11th Nov 2014 - 30th Nov 2014
StageSpace - Pleasance London
8pm
Suitable for ages 16 and above
At the risk of being accused of hyperbole (which is a
serious charge), I’d suggest that Streaming
by Jon Welch, performed by Pipeline Theatre at the Pleasance Theatre in
Islington contains three of the most powerful performances available to theatre
goers in London at the moment. I can’t
guarantee that there aren’t equally good performances elsewhere, because I’ve
seen very few plays recently, but the energy, conviction and sheer stage
presence of Angus Brown, Kyla Goodey and Anna Munden is exhausting in just the
way it ought to be.
Of course a good script to work to is important, and they
have that in Welch’s downbeat riff on the Wizard of Oz. A father, Toby, and
daughter, Rosa, previously well-to-do, have fallen on hard times following the
death of wife/mother and the loss of Toby’s job, and have had to move into
low-rent accommodation. Their neighbour,
Candy, provides online sexual favours for paying clients. She befriends the lonely, teenage Rosa, who
finds disagreeable her father’s desperate attempts on the one hand to get work
and on the other to keep her happy. Toby
declines into alcoholism; Rosa moves in with Candy, becomes ‘Dorothy’, and
starts her career as a webcam girl.
Perhaps I could be accused of spoilers but actually what
grips right from the start is the intensity of the performances. The play itself has holes (why doesn’t Rosa
go to school?) and rather rushes to its end.
According to the author’s notes in the programme, the play is an
investigation into the cost of the objectification of women, but actually – and
this saves it from being a simple-minded piece of agitprop - one’s sympathies
are not wholly with Rosa. Toby’s situation – widower, financially ruined,
alcoholic, and with a teenage daughter intent on making her own way – is hardly
to be envied. Either we must accept that
his advice to his daughter not to make friends with Candy is sensible or we
must decide that Rosa at sixteen is old enough to make her own decisions. In the final masque there is a sense that
Rosa and Candy have somehow triumphed over Toby, who has been reduced to a
wordless masturbator. It is hard to feel that any of the characters deserve
their fate.
Angus Brown and Anna Munden make an astonishing pair on
stage, the one manic in his despair, for ever rubbing his scalp (hair all
pulled out perhaps) pinching the bridge of his nose, and stalking the small
room, his phone limpit-like to his ear; the other, in contrast - Anna Munden as Rosa - is quiet, with a mesmerising stillness. This stillness directs one to her face. She acts with her eyes, and the movements are
never affected; always subtle, always natural, but also always emphatic. Having seen her in Pipeline’s previous,
brilliant, production, Transports, it
is evident that she has the makings already of an exceptional actress. She has inimitability. No-one is like her and she is like no-one.
There is comedy and comedic pathos in Kyla Goodey’s
performance as Candy. I had been
concerned to begin with that she was playing too close to the Catherine Tate
character Lauren Cooper or Vicky Pollard, but she
stayed just the right side of stereotype.
As with Transports,
the stagecraft is exemplary. So often in
Fringe theatre the audience is made uncomfortable by the awkwardnesses of the
staging. Pipeline do holisitic work, all
is of a piece. It is difficult to
imagine the play being done in any other way.
The design is simple but clever, the lighting and sound design more or
less flawless, the costumes properly thought about and executed.
This is first rate theatre.
Go and see it.
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