Bringing A Soap Opera to Fringe Theatre
When is a review not a review? Perhaps when you’re attending the show as a guest of the theatre. Or maybe when the performance in question is part of a three-week run of a live soap opera. And then, how do you review a show that is part of an eight-episode series, with the script for each episode only finished days, or even hours, before the show goes on stage? With an open mind…
Let’s be honest, this is not high drama: this is not a script that has been carefully honed through hours and hours of readings and rehearsals. No, it is instead a quickly cobbled together piece of absurdity. And sometimes that is what we all need! Indeed, it becomes a rather strange, and very silly, show within a show. The bread surrounding this tasty snack is the story of Joe, writer of the successful soap opera, Penge West. Joe is battling on a number of fronts; his soon-to-be-ex, the TV execs who are forcing him to write the show to meet audience demographics, and the ghost of dead friend Pat from whom he’s stolen the idea of the series. Then forming the meaty filling is the soap itself, complete with every clichéd soap character you could ever hope for!
As I suggested to Bridge House Theatre’s Artistic director Luke Adamson during a recent podcast, it sounds both horrific and yet utterly compelling. It’s like a car crash you drive past: you know you shouldn’t look but you just can’t stop yourself! – because we all have a little voyeurism in us.
What the team behind this show has created is a piece of theatre that is unlikely to be winning awards and will undoubtedly have rather sniffy thespians up in arms lamenting the demise of our once great theatres. But for the rest of us it’s a whole load of fun.
The wonderful local gags, even including a bit of neighbourhood product placement, means this really is a local show for local people – but one that happily invites a few outsiders as well. And that’s what fringe theatres do best, trying out crazy ideas that completely subvert what we expect of them. It’s a piece of soul feeding escapism.
Having been dropped in at Episode 5, it’s a relief for us to be handed a summary sheet outlining what’s happened previously, as well as seeing a quick recap at the start of the evening. But even after one episode, I’m already invested in this bunch of typical soap opera characters, desperate to know whether the dead dad will actually turn up fully alive by episode eight, and just what will happen if that rich American does prove he actually owns all of Penge. And I want this to be an annual event, these characters resurrected every year to give us an update on their lives. I’m sold.
Penge West is a great idea of how to do something different and silly and encourage your local community to make possibly their first ever visit to your theatre. It plays for one more week (until Saturday 5 July), with the series finale on that last night. If you want to enjoy a bunch of theatre makers just having a whole load of fun and proving theatre can do corny and silly as well as anyone, do get along to find out how it all ends.
Penge West is playing at Bridge House Theatre until Saturday 5 July. Further information and tickets available here.
