The cast of three, warm but not saccharine, do a fantastically committed job of engaging their young audience (ages 3+). Mark Kane‘s Stick Man is a skinny, slightly geeky, but totally authoritative presence, with a nice line in extremely daft dancing. Playing most of the obstacles in Stick Man’s way, Emily Pollet tackles a welter of quick changes with clarity and vim, and still manages to invest the deserted Stick Lady with a soothing blend of sadness, stoicism and calm. The production also boasts a jaunty, catchy score by Benji Bower, which jogs sympathetically alongside Stick Man on his journey, with Brian Hargreaves (on percussion, saxophone, melodica and much else) pausing periodically to cheerfully channel the book’s narrative voice of warning (‘O Stick Man!’) through a handy megaphone.

Turning a thirty-page picture book into a fifty-minute show means taking things pretty slowly, and a couple of music-and-mime interludes do rather outstay their welcome. But director Sally Cookson makes good use of this enforced pacing, developing some real dramatic tension in the story’s closing stages, as a delightedly complicit audience (with fingers on lips) help prepare the way for Stick Man’s long-awaited family reunion.

If Stick Man lacks anything, it’s a sense of risk-taking and anarchy, of the peculiar, unpredictable liveness of theatrical storytelling. But it would be churlish to cavil at this highly-accomplished children’s show; a confident, charming, polished and thoroughly reliable seasonal entertainment for the very littlest theatre-goers.

Steve Marmion’s revival revels in the tinselled excesses and hyperboles of Gant’s oversize toy-theatre, gorgeously realised and equipped with all manner of old-fashioned stage trickery by designer Tom Scutt. Here the company strut, fret and clown with gruesome and outrageous aplomb. Simon Kunz as Gant oozes slightly ghastly geniality, while Paul Barnhill gives his dissenter-within-the-ranks a workmanlike integrity that survives cross-dressing and slapstick. Sam Cox’s veteran sergeant undergoes much physical indignity with stoical absurdity, and Emma Handy shines as a succession of luckless heroines, mercilessly subverting a facade of idealised womanhood with a sharp eye for physical foolishness.

Despite Gant’s assurances that the tall-tales of his freak-show will offer revelations of the human heart, they invariably descend into crowd-pleasing exhibitions of grossness (featuring much explosive ejaculation of bodily fluids). Even when the players rebel and demand that the showman live up to his publicity, the drama doesn’t manage to resist the allure of cheap gags over some admittedly pretty flimsy character development. The play-without-the-play has none of the vigour and exuberance of Neilson’s travesty Victoriana, and after a little limp debate the cast retreats disconsolately (if in commendably good order) back to the props desk for more goo.

This isn’t to say that the show isn’t great fun (though it’s probably best to avoid the front rows if you’re squeamish). It’s just that Neilson, like Gant, seems to promise more than he delivers in this entertaining, but insubstantial, exhibition of in-yer-face whimsy.

This Isn’t Romance – the Soho Theatre’s new production by In-Sook Chappell, winner of the 2007 Verity Bargate Award – is about youth, innocence, cultural and sexual identity as well. But incest is a theme that can’t help but eclipse all others in its power to raise a reaction. This play is going to offend some people – and isn’t that the litmus test for vital art?

Convincingly justifying incestuous attraction is at once a delicate and Herculean task. The press pack for the show included a lengthy article on Genetic Sexual Attraction, a largely unacknowledged phenomenon affecting close relatives separated until adulthood. But for those disinclined to do preparatory reading for what should, after all, be an evening’s entertainment, several aspects of the production concertedly wrestle with overcoming the audience’s instinctive reactions – and an open mind is still essential.

Through the siblings’ vital first private encounter, Chappell walks us steadily through the complex cocktail of emotions involved: the shock of familiarity, guilt, anger, dependence, the urge to protect one another. Lim and Zainal flit from one to the next rather than attempt to externalise all at once the contradictory feelings bubbling within – flowing smoothly from the lustful embrace of lovers, through tense self-disgust into the innocent embrace of children seeking comfort.

This means we’re denied any potential virtuoso moments displaying the full extent of either sibling’s inner conflict, and understanding their motivations becomes a cerebral exercise – keeping track of the sequence of emotions we’re shown and applying the full spectrum to each subsequent line, action and expression. This is challenging enough for someone that wants to understand – so what about the sceptics?

This Isn’t Romance is a fearless exploration of some incredibly difficult subject matter, and like all such works its task will be largely thankless. The huge effort it makes towards humanising a widely demonised phenomenon will no doubt prove enlightening to the already well-informed or open-minded, but that’s like converting the choir – they were already partway there. Ironically, the people the play most wants to convince are those too paralysed by their (admittedly justifiable) prejudices to let it touch them.

Donny (Andrew Scott) is a gambler, responding to catastrophic losses by taking ever greater risks. When it’s his turn to see his ten-year-old son Sean (Jack O’Connor), all he can talk about is money markets. Jess (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) isn’t above flirting with clients to seal a deal. PJ (Nicolas Tennant) wants out, but his wife Sandy (Susan Vidler) has already spent his next five years’ bonuses in her head. And as for new boy Spoon (Christian Roe)…

The foursome – nominally a ‘team’ – compete viciously for profits in Kandis Cook’s Spartan office space. The same desks and swivel chairs become restaurants and living rooms; even on their own time, these people exist in the office. Under IT Designer Matt Kirby’s control, the same flatscreens that display market statistics (constantly flickering and updating) also suggest wallpaper or graduation photos.

The characters’ skyscraping egos demand surefooted performances, and under Roxana Silbert’s direction, the whole cast delivers with confidence and flair.

The race for the biggest bonus is just the respectable front for any number of other, more personal conflicts. The quickfire, often comic dialogue crackles throughout with phallic imagery – bonus size equals penis size; the pub after work is “a willy-measuring contest” – so Jess, the only trader lacking a phallus, has to fight to become more than just another measure of success for her male colleagues.

But the play’s centrepiece is actually a class conflict: slack-jawed bootstrapper Donny versus Cambridge graduate Spoon (named by Donny – “Silver Spoon, born with, in your trap”). Disguised as a simple clash of personalities, the issue nevertheless simmers underneath their escalating one-upmanship, never fully acknowledged but erupting in moments of passion.

It’s these conflicts bubbling away in the subtext that allow Roaring Trade to transcend its context. It is not a play ‘about’ the credit crunch. The money markets are simply a topical backdrop in which enormous egos are placed under enormous pressure, and consequently emotions are concentrated and conflicts magnified. Roaring Trade is an outstanding piece of straight theatre – regardless of its relevance to current affairs.

Roaring Trade is at the Soho Theatre until Saturday 7th February. £10 tickets are available for matinee performances. Not suitable for under 14s (contains strong language).

Photo top: Andrew Scott and Christian Roe in Roaring Trade at the Soho Theatre.
Photo bottom: Andrew Scott and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Roaring Trade at the Soho Theatre.

The notion is to look at the ways in which the shades of ancient tales and rituals endure beneath the sophisticated, sleazy veneer of contemporary mores. In fact, the cumbersome drama of policemen, politicians, prison and consulting room does little to support the silken knot of images and allusions which forms the mythological strand of the story.

In the shape-shifting role of Woman, Kathryn Hunter is angry, wounded and fragile, plucking fantasies out of the air with trembling fingers. But the real reason to see this show is Hideki Noda, slightly uncomfortable as the modern Psychiatrist, but who radiates effortless accomplishment once he steps away from the sofa, into his epic personae. As a giggling, childish, vengeful, wronged wife his touch is deft and assured, and the lightheartedness with which he handles this baneful character is utterly confident and chilling.

Hideki Noda, who also directs and writes (with Colin Teevan), evidently has grand ambitions, but sometimes seems to leave the rest of the company behind him in a welter of tumbling fabrics and fumbled fans. Harry Gostelow and Glyn Pritchard work tremendously hard to keep pace with the different segments and styles of the complex story. Gostelow is memorable as a louche playboy princeling, and Pritchard’s blank-faced demon is impressively imposing, but both have the air of actors worrying about the next prop, the next transformation, insufficiently certain about the purpose of alien formalities. Hunter’s physical presence can be fearless and thrilling, but it exists in a totally different register to Noda’s soft-stepping, dreamlike, and self-sufficient playing.

In the end it’s the fragments of ancient stories that resonate most strongly through The Diver, moments of unexplained but intense ambiguity and allusion, moments in which a struggling company manage to touch minds and move together. But the show’s determination to reduce myth and ritual to the level of contemporary mundanity is pedantic, exasperating and self-defeating. Through a barrage of cop-show clichés we catch resonant glimpses of strange tales that feel oddly familiar. But ultimately, in this over-written, over-interpreted drama, glimpses of that world are all we get.

The story is simple enough: two brothers, Alan (Nicolas Tennant) and Terry (Matthew Wait), squabble over the ownership of their late mother’s flat. This straightforwardness of this domestic drama takes a sharp turn when Terry brings home Lilly (Jade Williams), a refugee from a war somewhere in the Middle East. This ‘intrusion’ could have been brilliantly unsettling – a sudden burst of the wider world through the walls of British middle-class ‘problems’ and sensibilities. It could have brought the two brothers into confrontation with wider issues and played off their reactions. Instead, Lilly’s long monologue on the litany of atrocities she has endured, including her own rape and the mutilation of her brother, has little impact. The play becomes a series of digressions, and the subject of violence remains unprocessed, unrelated, and without effect even for Lilly’s character (apart from the general inclination she shows towards pacifism).

This lack of coherence, this unwillingness to establish associative connections, is symptomatic of the rest of the play. Things happen, but we never know why. By the end of the evening, I had the distinct impression that nothing had changed in the character’s lives, neither in their attitudes nor opinions. This could have been an interesting topic of itself, but it remained undeveloped. Both the writing and the Lisa Goldman’s direction have to account for this indecisiveness.

The whole production was played at a fast pace. Behavioural an emotional changes occurred out of the blue. Particularly in the case of Medic (John Macmillan) who switched from idealistic lover to callous brute and back in the blink of an eye. This made it difficult to connect with the characters, to penetrate the different veneers they apply. Piranha Heights certainly is neither introspective nor empathetic. Everything happens on the harsh glittery surface. No reasons, no motivations are given. Clearly this is a purpose-led device, perhaps with the intention of depicting an alienated and alienating society, but the question remains: how far can you distance your audience before losing them completely?

Unfortunately, as the violence deteriorated, the play lost me, but not due to a lack of chances, quite the contrary! There are fragments of subtlety that hint at a greater depth to the piece: the roses and the weeds that the two brothers bring at the beginning of the play, and that end up in the same vase at the end; the rose petals as red stains on the floor, taking on various shapes in the audience’s imagination, from drops of blood to the severed lips of Lilly’s brother; and Luke Treadaways brilliant portrayal of Garth, Terry’s freakish son. Treadaway develops the physicality of the obsessive and repressed person in fine detail: the staring eyes, the claw-like hands, the body posture, the twitching face. It is a pity that this truly unsettling and strange character came so late in the course of the evening.

Aside from the overall construction of the plot, there was one other point of contention in Ridley’s writing. The playwright is overly enamoured with the use of discordant simile to provoke laughter. There’s only so many lofty comparisons to gratuitous violence that you can take before it descends into the superficial; missing the chance to create a truly gripping and menacing dialogue.

There is a stigma attached to ‘young writers’, a perceived lack of experience, a sense of the author not having ‘lived’ which in many people’s minds reduces the author’s critical and sensory approach of the world to a ‘narrow’ depiction of the emotional turmoil of youth. Watching the play was in many ways the experience of seeing ’seeds’ of potential being sewn in the ‘right’ places but all too often left un-nurtured.

The play opens with a youth at a therapy session. With the youth glued to the proverbial therapy chair, the controlling therapist sends him into a state of hypnosis. As he “spirals” into the territory of dreams and passes through the door to the subconcious, we are presented with the bulk of the play: a long scene on the family yacht, fraught with all the misgivings of the youth’s upbringing. There’s the dominant military father, the passive yet loving mother and the arrogant older brother, all battling it out in a ‘metaphorical’ frenzy at sea. The youth is the scape goat in the affair, the canvas onto which his family peers project their insecurities and he is left to soak up the emotional discharge. The boat scene is interspersed with a parallel story of another boat party in distress. Physical images of suffering are evoked in distress calls, broadcast over a VHF radio on stage. This functions as a graphic evocation of violence that contrasts with the largely verbal agression onboard the family vessel. The sudden wrath of the militant father, drunk from a few too many rounds of Pimm’s feels familiar as does the character of the impotent mother. The character relationships work fairly well in relationship to the youth, but the inter-family relationships remain largely untouched. A copious amount of bad language boxes the father into an expression of rage from which there is no way forward.

The only scenes that take place away from the boat happen in the confines of a bathroom; when the youth urinates in semi-darkness he is haunted by voices in his dream, and in the penultimate scene of the play, it is the ‘ghost’ of his mother that appears in the bath tub. This becomes the exposition of fact behind the boy being in therapy, and as the ghost of his late mother coaxes him into an emotional/melodramatic outburst of fear and pain, we are given the ’satisfaction’ of his self-reconcilliation.

The play attempts to get inside the ’scream’, but unfortunately when the house lights came up, I was still waiting comfortably outside the ‘mouth’. The play is not without its potential components, devices are used to set up a dark foray into the pain of losing a loved one: for example, the opening scene when the therapist and the boy recede into darkness and we spiral into dream territory sets up great potential to launch into something more potent. Another example is the toilet scenes which give space for great tension and upturned expectations. Unfortunately, these scenes are left on the sidelines, and a linear narrative takes over; the main story is ‘well written’ but edges round the thematic territory rather than piercing its heart. No doubt Raine will be back with more stories, lessons learnt, experience had and I very much encourage and look forward to seeing his progress.

The culture of new writing in the UK, which I myself belong to and I’m certainly not without weaknesses in my own work, allows for the production of more diverse ‘new writing’ from the very young to the very old, spanning all minority divisions. ‘New labour’ champions this feat and gleans pride from having injected the “most funding of any UK government into the arts” to date (though I should point out that compared to our European neighbours funding available in performing arts is still relatively poor in the UK). New writing is a double-edged argument, with the ‘less is more’ school battling it out against the ‘more is better’ school. But beyond the merits and pitfalls of our theatre culture, the fact remains that to see one’s weakneeses in action and to see those of others is invaluable in informing future decisions for improvement in writing. Without this process the chances for learning are criticially reduced. I really recommend reading this paper by Munira Mirza on current UK cultural policy for an in-depth analysis of the ’state of the arts’ 2006.