Main Menu
Login
Online
There are 12 unlogged users and 0 registered users online.
You can log-in or register for a user account here.
You can log-in or register for a user account here.
North.
TAPE
by Stephen Belber.
Northern Outlet Theatre Company Tour to 2 August 2008.
Runs 1hr 15min No interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 July at Pauper’s Pit Buxton.
Past actions rewound to tie people up.
If something’s been taped, it’s recorded, a reference point for life, there to reinforce the recordist’s opinions, confirming them by repetition. Or, to have something “taped” is to have it sorted, dealt with, under control. Yet life’s something that can’t be taped in the present or future tenses. By the time something’s recorded it’s already becoming the past, and few people have their lives so sorted there aren’t messy problems, dilemmas, unresolved emotions.
Once, as students, life might have seemed ‘tapable’ to Vince or Jon, when they knew each other as in the first scene of Stephen Belber’s play. And Jon went on to his own sort of taping, as a film-maker, while Vince has dodged along on the fringe of crime. Years later they meet at a film festival.
Which might be all-right if they left the old times to gather dust in their box. But Vince insists on unspooling the past, and the two men’s relationship with Amy, who, of course, turns up on the scene.
Vince is the unpredictable one, giving off the increasing whiff of danger, unsettling both of the others. Paul Walker’s production for Northern Outlet Theatre Company plays in Buxton in a tight space, around two beds that provide seating places but also a reminder of the sexual context of what’s up for grabs.
There’s a directness to the performances that carries conviction in the heated situation that develops, the fit-up theatre’s confined space in the summer heat adding its own intensity. Yet, having decided on each character’s nature and the direction it’ll take them, there’s only limited detail beyond self-evident mannerisms (vocal or physical). And what we learn about the characters comes from what they tell us, without the sense of experience having helped determine their manner, movement and so on.
Still, that’s true of plenty that comes from Hollywood (Tape’s been successful on celluloid) and a young company lives up to its name by providing an outlet for this tense drama in the north of England with direction and a trio of performances that give a complex plotline clarity and conviction.
Jon: Ryan Cerenko.
Vince: Ric Ward.
Amy: Marie-Louise Cookson.
Director: Paul Walker.
Lighting: Aaron J Dootson.
Sound: Paul Anderton.
Fight director: Renny Krupinski.
TAPE
by Stephen Belber.
Northern Outlet Theatre Company Tour to 2 August 2008.
Runs 1hr 15min No interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 July at Pauper’s Pit Buxton.
Past actions rewound to tie people up.
If something’s been taped, it’s recorded, a reference point for life, there to reinforce the recordist’s opinions, confirming them by repetition. Or, to have something “taped” is to have it sorted, dealt with, under control. Yet life’s something that can’t be taped in the present or future tenses. By the time something’s recorded it’s already becoming the past, and few people have their lives so sorted there aren’t messy problems, dilemmas, unresolved emotions.
Once, as students, life might have seemed ‘tapable’ to Vince or Jon, when they knew each other as in the first scene of Stephen Belber’s play. And Jon went on to his own sort of taping, as a film-maker, while Vince has dodged along on the fringe of crime. Years later they meet at a film festival.
Which might be all-right if they left the old times to gather dust in their box. But Vince insists on unspooling the past, and the two men’s relationship with Amy, who, of course, turns up on the scene.
Vince is the unpredictable one, giving off the increasing whiff of danger, unsettling both of the others. Paul Walker’s production for Northern Outlet Theatre Company plays in Buxton in a tight space, around two beds that provide seating places but also a reminder of the sexual context of what’s up for grabs.
There’s a directness to the performances that carries conviction in the heated situation that develops, the fit-up theatre’s confined space in the summer heat adding its own intensity. Yet, having decided on each character’s nature and the direction it’ll take them, there’s only limited detail beyond self-evident mannerisms (vocal or physical). And what we learn about the characters comes from what they tell us, without the sense of experience having helped determine their manner, movement and so on.
Still, that’s true of plenty that comes from Hollywood (Tape’s been successful on celluloid) and a young company lives up to its name by providing an outlet for this tense drama in the north of England with direction and a trio of performances that give a complex plotline clarity and conviction.
Jon: Ryan Cerenko.
Vince: Ric Ward.
Amy: Marie-Louise Cookson.
Director: Paul Walker.
Lighting: Aaron J Dootson.
Sound: Paul Anderton.
Fight director: Renny Krupinski.