BWW Reviews: Shards Of Broken Lives Come Together In SHIVERED

Saturday 9th May 2015, PACT Theatre, Erskineville

Stories of lives SHIVERED into splinters due to war, failed industry and broken families are pieced together in Philip Ridley's moving work. Mad March Hare Theatre Company's Claudia Barrie (Director) has interpreted Ridley's text with humor, honesty, energy, and reality whilst placing the disjointed memories in a surreal space.

The lives of two teenagers, a mother and father, a single mother, a carnival mechanic and a soldier come together as memories play out in a non-linear sequence in the white and grey disused factory office in the fictional industrial town of Draylingstowe in Essex that serves to represent many spaces over a series of years. Lighting is used to help establish new times, places, and plot lines making it clear from the onset that whilst the performers may inhabit the same space, a different location or time applies.

Two boys, one the perpetual target of school bullies, Jack (Liam Nunan), and the other a loner with a deformed hand and bad eyesight, Ryan (Josh Anderson), strike up a friendship in the disused car factory as Ryan searches for extraterrestrial evidence and Jack seeks refuge from the gang that repeatedly beats him and threatens his mother. A housewife, Lyn (Libby Fleming), and grease covered man, Gordy(Andrew Johnston) use the same factory for a sordid rendezvous. An overweight telephone clairvoyant, Evie (Rhonda Doyle) consoles grieving women wanting news from their loved ones, in exchange for cash. A Soldier, Alec (Joseph Del Re) kneels, screaming in agony. A middle aged Father, Mikey (Brendan Miles) rallies his former colleagues regarding the chemicals the factory poisoned the community with.

The disjointed stories serve to keep the audience guessing as they try to piece the stories together and the performers do well to give each vignette the right level of historic knowledge, alluding to a past, without giving away too much and ensuring that the future is unknown, even if the scene that would follow in a linear sequence has already been expressed.

Anderson captures the geeky child that has been drawn into his father's obsession with monsters and UFOs, also damaged by the loss of his brother. Nunan presents an annoying YouTube and computer game obsessed misfit who wont believe anything unless it's recorded, that must care for his obese mother and lacks an understanding of loss. Del Re conveys the internal terrors a young man brings home with from war to a society that is flippant about death and destruction. Doyle gives Evie an ever present undertone of greed as she exploits her customers and then her son. Fleming bounces between the woman using sex to escape her life and a mother wanting to protect her sons and breaking down at the destruction of her family. Johnston carries an ever present aura of a charlatan as he seeks to make money from everything he comes across. Miles presents the passion of a father obsessed with UFOs and the compassion of trying to keep everyone happy even when things are not. All performers maintain their Essex accents and working class characteristics with individual consistency but ensuring variety across the characters to establish the different levels of maturity and aspiration.

Whilst SHIVERED is a highly emotional journey, it isn't devoid of humor, laughing at the absurdity of life as Jack scampers around the deserted factory terrified of the shadows as the boys hunt for monsters, the carnival mechanic that explains his deceptions and the father's ongoing obsession with UFO sightings. There is enduring love of a son that has been taken too soon and compassion of a father consoling his son's grieving friend, in contrast to the lust and exploitative relationships used to distract and deceive. The social issues of what happens to communities when their source of income vanishes, when big business sacrifices health for profits, and what happens to the participants and the bystanders of war are also explored as they all contribute to the destruction that the characters face.

Whilst SHIVERED is a complex work but is still very accessible and balances the weight and lightness of the content well. The blend of Ridley's clever words and the physical humor and delivery ensure that it draws on a range of emotions. The imagery in the text creates pictures ensuring that, when necessary, the audience can imagine the dilapidated office space is something else.

SHIVERED

PACT Theatre, 107 Railway Parade, Erskineville

7 - 30 May 2015

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