A seriously dark play with plenty of laughs!Rating
Excellent
BU21 is a verbatim-style production that imagines a terrorist attack in which a passenger plane is brought down over Fulham. Performed in the basement at The Lower Marsh Arts Club, with the audience seated around a thrust stage, it features a collection of six very different individuals attending a PTSD support group for people affected by the event. The group’s facilitator isn’t present, but as the play unfolds, we learn each person’s story and how the horrors of the day affected them.
The staging is minimal, using only chairs which are moved throughout the hour-long performance. Because the audience is so close to the action, the experience feels very intimate, especially during the emotionally charged monologues.
Despite being a play about a fatal plane crash, it has plenty of humour. Alex, played by Jack Hinckley, is an obnoxious, privileged City boy, who is so vile that he’s funny, although it’s hard to feel sorry for him. But Hinckley has a charm that draws you in, and you begin to realise, and certainly hope, that Alex’s behaviour is down to trauma, rather than solely to his background.
Izzy, played by Syama Rayner, is the epitome of a naïve posh girl. Rayner gives a very believable portrayal of someone who thinks she can get through this ordeal and that life will soon be fabulous again.
Hasan Shah is well cast in the role of Clive, who is likeable, upbeat and funny, while Ema Pasic gives a strong performance as Ana, the most subdued and serious member of the support group and the one who has been impacted the most physically, as well as mentally by the tragedy. Grace Borer’s Floss suffers frequent flashbacks and, in a clever plot point, finds herself in a new relationship as a direct result of the catastrophe. Adam Paul Brown plays Darren, a ‘geezer’ who gets caught up in the aftermath of the crash by being in the wrong place at the right time – or should that be, the right place at the wrong time?
Playwright Stuart Slade’s clever script touches on racism, prejudice, suicide and misogyny without preaching. The monologues shift from emotion to humour, so you never quite know whether to laugh or cry. It is a thought-provoking play about how humans respond to grief and shock, and how unpredictable and individual those responses can be; a story about healing and how this may or may not be possible. As Izzy says, “It’s strange how the things that break you also make you stronger.”
Written by Stuart Slade
Directed by Karen Holley
Produced by Brittany Rex
Intimacy Coordinator: Nora Iso-Kungas
Movement Director: Angela Botha
Lighting Design by James Denny
Sound Design by Steven Ramondt
BU21 plays at Lower March Arts Club until Sunday 25 October.
