Clever show minds the gap
proves too much; the engine of contrivance is all too apparent. I felt I got to know the book, but not the woman behind the waspish words. MARTIN GRAY between rich and poor starts to widen in post-war Britain.
Even as he grows up and is urged to take responsibility for himself, the Tory government is pushing the idea on a national scale. But what of his childhood hero? What would Robin Hood’s brand of justice look like today?
Whether Dale-jones threatens to rob a bank and gets arrested, whether he sells his home and gives the money to street kids, or partakes in some weekend safe-breaking with the Llangefni under-11s football team in tow, we’ll never know, so adept is he at splicing together personal experience and flights of fancy.
Indeed, if the show has a fault, it would be in offering so many of these possibilities that, by the end, we are Danielle Brustman’s design occasionally achieves Daliesque depths of visually vivid surrealism.
The show makes one valuable point, which is that if you are going to write a negative review, you should at least pay the artists the compliment of assuming their bad work is intentional, rather than merely accidental.
Apart from that though, the show is not much more than an hour-long demonstration of thespian selfobsession, taken to vaguely obscene, although occasionally entertaining, extremes; wallow in it if you must, I’d say, but don’t expect it to get a good review. JOYCE MCMILLAN in danger of feeling a little confused.
But Me And Robin Hood is clever and thoughtful and angry. It’s about home and friendship and memory and what artistic work is worth, and at its heart is a very real question about what it means to be a true radical in the 21st century. SUSAN MANSFIELD of no return? We see her Molly studying Hamlet, taking flute lessons, going on a girls’ holiday. Like anyone else, in fact. But after her mum dies when she is 19, her world disintegrates. She stays in bed, ignores final demands and letters from the bailiffs until it’s too late.
Co-writers of What Goes On, Calum Finlay (who directs) and performer Emma Bentley, set out to show that any young person, however “normal”, could be one crisis away from homelessness. And once that line has been crossed, it becomes very difficult to cross back again.
It’s a heartfelt show, borne of many months of research with homeless charities, and a compelling performance by Bentley, although the production is a little uneven and the use of an on-stage camera and screens is less than effective.
While it doesn’t exactly break new ground, and the focus remains more on the issue than the character, the play is a fresh perspective on a perennial subject. SUSAN MANSFIELD