This show had a highly regarded reputation and an amazing preconception, so I had high expectations going into it.

Let me set the scene. When you enter the sold-out performance space, it’s with excitement and anticipation in the air. There are smells, and alternative pop music being played. A bus stop is in the middle of the stage, with about nine black poles dotted around it, and an electronic screen in the middle of the bus stop displaying places in Swansea and times. The screen showed drug terms and definitions before the play started, such as “chasing,” “methadone,” “tick,” “weighing and bagging,” “chasing the dragon,” and “sorter” (which I hadn’t realized until now was a drug term; it means using a drug as payment for work instead of money). This was cleverly used for setting the scene, and these were the terms the performers used in the piece. If you remembered what some of these terms meant, you could understand it when they used them in the piece. The electronic screen was also used to show captions during the performance, as Friday night’s show was one of the captioned performances.

There was an orange light from the left corner, a purple light from the right, and a blue and a green from respective sides of the bus stop before the performance started. The performers used colour so cleverly during the piece, and they had multiple magnetic lights that they would take at different points and put them on the poles to set the scene for what they were describing, as the set was minimalistic. For example, for one scene when Richard Mylan is describing “memory 3,” with a guy named Ernie and a gas fire that he, when he was younger, was getting warmth from, they took a light to that pole, and the light was a warm orangey glow like a fire, to help emphasise the scene for the audience. There were also lights behind the bus stop. An excellent example of the riveting nature of the piece is the use of seagull noises in the background, such as when Sophie Melville’s character gets a view of Mumbles. At another point, there was an electric spark and a heartbeat that kept getting faster. There are many ways in which they use lighting and sound cleverly to envelop the audience into the story.

It is very fast paced, as Richard Mylan will tell his story, and then Sophie Melville will continue with hers, and it goes back and forth throughout, so you have to try and remember what happened in each story. “Sorter” was about a nurse who got addicted to morphine, and he was a high-functioning drug addict, which is based on Richard Mylan’s (writer and actor) life. Sophie Melville played a character who was addicted to drugs, and her boyfriend was also her drug dealer. “Sorter” was an astonishing and impressive piece. It was immersive, with moments of laughter amidst the darkness, and you really felt sympathy for the characters.

It made you think retrospectively about how harshly you judge homeless people or people addicted to drugs, when many factors go into becoming addicted to something. As Sophie Melville’s character says in the piece, “they are almost impossible to get off” [paraphrased], and a lot of factors go into becoming homeless. Who are we to judge these people when they don’t get the help they need? It was eye-opening and shocking but a must-see. You had to see it in the Grand Arts Wing because you had to be in thrust and a small stage to feel close to the characters, feel sympathy for them, and understand them. Also, there were lots of references to places in Swansea, one being when Jess, Sophie Melville’s character, climbs up on the ladder behind the bus stop and talks about how “people like her don’t deserve to have such a breath-taking view of the Mumbles and Swansea, living in Mayhill” [paraphrased].

Richard Mylan and Sophie Melville are exceptional and tell the story so well that you wish you hadn’t missed it.

A review of the new digital play, exploring where film and theatre meet, follows two teenagers, one a drug runner and the other the daughter of an addict, as they navigate a dangerous adult world.

Do cats tan? Could you bring me out a blanket?

Tom Powell, The Silence and The Noise, film.

This Be The Verse

BY PHILIP LARKIN

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

‘’There are 8 reasons why teenagers take drugs: other people, misinformation, popular media, escape and self medication, boredom, rebellion, instant gratification, lack of confidence.’’

Two teenagers ‘both alike in dignity’, acting out the roles they think they should be playing and railing against the tiny crooked worlds they inhabit on instinct and experience unbalanced and afraid.

Daize and Ant , star crossed indeed and lost in an adult place where parenting and drugs are failing them and where hope and stability come from each other.

This Shakespearean duologue creeps under the skin like a needle. It is a slippery painful rush of child and adult feeling its way through the awkward brilliance of its performers. Exceptional and tragic, closed and candid, ‘you’re not a laugh a minute you know’.

I am reminded of being a lay member on the local restorative justice panel and wishing I could magic better lives for the young people we met. These teenagers couldn’t just say No, their worlds were governed differently. Victims of circumstance.  I think of them often and wonder what we should do differently as we are the village raising the child and we have a combined responsibility.

Powell forces me to return to the debates in my head – where does responsibility lie and what does it look like? Is Ant so upset by his mother’s infidelity that he looks to make money in the easiest and quickest way (sic), justifying his decisions within a dubious moral framework? How does his complicated and dangerous choice compare to Daize’s addicted and failing mother which leaves her daughter to defend herself with a knife and eat cat food? No one should have to eat cat food. It is an axis on which the play turns.

It is all relative. It is not what happens but how we deal with it. This film schleps through nature and nurture and their consequences on transitional minds.

The story telling is adept – our actors are acting out teenagers acting as adults and breaking into juvenility. It is the most powerful and upsetting screenplay. Like those young people all those years ago in the justice system, I want to take them home and protect them, restore their innocence in some naïve and offensive way. That is how convincing they are. 

But Ant takes Daize home and the bravado and the arguments become a search for the relative peace of a family set up, leaving death and chaos behind them. Perhaps this Romeo and Juliet get a happier ending.

Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

‘’Teenagers in an impossible situation. They might be each other’s only hope of escape.’ Tom Powell, https://theartiscapegallery.com/writer-tom-powell-on-the-silence-and-the-noise

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

(5 / 5)

Just over a year ago, I attended The Da Vinci Code at Theatr Clwyd. Although I enjoyed this production, I felt that the book simply didn’t translate well to the stage, mainly due to the amount of detail included in the plot which there just wasn’t time to delve into in two hours. However, the same certainly cannot be said of The Shawshank Redemption.

Based on Stephen King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, this production examines topics from injustice to friendship and most notably, hope, in a place where the word ‘hope’ seems impossible: Shawshank Maximum Security Penitentiary. The 1994 movie starred Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman and was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Among the movie’s fans were stand-up comedians Dave Johns and Owen O’Neill who realised the potential for Shawshank as a theatre production. The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, where this current tour will end, agreed, and an adaptation of the original novella was first produced there in 2009. It then transferred to London and the adaptation was rewritten and put on in Edinburgh in 2013, with its adapters co-starring alongside Omid Djalili as Red.

For those not familiar with The Shawshank Redemption– it tells the story of Andy Dufresne who, despite claiming to be innocent, is given a double life sentence for the brutal murder of his wife and her lover. Incarcerated at the notorious Shawshank facility, Andy strikes up an unlikely friendship with the prison ‘fixer’, Red, and as their relationship strengthens, things seem to be looking up. However, when Warden Stammas decides to exploit Andy’s talents for accountancy, a desperate plan is hatched.

As the play begins, we are transported to the penitentiary. The set is simple but extremely effective with the prison walls surrounding the stage on both sides and upstage, allowing for a feeling of claustrophobia throughout. The main bulk of the set remains, but as the story unfolds, each scene is set within the walls: a postered wall and a bed for Andy’s cell, a desk, chair and wireless for the warden’s office, a long mess table and chairs for meal times. The transition between scenes is flawless, with the actors completing all set and prop movement seamlessly. Most scene transitions are also marked with a prison siren or alarm to signal a new location or place in time. The fluidity of the piece is extremely impressive, the action narrated by the character Red, portrayed perfectly by Ben Onwukwe. Red speaks directly to the audience, often regarding sensitive prison topics such as gambling, rape, corruption and so on, and he draws us in, allowing us to empathise not only with him, but with other inmates at Shawshank so we better understand life within the walls- we are allowed on a journey with each character over the course of the ‘twenty years’ we spend with them. And it’s not without a great sense of humour and plenty of comedic elements. Also noteworthy is

Red’s final monologue which he delivers as he completes a full costume change, reflective of his character’s change from despair to hope. A ‘changed’ man?

Joe Absolom’s Andy is the perfect mix of kind, compassionate, determined, if not a little arrogant in his own self-sufficient way. Absolom provides the character with just enough ‘crazy’ to have you questioning his every move. Consequently, even those familiar with the story begin to question the outcome! Credit must go to the lighting team- providing an appropriate atmosphere throughout. From the spotlights on the new ‘fresh’ inmates at the very beginning, to the effect provided for Andy’s fluttering butterfly at the end. Lighting is also used effectively to depict the men watching a Rita Hayworth movie, giving the impression that a projector is being used, as well as for scene transitions and instances of violence which are cleverly choreographed alongside appropriate light and dark moments.

Dave Johns and Owen O’Neill were certainly spot-on in believing that The Shawshank Redemption could work well in the medium of theatre. The prison setting makes for a fast paced, adjustable, well thought out production, which shifts from scene to scene effortlessly. With the addition of successful sound, lighting, costume and a fantastic cast, this is a must-see production.

The Shawshank Redemption continues its UK Tour on March 6^th at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry and finishes on May 13th at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Head to the website to book your tickets:

Theatr Clwyd, Mold

February 27^th-March 4^th, 2023

Cast

Andy Dufresne: Joe Absolom

Ellis ‘Red’ Redding: Ben Onwukwe

Warden Stammas: Mark Heenehan

Brooksie: Kenneth Jay

Hadley: Joe Reisig

Entwistle: Owen Oldroyd

Bogs Diamond: Jay Marsh

Rooster: Leigh Jones

Rico: Jules Brown

Dawkins: Kieran Garland

Tommy Williams: Coulder Dittman

Kelly: Samarge Hamilton

Creative

Director: David Esbjornson

Associate Director: Tim Welton

Designer: Gary McCann

Lighting Designer: Chris Davey

Sound Designer: Andy Graham

Fight Director: Alison De Burgh

Company Stage Manager: Simon Bannister

Deputy Stage Manager: Lucie Jackson

Technical Assistant Stage Manager: Sam Scott

Lx No 1: Matt Chaloner

Costume Supervisor: Johnny Palmer

Head of Wardrobe: Nadine Conell