As soon as I entered the ADC I knew something was up. Lowri Amies was whizzing about on a scooter, blocking the theatre entrance. Come on Lowri, I thought, have a bit more respect, you love this place. The feeling of unease gathered pace as I stepped into the bar. There were paper posters dotted about the walls, ones advertising pies, ones talking about sex toys and ones that had bizarre pictures of the Statue of Liberty crying on them. It was like stepping into another world. A world vaguely redolent of the 1980’s. Then I laughed to myself. Of course! Road! That’s set in the 1980’s! Suddenly everything made sense. It was like Life on Mars or something.

This ‘timewarp’ gave me vague trepidations about the play. Surely it couldn’t all be as kooky as this? I saw Blood Brothers once and, I get it, life is no bed of roses for those Northerners who happen to live below the poverty line. But I don’t want this message to be drummed in through some patronising tale about people called Barry and Linda. So when ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ started blaring out, followed shortly after by a speech from everyone’s favourite national treasure, Margaret Thatcher, I began to start looking at my watch. Thankfully, though, the music picked up (no Damien Rice here!), and the play swiftly followed suit.  

There really were some excellent performances. Oliver Soden was highly impressive, if only through the sheer diversity of his roles. Nick Ricketts gave a thought-provoking performance as a young man starving himself to death. Eve Hedderwick-Turner was captivating throughout, her characters showing a touch of vulnerability which undermined the displays of confidence they attempted to present.

The production was stimulating and engaging throughout, which I found particularly impressive considering how well trodden this particular path has been. The anger was still there in the original script, and the power of it was felt by the audience. It did at times feel like a bit of a museum piece, for much of the dialogue in Cartwright’s script has not aged very well. I haven’t heard so much talk about “snogging” since I was about 10. The play was also too long. There should have been more cutting than there was so as to sustain the audience’s attention throughout all those monologues. It is no coincidence that the most engaging scene in the play, the final one, had the snappiest dialogue. The pared down monologues at the end of the scene were brilliantly worked, and all the more powerful for the pace shown earlier in the scene.

But the fundamental flaw of the production was that the ADC was simply too big for it. I have never been more aware of how much space there is in this theatre. What the play screamed out for was intimacy, for the claustrophobic environment of the Corpus Playrooms or the Larkum Studio. Their attempts to create a voyeuristic atmosphere by incorporating the audience into the play were ill suited to the venue. The setting and props merely seemed like reasons to justify the use of such a big stage.
The poignancy of the monologues was at times lost on the audience. The futility of the ADC’s endeavours to make the venue ‘feel’ like the 1980’s became apparent while watching the play. For you can put up as many unconvincing posters as you like; it will not paper over the cracks that arise when a well-done production is performed in the wrong venue. By Nick Beck