Review: Foal, Finborough Theatre

There’s one thing that Finborough Theatre always seems to do well: nearly every show I have seen here over the years excels in its production. The sound, the lighting, the set – everything always seems to be a cut above most pub theatres. There’s probably a reason for this, but whatever that is, it’s always a thing to behold.

Titus Halder’s Foal is no exception. Cara Evans’ set is cleverly effective, with a bench under a streetlight creating a setting that fits each of the locations the story is told from. Then Pierre Flasse’s sound hits you full on from almost the beginning (even if the occasional use of a microphone is one of my serious peeves and feels utterly unnecessary here). Lastly, Rajiv Pattani’s lighting, much like the sound, at times is a full-frontal attack on our senses, yet helps set the tone, from the quiet of the island locations to the hustle and bustle of a busy city

Equally as outstanding as the thoughtful production is Amar Chadha-Patel’s solo performance. He certainly owns the space, demanding your full attention. I’m always in admiration of any solo performer who can dominate the stage on their own, while remembering such a long script!  

But great performance and great production values can only carry a show so far. So, it is rather a shame that all those elements are then rather let down by a script that feels like a sixty-minute introduction, a moment of (predictable and unshocking) violence and a sort of ending. None of which manages to ever create a suitably gripping story to justify all the effort gone in elsewhere. It might be a long script, but it’s largely a lot of words that just never feel as if they belong together. 

Maybe the start of any issues is that it’s billed as a thriller. It really isn’t. A thriller requires an element of tension, of suspense, a question of what is or might be about to happen. Foal has absolutely none of that. That’s not to belittle its themes on what happens when racism becomes a part of everyday life, amplified by the protagonist being one of the few non-white people on a small island where everyone knows everyone. It’s just that those themes need more to work around. Here, you know all that constant drip, drip, drip of racism must finally overflow; yet there’s just not enough tension present because it’s more than obvious where this is leading. When it does finally reach that point, well, there’s a feeling of ‘So what’? What follows this zenith is more a case of ‘Is that it?’ 

Clearly, Halder wants to say plenty with the play. Alongside the normalisation of racism that his central character tolerates for so long, he makes constant reference to “the other me” – the person he could have been under different circumstances, had life dealt him different cards. But as with so much else, it’s tricky to pin down where this really wants to go. Maybe it’s failing to grasp any meaning in this specific point that causes such a disconnect from the whole.

The show has a start. iI has an end and a sort of middle. But there’s so little in between to hold it together that, come the end, I’m still wondering when it’s all going to actually start. But hey, the production values are still up there with the usual Finborough high standards, it’s just a shame the script isn’t.

Written by Titas Halder
Directed by Annie Kershaw
Set and Costume Design by Cara Evans
Lighting Design by Rajiv Pattani
Sound design by Pierre Flasse
Produced by Hannah Farley-Hills

Foals plays at the Finborough Theatre until Saturday 30 May