Mulling it Over

Today I went along the entirety of the Circle Line and watched people for about an hour. It was part of an assignment for the Playwriting independent study. I have done this before but it was never as interesting as it was today. Now instead of just people watching and coming up with backstories for them in my head, I had to write everything down, which is intriguing, hard and a little creepy. One guy sitting next to me even asked what the hell I was doing. When I told him, he didn’t seem too convinced but oh well, he can be suspicious, I’m a writer damnit. Lunch with a friend at the lovely Whole Foods on High Street Kensington afterwards.

Wastwater at the Royal Court

Well…um…wait, was that just…oh maybe.

We all left the theatre almost in shock or just plain confusion over what we had just seen. The play was made up of three individual scenes with six different characters. Each scene had only two actors in them (save for the last one when a little girl comes onstage but she says nothing) making it a very intimate and very wordy play. The first scene takes place on the back porch of a home near Heathrow and was between a Foster Child and his guardian. He is about to leave for Vancouver Canada to take part in some whale study there. Both are trying to say goodbye in some way without actually saying it. They try to voice their feelings for the other person and the regrets they have made in life such as the time when the boy got in a car accident with his foster brother and the brother was killed. There came a moment in the interchange when the woman was left onstage by herself while the young man went and turned out the lights in the house. Time seemed to slow down in that moment, the lights changed and she herself was moving in slow motion. On the boys return to the porch where they were before time returns to its original stasis and the scene ends shortly afterward.

The second scene, after a short, complete change of the set, we are now put in a posh hotel room close to the airport where a man and a woman are toying with the notion of committing an affair together. Both move very carefully and are trying their best at being as sensual as possible, which turns out to be a little awkward for the man. The woman decides to take it slow and so they talk for the next 25 minutes. We find out that the man is the former teacher of the young boy killed in the car crash and that he is an art teacher about to do an exchange in America. The woman on the other hand is an ex-heroin addict (she met her husband in the rehabilitation program) who at one time traded making porn films for the drugs she needed…and that she’s a police officer. We find out all about her kinky past and the fact that she doesn’t have sex with her husband because she can’t bring herself to do that to him, but she’s willing to have an affair. We find out about the man and how he was slapped while he was in school by one of his professors because they got in a row over the man’s girlfriend (and future wife) and how the professor had been making passes at her. Finally the woman wants to have sex with the man but only if he agrees to her wishes, like he will be bound and blindfolded and he will slap her across the face. He does this, reluctantly. She goes into the bathroom to get some water. Time slows down; now he is on the bed stretching out. The moment she returns to the main room, time returns to its stasis and the scene ends shortly afterward.

The third scene, also after a short, complete change of set, is an abandoned metal building near Heathrow (get it now?). There is an older man and a younger woman. We find out that this man used to be a professor and that the woman is formerly of a foster home. They are taking care of some business that can only be done away from public eyes. The man keeps professing that he doesn’t want to go through with it anymore, but the woman shows him (and the audience) that he really does. By recounting his events from the day that included taking a large sum of money out of his bank (the money is being used to pay off the woman and get the business done). The woman begins to ask him questions of personality and also vaguely mentioning the young girl that the business is about. After a lengthy and at one point gruesome exchange (the woman tells a story about how she killed a dog when she was young to extreme detail), the business is done, the woman leaves the room to get the money out of the car. Time slows down, the man is stretching out his hand and arm that he had to keep in one place during the exchange between the woman and him. Eventually the money is exchanged and the young girl is delivered to the man from the airport. The man’s wife and him had tried agencies and years of natural methods but nothing worked, they were either always rejected on grounds of health or money (and I’m sure hitting a student and getting fired for it was not a good aspect either) so the man resorted to human trafficking.

The sets were amazing. They were actual full enclosed sets, all of them, all of them were different. The acting was good, though I had a hard time hearing the last woman because of where I was sitting. One problem I had was with the script. I didn’t feel like some things were warranted enough, like things went way too slowly and there was too much ambiguity and not enough similarity or ties between the stories. Yeah there were similarities, they were all connected in some way to one another and it was really just a giant game of Six Degrees of Separation, oddly enough there were six actual degrees. And yes the scenes are happening simultaneously in time, there are so many of the same references to the time it was almost too repetitive. Also I had a lot of grief with the second scene, I mean, just have sex already! This is ridiculous! If you’re going to have an affair with someone don’t go around explaining the intricacies of your past with the person just hurry up and get on with it! Yeah it adds suspense on the “will they/won’t they” front but c’mon! They obviously love their spouses in some way so if they are going to have an affair it’s for the physical side, not the emotional one. Also the whole issue with the dog killing in the third one, did seem a tad to the unnecessary extreme.

So there were bit where the play just really got on my nerves more than move me. But it was well worded when things did work. The characters were real enough to be believed and the situations, though a tad bit out of left field at times, are real situations that people of this day and age can find themselves in (yeah the human trafficking may have been too much). I love the work the Royal Court puts on, but sometimes it can leave you shaking your head saying to yourself “what the hell just happened?”

Tomorrow: No show, but a day out I’m sure…if only I can shake this sickness…