Tag: mental health

Rainer @ Arcola Theatre

04.10.2021

Arriving at Arcola Theatre’s outdoor space, I was pleasantly surprised, without yet knowing how suitable the venue would be for this piece. Sure enough, the opening scene showed Sorcha Kennedy as Rainer, walking through the audience, helmet, and ‘Angel Deliveries’ jacket on. This introduced the play as one which frequently broke the fourth wall, as Rainer began by addressing the audience directly.

Depicting the story of a woman who is forced to take up a job as a food delivery cyclist, as she isn’t quite ‘making it’ as a writer, Rainer is a funny, witty and at times, sinister piece. Throughout the show Sorcha performs multi-role play, becoming all the people Rainer interacts with, including an ex-boyfriend, a current love interest, and her boss, just to name a few. Her use of accents was a joy to watch, and the multi-role play really showed her versatility as an actor. I think the multi-role play could’ve been tidied up in places; I would’ve liked to have seen her perform the characters varying mannerisms, and ensuring that Rainer’s voice didn’t blur into the voices of those character’s she was depicting. However, the pace of the piece was demanding and her performance, nonetheless, impressive.

Throughout the play Rainer’s deliveries are interrupted by snippets of Rainer’s counselling sessions with her ‘shit NHS counsellor’. These scenes successfully explored mental health within a backdrop of underfunded mental health services in the UK. The script was rich in thematic content, with other topics including love, class, sexual assault, grief and (of course) COVID-19. I found the content of the play entirely relatable, and its exploration of these themes nuanced, all the while being laugh out loud funny. The brilliance of the script made sense when I discovered that its writer, Max Wilkinson, has previously won the Stage to Screen Award.

Throughout the play Sorcha frequently ran laps around the audience, while on her one of many ‘trips’ around London. The scripts successful ability to depict the areas of London meant that you felt you were on that journey with her, visualising each setting as she whizzed past. The ‘pinging’ of the delivery app, jolting her into action again and again, while the slightly less warm auditorium aided the realism. The ever changing settings were depicted usually by a small change in lighting, or music, with very little need for props. Despite the sparse stage, the writing and performance convinced you of the scenes.

All in all, I think the writing, performance, lighting and sound came together to provide a unique and gripping show. I’d love to see more of Max’s writing, and I think Sorcha’s energy and versatility make her an exciting performer to watch. I think if you get a chance, absolutely catch this piece before it finishes!

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Theatre Returns @ The Shakespeare’s Globe

Photo credit Marc Brenner

04.07.2021

Walking into the wooded stands of The Shakespeare’s Globe, aside from a little extra spacing and the lack of a standing audience, it was almost as if nothing had changed. The Globe’s new version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet had clearly taken the lessons from the last year, in an attempt to provide something new, as the revised script allowed for a heightened focus on mental health.

This contemporary exploration of Romeo and Juliet saw Romeo riding around the stage on his BMX, Mercutio puffing on a vape and party scenes soundtracked by Mike Skinner’s ‘Who’s got the bag?’. This helped the play’s relatability, but also successfully divided the Montagues and Capulets by class and character. The fight scenes took on a new significance as they stabbed one another in their tracksuits, the audience were reminded of the rise in London knife crime amongst teenage boys. The red and black costume colour theme brought a cohesiveness to the costume design, as Juliet often wore an oversized red hoodie with tartan pocket and matching hair band, while Romeo wore an all black tracksuit with small details of red. The most unique aspect of the show came from the interjecting statistics around mental health and race, which after the last year of lockdowns and #BLM felt especially poignant. The show closed with details for the Samaritans, displayed in red on the stage screen.

The stand out performance from the show came from Alfred Enoch, who played Romeo, as he successfully performed the Shakespearean language in a way that was believable and relatable as well as achieving a compelling emotional performance. The downsides of the show came mostly from the draw backs of the staging – occasionally speech is lot in the open space and unless you are lucky enough to be face on, you are probably going to miss some of the action. The set and prop design was basic, but these are all things we sign up for in the name of tradition and therefore, I don’t think can fairly be criticised. I found that despite excellent performance’s from both, the speeches from Adam Gillen (Mercutio) and Zoe West (Benvolio) often lacked the same clarity as Enoch’s and huge chunks of script were lost. On the whole I have very little complain about the show, apart from the fact that I think they could’ve pushed the contemporary adaptation further, maybe to include social media or a discussion of race, to give us something more revolutionary.

I found this version of Romeo and Juliet poignant progressive and fun, with strong performances and witty staging choices.

8/10