Firewing has a strong cast but feels cluttered, looking for a bit too much through the lensRating
Good!
Once in a past life, I was an amateur photographer. I had some photos published, I sold the odd one to Getty and was once displayed in a Tate Britain exhibit. I’ve done some wildlife photography, and while I’ve spent a little time in a hide like the photographers featured in Firewing, I’ve not spent hours lying still in mud waiting for the exact moment to take the shot. Maybe that’s why I never had any more published!
Tim (Gerard Horan) is an established wildlife photographer with a career going back decades. As part of this, he runs a programme to take a young photographer, Marcus (Charlie Beck), to his hide for the weekend. Teach him the ropes, via a 70-page manual with explicit instructions not to touch the camera. It’s a fairly straightforward dynamic initially. Grumpy experience guiding youth. However, the play turns into something more, touching on many themes.
David Pearson’s script mines the odd-couple comedy well. Their banter feels real, not forced and built from the different ways they see the world. Tim’s bafflement at Marcus brings laughs, and you can’t help but feel sorry for the latter as this grumpy older man berates him.
That dynamic smartly feeds into the rest of the story. Behind every photo, someone looks down the lens and decides how to frame the picture, where the focal point will be, where the eye will be drawn, and, inevitably, what will be left out. What is left out might be the context. The story. There might be something you could change. There might be a different photograph. Will you save the rabbit from being torn to pieces by the fox, for example? Do you photograph the outstretched hand or put the camera down and help?
Alice Hamilton’s direction keeps us moving along nicely, allowing just enough time with the characters for a baseline. It’s framed tightly, too, aware – like a lens – of what it shows and what it withholds. A flickering shadow for a passing bird? Despite the setting of a camera hide, we never actually see anything feathered. This restraint requires the actors to do much of the heavy lifting. When the script feels underdeveloped, and some story beats seem obvious and unearned, the cast really helps. The script feels unfocused, with lots of ideas thrown in, including authorship, fathers and sons, working-class roots, hobbies, truth, and even how to look at and appreciate art itself.
Questions of control and artistry begin to swirl. What are Tim and Marcus hiding, just outside of the image they present to each other? The past choices, the family and other influences and even what they know the future will bring. All out of shot, but still there, lurking and impacting each of them. As they find they have more and more in common, complex relationships with their dads and growing up poor, the connection becomes more real, more understandable.
Good Teeth’s set design shows the hide as functional, clear of distraction – the ideal place for solitude and birdwatching, focusing on that single shot and clearly not built for comfort. It’s a permanent frame around the actors, the lines drawing our attention to them, much as Tim describes the framing of a photo
Firewing is a thoughtful if uneven piece. The characters are well drawn, and it clearly understands how what we don’t see, what is left outside of the picture, can define us. It feels cluttered, though. A little more focus through the lens would go a long way. Still, it left me wondering where my camera kit is (my parents’ attic) and missing the days I looked at more through the lens.
Writer: David Pearson
Director: Alice Hamilton
Designer: Good Teeth
Lighting Designer: Jamie Platt
Sound Designer: Harry Blake
Costume Supervisor: Sharon Williams
Firewing plays at Hampstead Theatre until Saturday 23 May
