An unconventional piece of experimental theatre that suffers from a lack of depthRating
OK!
One of the best things about the London theatre scene is the amount of experimental work that is produced, and already this year, there has been some stunning weirdness from the likes of Rosa Garland’s Primal Bog and TG Works’ The Uncontainable Nausea of Alec Baldwin (which deserves an award for that title alone). Unfortunately, Mushroomification doesn’t reach their lofty heights: it’s inspired, but it’s also lacking in substance.
Initially, it starts out as a kind of one-person (fungus?) version of Waiting For Godot, as a sentient mushroom (Garrick Pagel) repeatedly expresses a desire to spread spores, until they can no longer deny the stark truth that they are all alone, the other mushrooms having been torn out of the ground by a feral animal. From having a shared single purpose to exploring a variety of desires, the monologue hurtles all over the place until it ends with a weird sliver of whimsy, where they decide that what they really want out of life is to be a dancer.
A quick but slightly clumsy scene change introduces the other two protagonists (Till Schindler and Tiger Mitchell), but it’s hard to figure out just quite who they are. Dressed in white lab coats, the two men proclaim themselves to both be scientists, but most of the time they bicker away like irritated siblings, neither happy with the other’s presence yet seemingly unable to consider a world where they’re not together. They’re also supposed to be taking turns as lead scientist and deciding what the experiment of the day will be, but a trick one-sided coin has meant that their relationship is on the verge of falling apart.
It flits between these two scenarios, and while there’s some amusing enough physical comedy between the two brothers, and our sentient fungus comes across as appealing, it’s hard to get a firm grasp on what the Heads On Crooked Theatre Collective is trying to do with this work. The dafter elements are fairly funny at the beginning of the play, but it needs to build on the ideas it establishes, instead of briefly flirting with them before finding another bunch of oddball concepts it wants to put in to the mix.
Given the level of absurdity, this really needs to have at least a slightly grounded beginning, a sense of the reality that the play exists within. But that’s never established here, and while it’s not necessarily an issue when it comes to the mushroom, it is when you have two humans who behave in such unusual ways. The final third takes a dark turn, but it’s impossible to care, as it’s never clear who these people really are.
There’s definitely nothing inherently bad about the production and writer performers Pagel and Schindler deserve credit for not producing a conventional play which explores ideas you’ve seen countless times before. There are some great lines in this, and ideas which could have been fascinating if they’d been explored in more depth, but with a just under fifty-minute running time, it feels like they’ve bitten off far more than they can masticate.
Written by Garrick Pagel & Till Schindler
Co-Directed by Lola Rose Wood & Garrick Pagel
Co-Produced by Garrick Pagel, Leah Byrne & Till Schindler
Sound & Lighting Design by Yashique Chalil
Costume by Tilly Bankes
Mushroomification (Legs, Legs, Legs) plays at The Drayton Arms until Saturday March 28
