THEATRE REVIEW: Too Much World At Once - HOME, Manchester

In this new play by Billie Collins, premiering at Manchester's HOME prior to a UK tour, innovative theatre company Box Of Tricks brings us a nightmarish scenario about birds, climate change, and familial understanding. 

Recipe: In a bowl mix ideas and themes from 'The Day After Tomorrow' film, the central premise of Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', the animals and horror of Hitchcock's 'The Birds', with a sprinkling of Kate Tempest, and you will get a flavour of this play, which is essentially about how a family comes to terms with their somewhat unconventional relationships, whilst navigating an end-of-days scenario where the weather becomes tempestuous and water levels rise. In the middle of all of this is the fact that our central character (called Noble) finds he turns into a starling, and hides out in a schoolfriend's barn until the right time to fly to South Georgia to be with his sister. It sounds more like a comedic recipe for disaster than anything, but surprisingly this play does work, and works well. This however is due in no small part to the convincing and naturalistic acting from the four cast members. 

Alexandra Mathie is a senior school teacher whose husband is constantly working away on business, and her son Noble, attends the same school. Their house is slowly but surely sinking and suffering the effects of subsidence which is a lovely metaphor for the dynamics of the family who live there. Mathie gives a studied performance as a concerned mother who doesn't really quite understand her children, and her stubbornness at staying put, despite her house and her world falling apart around her, still stays stoic to the end. Sadly she is at times too quiet to hear, as her deliberately introverted emotions get the better of her, so a little more projection in these instances is needed.  

Evie Hargreaves plays Cleo, the sister who is doing essential anthropological climate change research on albatrosses in South Georgia with a steady mix of twenty-something gusto and bravado, and teenage immaturity; whilst Ewan Grant pitches his teenage character spot on as a personable and good-natured schoolboy who just happens to be gay and wants to wear nail polish, which sets him apart from the in-crowd, and becomes something of a misfit because of it. 

The central character of Noble, the teenage son who, on his 15th birthday starts to turn into a bird, is the one character that certainly could have been performed in a much more comedic or unrealistic way given that he has to transform twice in front of the audience; however in the hands of actor Paddy Stafford, Noble was completely believable and realistic and the aptronym of noble isn't lost on us. 

The playscript however is a little strange, inasmuch as it mixes scenes and geographical locations vagariously, especially in the first half, and there are many passages which are written as performance poetry which makes it hard for the actor to give a realistic and sincere portrayal of their characters if they are forever breaking into a somewhat false style of theatrical presentation. Adam Quayle's direction of the work doesn't do them any favours in this regard either, as the performance poetry / choral speaking episodes are highlighted with strange unnatural movement and very theatrical furniture moving, which goes against the very realistic directing style of the actual narrative. I understand the reasoning behind all of this, but from a simple theatre-goers perspective, it is a little odd and offputting. Moreover, using Katie Scott's strange set design was not helping much either, and certainly was not optimal for this production. A completely bare stage would have worked better. A circular central dais with wooden slats "falling" from a hanging arrangement above, whilst a broken window (hardly ever used or referenced) and bits of furniture lay to one side.

The play acts as a wake-up call (perhaps too late) that our world is about to end, and end in a huge natural disaster; but it is also a very human story too.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 6.3.23