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Written
by
Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Directed
by
Sean Mathias
Designer
Paul Burgess
Lighting
Designer
Jason Taylor
Martha
Francesca
Annis
Nick
Adam Croasdell
Hodge
Lee Ingleby
Devlin
Leigh Lawson
Christina
Alexandra
Moen
Michael
Daniel Rabin
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Soho Theatre
6
July - 6 August 2005 |
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"A
derelict space. Three urban
cowboys. Two jaded bohemians.
One woman, alone, in pain."
So goes the blurb to
Shoreditch
Madonna,
in its first performance at
the Soho Theatre. Alas, this
says it all. There is little
more to this play than that
basic premise, and we are
no more enlightened at the
end about the wider implications
of this set-up than we were
at the beginning.
The play opens with the "woman,
alone, in pain", a supposedly
thirty-something South Londoner
called Christina, played by
Alexandra Moen, who brings
no such maturity to the role,
appearing to be twenty at
most. No more than a stereotype
Chelsea girl (little black
dress, pearls at her throat,
blond hair in an untidy chignon),
Rebecca Lenkiewicz could almost
have taken Christina's characterization
from a dated novel by John
Fowles. She is Bob Dylan's
Miss Lonely with no direction
home, whose boyfriend took
from her everything he could
steal. She utters excruciatingly
bad lines in a breathy drama-school
voice such as "Will you
trace my dinosaur-skeleton
spine with your nicotine fingers?"
If she is supposed to be in
her thirties Christina appears
more like a teenage girl rapt
by literature before she learns
to temper the worst excesses
of literary language. The
constant thought whilst watching
her on stage is, 'Are we supposed
to feel for her in her pain?'
If we are, it is a gross failing
that we do not.
The only characters that work
on stage are the "two
jaded bohemians" played
by Francesca Annis and Leigh
Lawson. Lawson's character,
Devlin, is - again - something
of a caricature: an aging
Irish rogue with a twinkle
in his eye. In his youth he
was a promising artist and
tutor at St Martin's, but
life has worn him down and
now he is addicted to women
and alcohol. He scrapes a
living on the basis of his
former glory. Martha, played
with great intelligence by
Annis, was a former student
of his at St Martin's. They
had an affair, the consequences
of which remain to be confronted.
They meet for the first time
in twelve years in the "derelict
space" where Devlin is
making a video with the "three
urban cowboys" Nick,
Hodge and Michael.
Francesca Annis is the saving
grace of the entire production,
both fictionally and actually,
not only making Martha a credible
character but also generating
the chemistry to improve other
performances. It would be
easy, as with Christina or
Devlin, to make Martha one-dimensional.
We know she is "bohemian"
because she wears dangly earrings
and a floaty top and occasionally
smokes a joint, but Annis
transcends these cliches to
make an individual who is
fundamentally joyful, swept
along by all the experiences
that life has to offer. She
lives fully but accepts the
bitter-sweet nature of the
consequences, hence she is
the only character to portray
penetrable motivations.
The tragedy that motivates
Devlin's self-destructive
behaviour is, in contrast,
utterly impenetrable. The
script informs us that he
was emotionally "anaesthetised"
after the death by drowning
of his ten-year old daughter.
Martha, the "Shoreditch
Madonna" of the title,
releases some of those emotions
in Devlin but even when they
are visible they never quite
ring true. In this sense Martha
acts as a redemptive force
in the play, catalysing the
confrontation of difficult
emotions, no matter how naively
she behaves in the process.
Towards the end of the play,
therefore, the characters
anaesthetised by drink, drugs
and casual sex, begin to feel.
One suspects that the audience
should also at this point
be beginning to feel something
too, but this didn't happen.
There were brief moments that
had that translucent shine,
where the audience suspended
its breath as one body, but
these were mainly moments
of connection between Martha
and Devlin, and between Christina
and one of those "urban
cowboys" Nick. There
were not enough of these moments
to outweigh the tedium of
other scenes.
Nick (played by Adam Croasdell)
in particular failed to make
much impression. Prior to
his emotional breakdown in
the second half he is little
more than a (better looking)
English version of Friends'
Joey Tribbiani, which means
that when he has to portray
raw emotion it doesn't carry
the serious weight it should.
Captivated by Christina's
vulnerable persona, he lacks
the experience to know the
hardness and complexity behind
it and so it comes close to
destroying him. It is, however,
hard to believe that such
a good-looking boy in the
East-End arts scene wouldn't
be wise to those games. Boys
in their twenties in the midst
of uber-hip Shoreditch / Hoxton
are simply not that naive
(alas).
The character who is convincingly
naive is Hodge, played by
Lee Ingleby. Unlike the others,
he is motivated by emotional
connections rather than sex,
and the subtlety of Ingleby's
performance does justice to
the character. All three lads
are meant to be local losers
who will never be as edgy
and up-to-the-minute as the
hip young things who split
their time between Berlin
and Brick Lane. The soundtrack
hints that, in 2005, these
characters haven't got beyond
the likes of Peaches and Ben
Kweller (so 2002, darling!).
When it comes to the sharks
out there, they won't last
a minute, but Hodge is the
only one who conveys this
with any clarity. They are
all supposed to be nice boys,
but it is not until that niceness
is thrown into relief by the
hardness of others that we
realise it in the case of
Nick and Michael. There are
many things like this that
should have been apparent
from the beginning, and that
come as a shock when the script
informs us of them, for example,
the homo-erotic tension between
two of the "urban cowboys".
There was plenty of opportunity
to portray this through performance,
but when it is dropped into
the script with aplomb it
comes as news to the audience.
In terms of the meaning to
be taken from the play, Hodge
and Martha are clearly touchstones
who, despite the randomness
of connections made in the
mess of lives fuelled by drink,
drugs and casual sex, live
their experiences fully with
a wide-eyed innocence that
leaves them untouched, unlike
Nick or Christina. However,
one has to work hard to find
this meaning, and that is
the problem of writing a play
that depicts the emotionally
scarred, messy lives we all
lead nowadays; it is not particularly
interesting because it is
all too familiar outside the
theatre. By the time it reaches
the stage it has already dated.
Moreover, making an audience
feel something for people
who cannot feel anything themselves
requires a great deal of experience
in writing drama.
Shoreditch
Madonna
is nearly there but falls
just short of the mark, though
one senses it will come for
Rebecca Lenkiewicz. As it
stands, at the end of
Shoreditch
Madonna,
having experienced the connections
made by "three urban
cowboys, two jaded bohemians
and a woman, alone, in pain"
in their "derelict space"
the feeling is still one of
'So what?' It does not throw
the similar messiness experienced
outside the theatre into any
relief.
Nonetheless, Lenkiewicz displays
a strong talent for writing
witty repartee and clearly
has an ear for dialogue and
an eye for what works dramatically,
but with Shoreditch
Madonna
she has yet to find the subject
matter that will do her talent
justice.
Laura
Keynes |
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