This is a new, site-specific play by Alison Carr. The world has been given seven hours’ notice that an asteroid the size of Singapore is about to hit the Earth, specifically via the bit of sky above Salford (why not?) and, being the stoic Northerners that the audience are, we have all decided to congregate in the pub and spend our last two hours of life having a pub quiz. As you do. Box Of Tricks Theatre Company presented tonight’s performance in the genuine working pub The Welcome Inn, Salford.
This is a really good idea for a play, and there was a lot of fresh comedy and some genuinely moving performances from the actors. But the audience had also been cast into the play as actors too, and that part of it was not quite handled as effectively as it could have been.
Let’s go back to the actors. Meriel Scholfield ruled as our pub landlady Kathy. Warm and friendly, she pumped audience hands vigorously and seemed to know everybody by their (fictional) name: – one luckless man was assigned the identity of Paul, her naughty ex, but as the world was about to end, she generously exempted him from his pub ban. She was soon joined by her barman Rav, who had donned a sequinned evening jacket and was now relishing in his alternate role as quizmaster. Shaban Dar was bossy, playful, anal and entertaining all at the same time as he dictated his music and launched the quiz that he had specially prepared for this momentous night.
So I was in a warm pub with my drink and crisps, I’d run into a friend to chat to over the quiz sheet, and I love pub quizzes. I actually forgot I was there to watch a play, and though Kathy had casually mentioned that we only had two hours to live, I forgot about that part too. Certainly nobody around me was bothered. We were all focused on those thirty questions……..
…… And just when we’d swapped sheets to mark the first round: – Kathy’s estranged brother Bobby, who she hadn’t seen for twenty years, burst through the door and demanded her car to escape the apocalypse.
…… And just when we’d swapped sheets for the next marking: – Rav’s ex-girlfriend Fran from high school, who’d been secretly stalking him on Facebook for years, burst through the door to declare that she was in love with him.
…… And: - so on.
This made the play very hard to concentrate on, because each time the marking was held up until they’d finished, and all I could think about was: did I get the Serena Williams question right? Please, Alison Carr – can you hold off the next scene until the marking’s been finished? (There were five quiz rounds, so this was a very frustrating play structure for an audience of trivia fiends……)
Chris Jack gave a mature and moving performance as Bobby, with an emotional arc leading up to a climatic reflection on his life in divorced and mortgaged middle management. Amy Drake brought a kooky yet vulnerable edge to Fran, thrashing around a little desperately for meaning in her own empty life, and yet still finding the goofy comedy of her role. Between them, they drew out the back stories and deeper emotional depths of Kathy and Rav, with a few new discoveries along the way….. And then right towards the end of the two hours, the lights started going on and off, and for the first time, we the audience looked up and felt the apocalypse to be near……
This is where I feel director Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder had left out a dimension. The actors were talking about how five hours earlier they had been smashing crockery, hiding under office desks and looting the stationery cupboard in reaction to the news of their impending doom, and presumably we as audience-actors would have been reacting in similar ways earlier too, before arriving for our night of jollity. If the apocalypse had been factored in a little more in the earlier scenes of the play – a bit more unstable electricity, a bit more radio news being heard without being drowned out by audience chatter – if that tang had been put in beneath the frothy comedy and personal reconciliations – then it would definitely have been a last night on Earth to remember.
I will not divulge if our table won the £500 cash prize for best team name.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 13/2/20
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