BWW Reviews: Schizophrenic LENNY Needs Greater Clarity

In the 2013 National Arts Festival Programme, LENNY AND THE WASTELAND is billed as a comedy. On the website of the Production Company, The Space Behind the Couch, the play is described as 'a romantic comedy adventure' and 'an unimaginable science fiction adventure', created by the company for their target market of 'young theatregoers and those who are still young at heart'. While it is heavy on science fiction, it is light on adventure and LENNY AND THE WASTELAND is more a buddy film than a romantic comedy. It is also definitely more for young theatregoers than theatregoers who are still young at heart. In fact, it seems like a theatre piece made for a niche market of tween boys - right up until the moment when Lenny has sex with a robot called Pandora. That is when Lenny shifts from a play with an identity crisis into one that is puzzling and ultimately unsatisfying.

LENNY AND THE WASTELAND is set in a post-apocalyptic future, where life as we know it has been destroyed completely. The only human being left is Lenny and the animals have been mutated into fantastical hybrid creatures, most of which seem to be dangerous. Lenny has found a kind of sidekick in the form of Newt, a female mutant creature who is able to talk. Together they banter about Lenny's disdain for his current situation, watch video footage showing the decline of the world we know as human beings gave over their power to robots, scavenge for tinned food and artefacts that have survived the apocalypse and dream of restoring the atmosphere and the environment so that Earth can once again support the kind of life we conventionally associate with a thriving planet. This process is jumpstarted when the pair finds a sapling plant, from which they extract a seed. But if the world becomes inhabitable, how will Lenny be able to repopulate the world with humans? When Lenny and Newt discover Pandora and activate her, it seems as though they have found the answer. However, Pandora has her own agenda and things are not so easily remedied.

The environment in which this narrative plays out is beautifully designed. Lenny's shelter is a dimly lit maze of metal structures with several practical lighting effects that help to create some magnificent stage imagery. There is also a screen upon which film, puppet animation and shadows are projected, all elements that work well together to create compelling scenography that draws the audience into the world of the play. Similarly too the costumes manage to capture the essence of the characters. Lenny, Newt, Pandora and the little mutant that rolls about all over the stage all look as though they could believably exist in this milieu.

The problems arise when the play itself is examined as a piece of storytelling. Playwright and director Beren Belknap's basic concept for LENNY AND THE WASTELAND is fantastic. But somewhere between the idea and its realisation, Belknap seems to have been seduced by the eccentricities of his story. That communication is that one of the primary transactions of theatre has either been forgotten or wilfully ignored. There is a lack of clarity around who the target audience for this play is and what the implications of that choice are for the very basic elements of drama: plot, character, language and theme. Belknap needs to interrogate his play and find answers for those questions if LENNY AND THE WASTELAND is to become a convincing theatrical experience.

The cast of LENNY AND THE WASTELAND works hard to make the play work as well as it can despite the problems there are with the scripting. Richard September plays Lenny with an endearing roughness, saving the character from becoming completely unlikable in the last third of the play during which Lenny makes mistake after mistake and never quite redeems himself. Megan Young invests Newt with a cutesy edginess that becomes a little grating at times, yet another of the offshoots of the play's lack of choices when it comes to defining itself. The role of Pandora is played by Nieke Lombard with an appropriate heaviness. A compelling physical actress, Lombard doubles as a little mutant that Newt trains up during the show.

I left LENNY AND THE WASTELAND feeling somewhat perplexed. While I was drawn into the fictional world presented in the play visually through its design and through the performances, I was distanced from the story being told because the way in which the story was told ultimately proved to be incongruous with what it was trying to say. LENNY AND THE WASTELAND needs to decide what it is. Is it a crackerjack of a play for tween boys about friendship, the dangers of technology and the importance of preserving our environment? Or is it a piece for Generation Z comic book fans with social commentary about human reliance on technology and deviant sexual fantasies? My gut feeling is that it is the former rather than the latter. Both would make for interesting pieces of theatre, but LENNY AND THE WASTELAND falls somewhere in between and is all the poorer for it.

LENNY AND THE WASTELAND runs until 5 July in St Andrew's Hall at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown at the following times: 4 July at 20:30 and 5 July at 12:30 and 21:00. Tickets can be booked at Computicket.

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