"PASSION PLAY"
PRESENTED BY FULL CIRCLE THEATRE GROUP
DIXON STUDIO, WESTCLIFF-ON-SEA, ESSEX
JUNE 2016
PRESENTED BY FULL CIRCLE THEATRE GROUP
DIXON STUDIO, WESTCLIFF-ON-SEA, ESSEX
JUNE 2016
CRACKING play, crackling production. Passion Play deserves to be esteemed as a classic of modern theatre, yet it has a meagre performance record both in London and New York, let alone the regions.
Neglected plays like this are meat and drink to Full Circle, the Essex company made up of pro and semi-pro actors and directors. Rescuing Peter Nichols's play from its undeserved obscurity, director Valery Miller and the Full Circle team deliver a production that gives us full-blooded, hard-hitting, psyche-shattering live theatre at its most sizzling.
At the heart of Passion Play is a structural device so neat that I am surprised it has not been copied left, right and centre by other writers. The play is about a happy 25-year-old happy marriage imploding messily, and wordily, as the result of an adulterous affair.
Each partner in the marriage is represented by two identically-dressed (and in the case of the actresses, identically coiffed) actors. One represents the physical person, the words they speak (often lies) and the body language they adopt. The other actor represents what is really going on in their minds, and their genuine, violent but silent, emotions.
In the second half of the play, the two “mind” actors start to engage with one another directly, tangling with ever-increasing rage, while their “real life” physical embodiments look on almost hopelessly, enfeebled by the forces they have unleashed. Fasten your seatbelts, audience, it's a bumpy ride.
Two familiar, and fine, local actresses, Amanda Whiteford and Carol Hayes, add further feathers to their head-dresses as the two parts of the wife, Eleanor. Their double-act fuses as they portray Alice's emotional journey from quiet contentment through every shade of anguish and doubt, and the final, quietly searing moment of emotional death (it involves a suitcase).
They are easily matched by Neil Patrick and Robb Stow as the two segments of the male character, husband James. Again, the two performances fuse to create a rounded portrait of a man unseated by a toxic mix of midlife crisis and volcanic sexual passion. Mr Stow in particular caps a long run of powerful performances as the invisible side of James. He is building an odd corner in tormented adulterers, having played a similar role in Harold Pinter's Betrayal a few months ago.
Radio presenter Alice Ryan is a revelation in the part of Kate, the marriage wrecker. This is one of the most convincing portraits of a determined sexual predator I have seen on stage. The temperature perceptibly hots up when she is on stage, and it is hard to imagine any man, let alone the weakling James, resisting Kate's allure. But she is also something of a mystery, perhaps even to herself. A lesbian who uses husbands to get to the wives? A lost soul desperate at her own lack of talent? A power-seeker? Kate flails around like a newly-landed fish, wrecking other lives in the process. A perfectly judged performance from Ms Ryan, though it will be hard to listen to her travel and traffic news in quite the same way again.
TOM KING
16th June 2016
Neglected plays like this are meat and drink to Full Circle, the Essex company made up of pro and semi-pro actors and directors. Rescuing Peter Nichols's play from its undeserved obscurity, director Valery Miller and the Full Circle team deliver a production that gives us full-blooded, hard-hitting, psyche-shattering live theatre at its most sizzling.
At the heart of Passion Play is a structural device so neat that I am surprised it has not been copied left, right and centre by other writers. The play is about a happy 25-year-old happy marriage imploding messily, and wordily, as the result of an adulterous affair.
Each partner in the marriage is represented by two identically-dressed (and in the case of the actresses, identically coiffed) actors. One represents the physical person, the words they speak (often lies) and the body language they adopt. The other actor represents what is really going on in their minds, and their genuine, violent but silent, emotions.
In the second half of the play, the two “mind” actors start to engage with one another directly, tangling with ever-increasing rage, while their “real life” physical embodiments look on almost hopelessly, enfeebled by the forces they have unleashed. Fasten your seatbelts, audience, it's a bumpy ride.
Two familiar, and fine, local actresses, Amanda Whiteford and Carol Hayes, add further feathers to their head-dresses as the two parts of the wife, Eleanor. Their double-act fuses as they portray Alice's emotional journey from quiet contentment through every shade of anguish and doubt, and the final, quietly searing moment of emotional death (it involves a suitcase).
They are easily matched by Neil Patrick and Robb Stow as the two segments of the male character, husband James. Again, the two performances fuse to create a rounded portrait of a man unseated by a toxic mix of midlife crisis and volcanic sexual passion. Mr Stow in particular caps a long run of powerful performances as the invisible side of James. He is building an odd corner in tormented adulterers, having played a similar role in Harold Pinter's Betrayal a few months ago.
Radio presenter Alice Ryan is a revelation in the part of Kate, the marriage wrecker. This is one of the most convincing portraits of a determined sexual predator I have seen on stage. The temperature perceptibly hots up when she is on stage, and it is hard to imagine any man, let alone the weakling James, resisting Kate's allure. But she is also something of a mystery, perhaps even to herself. A lesbian who uses husbands to get to the wives? A lost soul desperate at her own lack of talent? A power-seeker? Kate flails around like a newly-landed fish, wrecking other lives in the process. A perfectly judged performance from Ms Ryan, though it will be hard to listen to her travel and traffic news in quite the same way again.
TOM KING
16th June 2016