Sunday March 3rd 2019 Waterloo, Vault Festival
Yes the £9 glass of wine - ouch
I was lulled beautifully into the £5.10 for a pint of Estrella at a nearby bar, but it all meant nowt as my £15 ticket let me watch and review a show.
I stumbled, quite literally into the Vault festival in London's Lower Marches under Waterloo.
I'm a fan of reviewing this kind of theatre as the Vault Festival encourages people to write, act and produce just like bands back in the 80's would play and perform their own songs and Deadbeat tried to showcase them. A creative explosion is good for the soul whether learning a trade or just playing for fun..
Nowadays the price has changed and at these prices the voices are possibly not as cosmopolitan as London is, but nonetheless you have to strike out.
Which I did indeed when I joined the queue for the gents. Only one toilet for us and two for the girls, wonderful irony when more toilets are now gender neutral.
The auditorium filled up quickly. When a late arriving lassie shrieked "ah need a piss" I chuckled, knowing she'd be quick.
On her return she announced "I made it", "you made it" her pal reiterated, the lights dimmed and the action started.
A superb night watching three actors perform an interesting play that engaged at will, sometimes meandered, raised the roof with hysterical laughter, whilst casting a confusingly dark shadow over the many different locations, played out on a fairly small stage. I didn't count the many locations but credit to the actors and set designers for creating and inhabiting the space in our minds.
Botwana's Number One Ladies private detective, may have been an inspiration or possibly 'Sherlock stalks a stalker', but as the play moved on it was clear there were twists and counter twists as they played 'carry on up the cluestalk'. There is always the temptation to squeeze extra in and five one hour episodes a la Sherlock Holmes may have enabled the characters to relax into their roles and the writer to balance the prose.
As it was they moved Helter Skelter through the plot and took the audience on the ride. The laughter from the paying patrons proved there was plenty to please them.
The play opens at a lesbian dating night where it becomes clear one of the characters will enjoy an inner narrative with the audience while the other isn't there for the dating. Our sleuth Sullivan spoke swiftly and her words swung in the air, with the audience, back to her speed date and back to the audience. She's clearly in love with herself, her voice, vast knowledge, great powers of investigation and its funny. She listens, narrates preconceived notions and responds with all the consideration the character comes with.
As the speed date developed the straight character came clean, admitting she was only there to throw a male stalker, Swann, off the scent.
The appalling ends she described to evade including confronting the stalker providing both scary and comedic overtones juxtaposed against the background of being straight at a lesbian speed date.
Our sleuth lost no time in explaining she was out of the game with overtures of double entendre slap stick confusion. The challenge was there, the gauntlet picked up, Sullivan would indeed investigate, "what's your name?", "Madelaine" as through the window peeked, Madeleine's monstrous stalker Swann.
Some jokes really tickle me, and there was something really hysterical about Sullivan the Sleuth being so good at the PI job that she'd given up, told the audience about, won awards for etc, that she hadn't even asked Madelaine her name during the pre-nuptials of the speed date. I thought I heard her say "you're my favourite biscuit....." during the date or maybe I didn't it.
The dialogue was intricate, as it fizzed fast between the two of them. It was very funny. Madelaine squirmed awkwardly as she came clean and dug deeper holes with her narrative while the additional layer of Sullivan the Sleuth's inner dialogue delivery was proving very pithy indeed.
The audience were laughing so much some gags could be missed. It's brave for young writers to put in a laughter break but foolish if the audience don't get it. Some of tonight's crowd seemed to know the play and a few were ahead of the rest of us.
As Madelaine engaged Sullivan the Sleuth, at £80 a day no less, there followed some excellent narrative as the pair bumped into each other, playing out their roles in the play within the play. The work to work, the lunch break and going home all were given locations and the options for the carry on comedy were all max'd out.
The plot developed very quickly into sleuth, stalker and stalked. It was a tricky tightrope to tread as the subject matter is extremely serious and the writer tried to give the stalker a sadder profile to shift the light into farce rather than trivialise the issue, I'm not sure where you go with that but the device used, was to humanise the stalker by turning the sleuth into a stalker too. With stalkers 2-1 up on the stalked it became apparent that majority rules apply and so we moved to comedy.
At first the sleuth was stalking Swann the stalker, then in a bizarre little twist they joined forces, hiding in a bush together, to enable the stalker to be stalked by the sleuth at close quarters.
Keeping up?
The play slides and crashes into 'carry-on' up the 'can stalk will stalk', moving into the full comedic confusion of who's stalking who and why before an explosion back into reality as the stalker realises the sleuth has the jump on him.
It's moving so fast now I did have a bit of trouble keeping up. Madeleine, the stalked, then does a runner and having had very predictable behaviour starts to vary her routines.
At this point I'm a bit confused, but to be fair, I've still not looked at my watch, so my attention is being held.
Sullivan the sleuth shows her hand as she breaks into Madeleine's flat while Swann is angry at his fellow stalker crossing the line. I'm not sure if these were metaphorical lines or comedic crossings of the code as stalker Swann saw it.
I'd never give away the ending and to be fair I'm still not quite sure what happened. There was a bit of a crash and a bang and it felt like the stalked was now being blamed for bringing it on herself. She was standing on a bridge and before she jumped, she threw her phone and then smiled to camera, put on a wig and said 'here we go again', or words to that effect. A serial stalking victim? As we left the Velvet Underground were playing "Femme Fatale" so I guess the moral if there was one, was that, dull deserves what dull gets, for acting like a femme fatale. Hmmm dunno about that.
The play will have benefited the writer, director, cast and crew, which is why new work is encouraged. If it travels to the Edinburgh fringe I'll look forward to seeing it again with a few of the narratives nursed into shape. The way they used the stage was very impressive at times even physical and the actors were all very impressive with their dialogue and movement.
The first 40 minutes were fast, furious and funny. Sometimes you need to focus on the best aspects and stumbling back into the serious stalking subject matter was in my view a mistake. A straight comedic ending would benefit this play enormously.
Vinny Bee
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I've not been too successful at loading all the copies up on this site despite all the help I've received particularly from Gordon at www.retrodundee.blogspot.com, but if anyone wants a copy, not already loaded up I'll try and email one through.
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