car manufacturing giant.  It is where Danny returns home to after serving as a squaddie in Basra.

PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is something that most will be familiar with these days; stories of soldiers coming back from war zones with PTSD are sadly all too common but at least now in 2017 we accept that it is something that needs to be acknowledged and treated.  Back in the days of the Iraq conflict, which began in 2003, all too many soldiers were returning home to a country of people who had no idea of the horrors that they had witnessed and been involved in.

Danny’s return to Dagenham finds him with a girlfriend he thought would be waiting for him but who has moved on; with parents he despises too much to visit and ends up living with his special needs brother.  

The irony of this sorry tale is that his return to home, which should provide him with the comfort and safety with which he was deprived off as a squaddie, in reality is never really obtained.  Home seems more of a foreign land than his army barracks and he retaliates by bringing the carnage of the war back with him.

The play is shown through a number of duologues and these are punctuated with the same punchy incidental music, performed on a set that is bare but for a large sheet of clear plastic hanging down centre stage where the actors take turns to set table and chairs in various positions.  Simple, yet effective and frankly all that is needed.  
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Jack Rowell takes on the mammoth role of Danny who is never offstage and he portrays the tortured soldier convincingly well. You can see his character gradually diminishing into a tragic mental decline as he becomes aggravated and traumatised after reuniting with the friends, family, acquaintance’s and strangers who think they know what he’s been through, but really have no idea.

Elliot Bigden plays Danny’s special needs brother, Lee, and has clearly done his homework on this wonderful character who is struggling with his loyalties to his brother.

There are some nicely played performances from all the cast including Daniel Steward and Christina Waymark as Justin and Helen, Morgan Eves as Danny’s girlfriend, Marley and Matty Kirk as Tom.  Ela Kozoglu as 14 year old Jade does a brilliant job, especially in one scene which made very uncomfortable viewing and if not played right would not have worked as well as it did and credit also for this scene to Jack Rowell.  

However, Alex Abineri must surely win the award for delivering one of the most chillingly vile and terrifying performances of the evening in the role of Paul; a peach of a part for any actor but which must have taken a huge amount of time and development to reach.  His performance gave goosebumps - but for all the wrong reasons. 

Artistic Director, Josh Picton, assisted by Danny Whitelaw, has had only three and half weeks to bring this play to the Dixon Studio and I never cease to be amazed by what he manages to draw out from his actors, especially in this instance, in such a short space of time.  Along with Sam Thomas in charge of design and lighting, and producer, Harry Neal, the three are certainly a force to be reckoned with and I can’t wait to see what their second year of university and drama school will bring back to the Southend theatre scene.  Whatever it may be, don’t miss it because these guys just get better and better.

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