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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Amy Fowler as Sophie and Jasmine Taha as Joanna and their arms' length romance Blink Hall Green Little Theatre ***** Blink is a love story, a fragile, uncertain, distant, dysfunctional love story with its seeds in a common grief – our lovers both lost fathers leaving them alone and uncertain in what was, to them, an alien world. Phil Porter's play is a two hander as we see separate lives slowly converge, merge, grow together and . . . well that is their story. There is the introverted Joanna, not so much socially inept as completely unable to connect with people leaving her isolated and with her only friend, or, more accurately, the nearest she has to one, a scruffy, mange ridden fox she calls Scruffilitis that she feeds each day and then watches it as it eats. And in the flat above we have desperately lonely Sophie, finding it hard to come to terms with grief, she holds down a job and is a functioning member of society, but it is a society she shuns, she is an outsider; it is their world, not hers. She is, as HR explained in mealy mouthed management speak “lacking visibility”. Porter wrote the play with Sophie and Jonah, a boy/girl romance with its laughs and pathos, but director Richard Scott has changed it to Sophie and Joanna, not for effect, nor to champion sapphism or even to push boundaries, but for far more pragmatic reasons. Jasmine Taha, who plays Joanna, and Amy Fowler, the play’s Sophie, were both up for the part of Sophie and, after the reading, to lose either would have been . . . well unfortunate barely touches it. The play is about relationships, loneliness, grief and coping, or failing to cope with bereavement, a story of two people finding each other and, perhaps, themselves, it is hardly gender specific, so Scott went for cast over convention and it is easy to see why – the pair are simply magnificent. Newcomers to the Hall Green stage they hold their audience from start to finish and have that rare gift of timing and pacing, that understanding of the power of the pause. It is something instinctive, something that cannot be taught, and its exponents enhance comedy and drama alike to the next level. It creates the silences and pregnant moments of hesitation that leaves the audience waiting in anticipation, willing the next line, in comedy it is a punch line or aside, in drama it is the revelation or simply the relief or the unsettling increase in tension.
Their relationship hides in the shadows of their troubled minds The trick is knowing how long to pause, holding your nerve, relying on instinct and both Taha and Fowler manage it quite beautifully and not only demonstrating that skill but the pair are acting for the entire play. While one has a monologue, an explanation or relates a catalogue of events, the other fusses herself with some task, not enough to distract the audience, just enough to keep her character busy in her own world, or she watches and listens, attentive, even doting on her . . . would be partner, never just standing around motionless waiting for their next line. We open with an explanation of how our disparate pair converged on their flats in Leytonstone in East London. Sophie’s home was the Isle of Man, famous only for tail-less cats and motor bikes according to her. Her mother left when she was little, no doubt instilling a feeling of abandonment she carried through her life. It brought her closer to her father who was to return to Leytonstone where he was brought up. She followed and the pair ended in flats, one above the other. He developed pancreatic cancer and died a long and lingering death which was physically and emotionally draining on Sophie, his primary carer. She has never got over his death and it seems part of her does not even accept it. Joanna lived on a farm, or as she put it “a self-sustaining religious community” and when her father died suddenly she was left alone in an alien world. She did not have a strong relationship with her mother, and on an isolated, unconventional farm which hardly fitted into the local community she was a lost soul with no experience of the real world to cling to.
Life goes with more ghosts added to the past Boosted by an unexpected legacy from her late mother, who had always been distant, she eventually moves, or perhaps flees is a better word, to London, emotionally and socially naïve. she moves into Sophie’s late father’s flat, by pure chance not some bizarre design. Sophie in the top flat had fitted a wireless baby monitor in the flat to keep an eye on her father below who had started to suffer restless nights beset by nightmares. The monitor was still there. So, while Sophie had a window into Joanna’s world, Joanna developed her own window into Sophie’s by following her. It sounds creepy, restraining order territory, but these are two people who just don’t know how to interact with other people; to us it might be stalking, or, at the very least, some form of voyeurism, to them it is as near as they can get to a relationship, friends but at a safe distance. It is Sophie’s inability to fully accept her father’s death that brings our pair of life’s inadequates together when she sees her father in the street – an easy mistake when her dead father was still alive somewhere in her conflicted mind. It leads to a trauma which leaves Sophie with a GCS score of three – GCS being the Glasgow Coma Scale used by doctors for unresponsive patients - anything less than three involves a made to measure pine box. With Sophie knockin’ on Heaven’s door, so to speak, Joanna can emerge from the shadows and be . . . well, friends. There is no threat, no judgement, no questions, they are friends on Joanna’s terms, the only terms available, terms that even overcame recovery and grew into a more normal relationship . . . normal never being at ease in that description. What happens next is up to them, their decision, in finding each other they have found at least a part of themselves, taken charge of a part of their life. The pair also take on other roles by donning coats and props, becoming HR executives, estate agents, doctors, German artists . . . whoever is needed, with nice changes of accent and bearing to distinguish the characters. As a play it seems, on the face of it, to be at the Leonard Cohen end of the dramatic scale, beautifully written but with an underlying current of angst, and it does have its pathos, and sad moments, but it also has its humour, even its moments of laugh out loud comedy. It is a human story and we feel for the characters, sympathise with them, have empathy with them and, whatever their choice for the future, we wish them well. Lauren Rote’s simple effective studio set and props leave the actors free to tell the story while Emily Beaton’s lighting helps to highlight personal moments and open up into the society our pair find themselves in while the low, background sounds from Julie Williams, whispers of of streets, shops, hospitals and so on, provide an audible backdrop for each scene, The result is poignant portrait of an unlikely relationship painted with humour amid tender moments, all beautifully acted and portrayed by a wonderful cast. To 21-06-25 Roger Clarke 13-06-25 |
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