Young theatre company Happy Cannibals delivers another beautifully effective, wonderfully self-reflective night of pub theatre in three seamlessly woven acts.
There’s a lot of pub theatre out there that wishes itself to be of the utmost importance – the stage regarded as just a slightly higher platform on which a few creatives, surrounded by enough chairs, feel they can simply chuck their ideas and trauma before an audience, all sans reverence for the form or function of a pub stage and how that might affect the piece itself. The Play’s The Thing artfully tucks that lock of hair behind the ear.
This three-part play encapsulating the events surrounding a one-woman show at a pub theatre is not only self-aware of its setting in the most delightful of ways; it also becomes a sort of love letter to pub theatre generally that speaks directly and intelligently from a heart that both knows and wishes it well.
From the start, it is clear that the company of Happy Cannibals has already attracted some of the best and brightest young creatives in London. In “Part 1: The Rehearsal,” Rachel Kitts plays the Actor rehearsing the climactic monologue at the centre of said one-woman show, just prior to opening night. Her Director, played by Andrew Friedman, pushes her through a rehearsal that spins suddenly and terrifyingly out of control. Kitts radiates an earnest innocence and humility that is thrilling to watch – which is really saying something, given that the actor playing this role somehow has to believably convey the arc from “bad” acting to “good” acting by the end of this “rehearsal.” Meanwhile, Friedman is utterly masterful in his catlike ease, pulling the atmosphere of the overall scene wherever it begs to go next. At one moment charmingly nervous and in the next, perversely terrifying, Friedman’s chilling light-switch performance and incredible writing by Maya Yousif leave the audience wondering what could possibly follow in the succeeding two acts of the night.
“Part 2: The Baby” picks up right after the show has curtained. As her friend (Jess Murdoch) helps her clear the stage of props and set pieces, playwright Maisie (Francesca D’Souza) reveals that this play – about a miscarriage – is actually a metaphor about this friend and an unforgivable thing she did years ago. It was one of my favorite moments of the evening and a testament to the slick writing chops of Rachel Kitts to watch how, ironically, her friend mistakes this one-woman show for autobiographical trauma porn (at one extreme of the sad misuses of pub theatre) only to learn that it is actually just a way to process relatively minor friendship squabbles (at the other extreme of the sad misuses of pub theatre).
As if things couldn’t get any better, “Part 3: The Thing” motors along to the warm after-show moments in the pub. Only, the couple that we meet here is having a rather chilly evening and on their tenth wedding anniversary, no less. In a deliciously light-dark scene written by the multi-talented Jess Murdoch, Ralph (James Fairhead) and Linda (Ella Blackburn) struggle as their love and hatred for each other expands and contracts over their post-show tipples – all of it triggered by the simple question: What did you think of the show? The same one-woman show that we, the audience, have just witnessed first being rehearsed and then tearing apart a friendship now sows the seeds of both deep understanding and discord that only long-mated partners know well. Thanks to Fairhead’s delicate and quietly melancholic performance and Blackburn’s stupefying grasp of any role she can get her masterful hands on, the tricky pulse of pain and love underneath this couple’s decade-long miscommunication rang out sharper than the bell for final call.
Each of these pieces could be rolled into its own full-length play. However, it is a testament to the writers and directors – all long-time collaborators and friends who worked closely across the production – that, in all three cases, each of these pieces lends so effectively to the other two. I wouldn’t have wanted to see The Play’s The Thing any other way. This is the second Happy Cannibals production I’ve seen in a pub theatre, and it’s now very clear that theirs is a space to watch.