Friday 2 November 2018

REVIEW: Lands - HOME, Manchester



With 'Lands', Antler Theatre presented an absurdist-tinged allegory of the failure of communication as a friendship is placed under strain. Leah (Leah Broterhead) loves jigsaws. She documents what she sees on each piece. She dances in celebration when pieces are joined together, and she makes “a connection”. Sophie (Sophie Steer) loves her trampoline. She spent the majority of the play’s 80-minute run-time jumping up and down on her trampoline. At times, 'Lands' was like a reworking of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, where two people are seemingly trapped together and dependent on one another, all the while resentment simmers between them. Like Beckett’s work, both Sophie and Leah break the fourth wall, usually to address Rachel at the tech desk to play a song, or to throw a glance or line to the audience. There’s also the element of narrative frustration at play, which 'Lands' shares with the work of Beckett. However, again like Beckett, there are some genuinely funny moments and an astonishing monologue near the end which is funny and tragic all at once.

As the audience entered the performance space Leah was sat at a desk, with a microphone and a lamp positioned over a box. Using tweezers, she grabbed a jigsaw piece and proceeded to describe what could be seen on that piece: “Piece 104…there’s a man with a hat. A guard. A Beefeater. He’s wearing a Beefeater hat. Is Beefeater the name of the hat or is the guard called a Beefeater?” Meanwhile, Sophie was bouncing up and down on her trampoline. This establishing scene continued and even when the house lights were down, and the play had ‘officially’ commenced, the action effectively segued into the same scene. Sophie ate a tangerine while on her trampoline and discarded the peel. Noticing the peel distracted Leah from her jigsaw and she pointed it out. The dialogue which followed is full of repetition and ellipses as Leah attempted to draw Sophie’s attention to the peel. Even when that was done, Sophie showed little sign of getting off her trampoline to clear it away and Leah ended up throwing it in the bin. Here, the characters are drawn: Leah, with her jigsaw obsession, had an element of OCD about her, driven to distraction by a discarded tangerine peel; Sophie, in contrast, was in no hurry to do anything other than bounce on the trampoline.

This initial hint of a fracture in the relationship was deepened when Leah’s lamp failed, and she tried to enlist Sophie’s help in describing a puzzle piece. Leah absent-mindedly gave Sophie the board containing the partially completed jigsaw and, inevitably, the pieces went everywhere. This led into a very funny piece of physical theatre as Sophie managed to pick up about three pieces from her trampoline – while still bouncing on it! – before Leah gave up and picked up the rest herself, barely containing how distraught she was that her work on the puzzle has gone to waste. After Sophie confessed that she can’t get off the trampoline, Leah realised she had never seen Sophie away from the trampoline and set about trying to get her off it. This section of 'Lands' was very funny with elements of slapstick (especially when Leah stood on a chair and proceeded to slap Sophie’s face) and the rapport between Brotherhead and Steer was fantastic. Yet Sophie showed no sign of dismounting from her precious trampoline. Not even Leah miming to “Don’t Give Up” by Peter Gabriel (featuring Kate Bush) was enough to lure her away. When Sophie did step off, it wasn’t long before she’s back on the trampoline. Eventually, brute force succeeded, and Leah literally dragged the trampoline away from Sophie mid-bounce. A tussle ensued, and Sophie dragged Leah’s precious, completed, favourite jigsaw puzzle off her desk. The puzzle dispersed into its constituent parts, much like the relationship between the two characters. Leah was upset, Sophie resumed her trampoline activities, and she sang Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”: “This land was made for you and me,” she was, in her way, apologising. Leah seemingly accepted the apology eventually, after Sophie tried to organise the jigsaw pieces and Leah became very excited at the prospect of doing the puzzle again, as a team. Alas, Sophie went back to her trampoline and the hurt between the pair grew anew: “You don’t understand!” they both yelled at one another – neither one willing to hear the other one out.

This tension escalated into a full-on rant from Leah who declared that she didn’t care about Sophie, or anyone, or anything. The only thing she cared about was her jigsaw and she couldn’t concentrate while Sophie’s trampoline creaked with every bounce. As Sophie refused to get off her trampoline, her ‘land’, Leah ordered Rachel to put her in darkness and play some music to drown out the sound of the trampoline. As David Bowie’s “Modern Love” played, Leah directed her lamp over to Sophie and she bounced in the spotlight. This is how we left Leah and Sophie, still with one another, both doing what they care about, and presumably doomed to repeat the cycle again.

'Lands' is an interesting, if unconventional, piece of theatre and the performances of both Brotherhead and Steer are fantastic; Steer for her ability to put in a performance whilst on a trampoline and Brotherhead excels as Leah gets more angry and desperate and her ranting monologue near the end is delivered with considerable skill. The two performers work well together, and the play is well directed. It does, however, feel a little overlong – perhaps trimmed down to an hour it would have more impact as the nature of the piece means that there is no clear driving force behind the narrative and it does feel as though it is marking time in places. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see a modern-day take on the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ and there are some very funny moments. A solid piece of theatre and entertaining to boot.

Reviewer - Andrew Marsden
on -  1/11/18

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