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Camden Fringe
An entertaining domestic drama, with potential for developmentSummary
Rating
Good
Brothers, Danny and Charlie, live in an increasingly decrepit Redcar council house. They have a roof, but it’s leaky; furniture, but it’s wonky; a fridge, but it’s warm; and a dad, but he’s missing both metaphorically and physically. Away From Here, the second show from Mountview graduate company, Four Square Theatre, feels a little like that home. The fundamentals are there, but a few areas need more attention.
Danny (Aaron Rooney) and Charlie (Ben Watts) have a fraught relationship. Danny is the dutiful older sibling, trying to hold the family together, to paper over the emotional cracks and keep his little brother in check. Charlie, resentful of Danny’s martyrdom, and more engaged with video games than real life, responds with insolence, obstinacy and a range of amusingly venomous death wishes for his older brother. While their dad, an absent but ominous figure, is missing in a torrential storm, they have an unexpected visit from Jack (Jacob Grunberger), the long-lost surrogate brother who has moved south and made good. Secrets are revealed, truths are told and dad, Arthur (Matt Cox), is revealed to be a white nationalist as proprietorial over ‘his country’ as over ‘his chair.’
There are good performances here, with Rooney, Watts and Grunberger showcasing both their comic and dramatic chops, and Cox making great work of a splenetic monologue. Watts is convincing as a petulant and maladjusted teenager, while 20-something Cox is surprisingly believable as a 50-year old made impotent by drink, rage and poverty. The recent riots must have provided plenty of grist to his acting mill.
Set is on-a-shoestring minimal, and by the last night of the run the 50 balloon was looking less than fresh, but it is enough to conjure a tatty sitting room and a bus stop. Lighting is likewise limited to powercut /not powercut, and sound effects to indoors /pouring rain, but again, they do the job.
Where the show could use a little more attention is in the plot. The themes are interesting – nationalism, poverty, masculinity – but none of them gets enough attention. Although it’s reasonable to assume, and the play implies, that these are interlinked, the audience is left guessing about cause and effect. Relative to other characters, Jack is underwritten and in the effort to make him a mysterious interloper, writer Rooney has compromised the character’s believability both as a doctor and as a baby-daddy. It is not entirely clear what happens as a result of the lightning strike, and the play’s ending comes very abruptly, with many questions left unanswered. All of these are remediable.
The dialogue is good and there’s the start of a very interesting, topical story about the decline of regional seaside towns, but it needs a bit more investment in the writing. If Rooney and co. can fill the plot gaps, root the action more firmly in Redcar and flesh out not only the men we meet, but also the women we don’t meet, they’ll have a very interesting kitchen sink drama.
Written by: Aaron Rooney
Directed by: Lucas Hopgood
Produced by: Four Square Theatre
Away From Home has now ended its run at Camden People’s Theatre
