A studio theatre / fringe theatre production, performed in Bury Met's 'The Box' with an audience of only 26 people, this was a rather intimate, grass-roots, and up-close 70 minute production played through without interval. The two actors, John Gorick and Jon Haynes performed all the roles between them, and despite a very slow and uninspiring start, once the play got into its stride, the audience understood the production more, relaxing into it, and the laughter started to flow, it did become quite enjoyable. It just took too long a time to get there. The premise of this story and indeed the story's starting point was that of them being the two gravediggers (Act 5 Scene!) of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet', albeit in modern dress and in the present day. These roles have most usually been seen as comedy relief in the Shakespeare tragedy, and despite them musing on the meaning of death, the rights and wrongs of a Christian burial, and social status in general, that is how they were portrayed here too... as figures of fun, maybe even ridicule.
Majority of the comedy, at least in the first half of the play, relied very much on body language and repetition of monotonous actions, there was very little dialogue. It really only came into its own once the two started truly "mucking about", telling silly jokes, interacting with the front row of audience (grave stones) and the whole Shakespearean 'dream sequence'. Had we got here much sooner, the play would, I feel sure, have been better received. Too little too late was the cry! The denouement, and the rewind was a very good and funny idea, which was sadly quite poorly executed. In this particular reviewer's opinion it would have worked so much better had they used silly rewind music to accompany it, not the monotonous drone we were given, whilst it should have been speeded up instead of played out almost real-time. It was quite funny for the first 30 seconds, after that, it as simply boring and predictable. The actual ending (suitcases) was also a good idea, but again, why could they not have finished where they did instead of coming back on stage again, spoiling the illusion. Directed by David Woods and Jon Haynes, I feel the production was in danger of being rather too self-indulgent and introvert. Many of the jokes didn't work because they were too slow in being performed, and there was no sense of urgency built in any of the scenes. The gun fire was never explained. Sight lines, despite the smallness of the auditorium was also a huge problem and seated on the back row (of 5) I was unable to see anything on the floor, or what happened to the characters when they were on the floor.
It was obvious that the company cares much about what it does and for a company which call themselves Ridiculusmus, perhaps take themselves a little too seriously. Overall it was a pleasant hour spent in their company, but it was a totally unmemorable production which felt much more like a drama school exercise than anything else.
Reviewer - Alastair Zyggu
on - 10.4.25
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