Monday 10 August 2020

ONLINE MONOLOGUE REVIEW: 7 Years, 7 Messages - The Lockdown Theatre Company


In this monologue performed in isloation by The Lockdown Theatre Company (available for free on YouTube), the monologue has a short introduction by company founder and writer, Rohan Candappa, in which he tells us that this piece is a short except from a much longer piece that he was planning to go into production with just before lockdown, and so that project has now had to be put on hold.

The piece is about seven messages left on an answering machine over the course of seven years. An answering machine being that lovely piece of technology that took voice messages from people who called your land-line back in the day!

Cut to Ashley Gerlach performing a section of  'Year 1, Message 1'. It's a very long and rambling message - yes, the suspension of the disbelief or whatever you want to call it has to come into play here, simply because it was not possible to leave a message of this length! He met a girl down the pub the other night and he now has her telephone number, and is somewhat naive and tongue-tied, nervous, embarrassed, and seemingly somewhat immature if we are to believe he is playing his real age, which I would imagine is mid twenties. However...

It's nice to see the person delivering the voice message as this adds a new dimension to just listening to the voice - which is what the girl at the other end would undoubtedly be doing. Finishing with a deliberately off-key and terrible rendition of 'Don't You Want Me baby' which would be enough to frighten anyone off, he stops recording.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 9/8/20

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