Tweet
THEATRE: QUAKE
by Elizabeth Moss
Varsity Online, UK
Nov 2 2011
Marriage proposals, a collapsed hotel and an overprotective tortoise:
Lizzie Moss enjoys the opening night of Sian Docksey's new play at
Corpus Playroom
A myriad of proposals, a huge explosion and an overprotective tortoise:
Siān Docksey's play is so much more than the story of her grandmother,
who was trapped under the telephone switchboard when a bomb destroyed
the King David Hotel where she worked in Jerusalem in 1946. The
writing and the production were slick, poignant and witty.
Quake opens with all five characters gazing into the distance speaking
in turn to set the scene. For some reason a mysterious musician in
the background provides drums at the beginning and between scene
changes, and although he looked somewhat uninterested in the play,
this fortunately did not reflect my own feelings.
The dramatic and gloomily lit opening scene moves smoothly into a
family home in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem. Two of the sisters,
Anoush (Lydia Morris-Jones) and Myriam (Holly Marsden), argue over
clothes. For me this is where the tone was really set for the whole
play - the girls manage to talk about their worries for their safety
and their future but always in a light-hearted and often amusing way.
Family tensions concerning moving away to America, prejudice against
the British military command and indeed about who the girls might
marry never spill over into uncomfortable argument, and the characters
never take themselves too seriously.
There are only subtle hints that the play is moving towards a disaster
for Anoush. Our attention is focussed instead on the plight of
Anoush's admirer, an English gentleman, Ernest (played effortlessly
by Hugh Wyld), who is baffled about how to behave when offered a
cup of tea by a surly Armenag (Sam Curry), thanks to insights into
Armenian etiquette offered by the sisters. He deals with this, and
also being attacked by a tortoise, very well. (The tortoise itself is
not, as I first assumed, a Stoppardian touch on the writer's part but
apparently a real family pet alive and well in Jerusalem to this day.)
When Anoush runs back into work to retrieve her handbag before a
cigarette break it is apparent that something more is going on. While
she talks through the minutiae of her daily life in the office, the
whole cast are on stage adding their voices, building up to the moment
of the explosion. The contrast between the usual activities of the
office and the sudden outburst of the explosion had me jumping out of
my skin. I had wondered how, with some white boxes and a cabinet, they
were possibly going to suggest the aftermath of a bomb in the Corpus
Playroom. But with some well-choreographed physical theatre, it worked.
Even then, I wondered how, if much of the rest of the play would be
one girl's monologue whilst stuck under some rubble, we would be kept
entertained. Again, I was not disappointed. Anoush prays desperately
and imagines various scenes of speaking to her colleagues and Christmas
with the family. She becomes obsessed with forcing herself to wake
up. We realise the clever ambiguity of whether this takes place while
she was trapped, later when she was in a coma, or when we see her now,
a grandma, forcing herself to wake up from a nap to find she is safe
in her own son's home in England with a teenage granddaughter who
has absolutely no desire to play scrabble with her.
Her son and his wife nervously discuss whether to tell Anoush the news
of her sister Miryam's death in Armenia but after all "She's hardy,
they dropped a hotel on her remember?"
Anoush's death is happily not the last thing we see. Miryam's doctors
become Anoush's after her rescue as the cast dramatically pound their
chests in the rhythm of a heartbeat. Instead of the end of a long life,
we end with her reading the letters from Ernest who, after two years
of asking every day, has made his last proposal. (His approach was
always hopelessly casual: "Will you marry me" "No" "Shame".)
Morris-Jones, quite rightly, comes close to stealing the show, but
for me it was the way the actors worked together so well that gave
the play its charm. Powell is responsible for a lot of the play's
ability to move so smoothly from one time to another. She manages to
be completely different in voice and mannerisms in every one of her
characters with no help from a costume change and very little time
between scenes.
The movement back and forth between past, present and future
works fantastically. The scenes with all five actors miming various
activities didn't always run smoothly, with Curry stumbling over his
lines a bit whilst remembering his precise action for moving the
wires of the operating board. But I put this down to first night
nerves which will no doubt be banished by the knowledge that the
play was received so well by its audience. Docksey's first play is
brilliantly written and well directed - the writing is amusing but
the cast made it even more so.
http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/3961
by Elizabeth Moss
Varsity Online, UK
Nov 2 2011
Marriage proposals, a collapsed hotel and an overprotective tortoise:
Lizzie Moss enjoys the opening night of Sian Docksey's new play at
Corpus Playroom
A myriad of proposals, a huge explosion and an overprotective tortoise:
Siān Docksey's play is so much more than the story of her grandmother,
who was trapped under the telephone switchboard when a bomb destroyed
the King David Hotel where she worked in Jerusalem in 1946. The
writing and the production were slick, poignant and witty.
Quake opens with all five characters gazing into the distance speaking
in turn to set the scene. For some reason a mysterious musician in
the background provides drums at the beginning and between scene
changes, and although he looked somewhat uninterested in the play,
this fortunately did not reflect my own feelings.
The dramatic and gloomily lit opening scene moves smoothly into a
family home in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem. Two of the sisters,
Anoush (Lydia Morris-Jones) and Myriam (Holly Marsden), argue over
clothes. For me this is where the tone was really set for the whole
play - the girls manage to talk about their worries for their safety
and their future but always in a light-hearted and often amusing way.
Family tensions concerning moving away to America, prejudice against
the British military command and indeed about who the girls might
marry never spill over into uncomfortable argument, and the characters
never take themselves too seriously.
There are only subtle hints that the play is moving towards a disaster
for Anoush. Our attention is focussed instead on the plight of
Anoush's admirer, an English gentleman, Ernest (played effortlessly
by Hugh Wyld), who is baffled about how to behave when offered a
cup of tea by a surly Armenag (Sam Curry), thanks to insights into
Armenian etiquette offered by the sisters. He deals with this, and
also being attacked by a tortoise, very well. (The tortoise itself is
not, as I first assumed, a Stoppardian touch on the writer's part but
apparently a real family pet alive and well in Jerusalem to this day.)
When Anoush runs back into work to retrieve her handbag before a
cigarette break it is apparent that something more is going on. While
she talks through the minutiae of her daily life in the office, the
whole cast are on stage adding their voices, building up to the moment
of the explosion. The contrast between the usual activities of the
office and the sudden outburst of the explosion had me jumping out of
my skin. I had wondered how, with some white boxes and a cabinet, they
were possibly going to suggest the aftermath of a bomb in the Corpus
Playroom. But with some well-choreographed physical theatre, it worked.
Even then, I wondered how, if much of the rest of the play would be
one girl's monologue whilst stuck under some rubble, we would be kept
entertained. Again, I was not disappointed. Anoush prays desperately
and imagines various scenes of speaking to her colleagues and Christmas
with the family. She becomes obsessed with forcing herself to wake
up. We realise the clever ambiguity of whether this takes place while
she was trapped, later when she was in a coma, or when we see her now,
a grandma, forcing herself to wake up from a nap to find she is safe
in her own son's home in England with a teenage granddaughter who
has absolutely no desire to play scrabble with her.
Her son and his wife nervously discuss whether to tell Anoush the news
of her sister Miryam's death in Armenia but after all "She's hardy,
they dropped a hotel on her remember?"
Anoush's death is happily not the last thing we see. Miryam's doctors
become Anoush's after her rescue as the cast dramatically pound their
chests in the rhythm of a heartbeat. Instead of the end of a long life,
we end with her reading the letters from Ernest who, after two years
of asking every day, has made his last proposal. (His approach was
always hopelessly casual: "Will you marry me" "No" "Shame".)
Morris-Jones, quite rightly, comes close to stealing the show, but
for me it was the way the actors worked together so well that gave
the play its charm. Powell is responsible for a lot of the play's
ability to move so smoothly from one time to another. She manages to
be completely different in voice and mannerisms in every one of her
characters with no help from a costume change and very little time
between scenes.
The movement back and forth between past, present and future
works fantastically. The scenes with all five actors miming various
activities didn't always run smoothly, with Curry stumbling over his
lines a bit whilst remembering his precise action for moving the
wires of the operating board. But I put this down to first night
nerves which will no doubt be banished by the knowledge that the
play was received so well by its audience. Docksey's first play is
brilliantly written and well directed - the writing is amusing but
the cast made it even more so.
http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/3961