The Domino Effect at Reading College, May 24th 2005.

I have seen this play before. Well, not this play, but ones just like it by every student theatre group that heads north to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that isn’t doing Bouncers or whatever piece of Beckett seems most popular that year. It’s a play by very young people about how dreadful it is being grown up and more specifically about how dreadful it is to deal with those prerequisites of being grown up – having a job and having sex and failing to find love.

That said this particular incarnation, written and presented by Nebulous Theatre Productions, rises above many other similar endeavours on several fronts. For a start the physical element of this physical theatre piece was remarkably slick – practiced, well-honed and often very effective. Character monologues were regularly punctuated by entirely appropriate and unobtrusive ensemble illustrations which occurred both behind and around the speaker. This elevated even the less profound or knowledgeable passages into something both entertaining and thoughtmaking.

All of the actors used the blank stage (all black, with three chairs making up the entirety of the office) as a canvas on which to write large their characters, neither being afraid of such emptiness nor filling it unnecessarily.

We were introduced to five specific people during the show and it was in this that some of the limitations of what was being done showed. Luke Burton made a good show of bringing to life the gay character, Douglas, but the script he was working with was so similar to the one used by the Legz Akimbo Theatre Company in the League Of Gentlemen in their very funny but utterly inappropriate and ultimately patronising schools’ play XXXXXXXXX that it was the one part of the show that seemed to be a parody. It seemed as if the cast had been writing about a situation they had not been in, as did some of the office-bound scenes – David Brent has a lot to answer for – whereas the scene in which Kerry Vincent, playing ‘the boss’, goes into town and visits a succession of retail establishments had the solid ring of authenticity about it – and was brilliantly comically realised by the supporting cast. When this sort of authenticity showed through it really shone.

Zoe Iles’ monologue as ‘the office temp’ was notably strong and Diane Allen as ‘the slut’ also brought a veracity and sadness to her acting that gave the show a very memorable closing scene. Jade Cooper danced well as ‘the stripper’ but for me her scene was overshadowed by one of the other dancers claiming to have been bitten the night before (on the bum) by her python (a python, of course, is a constrictor and may have hugged her bottom quite vigorously but is very unlikely to have nipped). It is only the most irritating of audience members, perhaps, who find such errors of consequence so I shall say no more.

On the whole the piece was well produced – the light and sound was very well integrated – and the supporting players were quite brilliant – utterly supportive but never overshadowed by the main players – and if the only flaw is that little of any novelty or wisdom was said one can take a twofold comfort: firstly that each of these actors, individually, could well go on to do impressive things; and secondly that now that Nebulous Theatre Productions has this rite of passage piece that all young physical theatre groups must do out of the way they can take their obvious talents onto something more worthy.

This certainly wasn’t a dull night out and worth seeing for the music of the movements. It bodes well.

A F Harrold (c) 2005