Just Loving It (Our theatrical holiday in the UK)

Just Loving It (**** AO) (Coming soon to a Device near you)
Reviewed by Gordon Gregory.

There is mounting evidence that the holiday in England shared by Pella and me was not real but a series of wonderfully-directed theatrical events to which we were given privileged access. To be with me, Pella had to take leave from a secret project identified at her work by three letters – let’s say JLI. We hired a car in the UK for a week; its number plate? JLI 300. If I’m not mistaken the probability of drawing those three letters randomly in that order is 1 in 17,576. That’s the kind of holiday it was!

But back to its theatrical nature. Several of the people we met were so vivid in personality, so lacking in ordinariness, as to seem like caricatures of certain types rather than real people. It has to be said that this includes a number to whom Pella is related. Others included the effusively-kind boarding house lady who spared no trouble in detailing in minute detail the precise nature and content of ‘the full English’ and of the workings of the shower taps and refrigerators in Pella’s room and mine. At one end of the breakfast room was a talking parrot – “Who’s a good boy, who’s a good boy?”; at the other, a concrete pool congested with goldfish as big as a prop forward’s leg. It was when we were seated at breakfast in these surrounds that the notion of being part of a piece of theatre emerged. Suddenly, between mouthfuls of pork sausage, the squawk of a seagull so loud and close to our table that it seemed to both of us more like an over the top sound effect than a real bird’s cry.

Our landlady was soon joined in dramatic personae by the crabby table waiter with attitude; the gossip in the village who – yes – knew the house we were looking for; the anxious driver fearful of not finding a parking spot and being forced to keep driving around a city’s centre for eternity; and of course the Knaresborough town crier – pure theatre in which Pella and I were able to play bit parts.

One of the most memorable theatric scenes was in the New Forest, established by William the Conquerer as a source of oak for building England’s navy and as a preferred locale for a King’s hunting. The Director of the Holiday presented us, their audience, with a scene so simple in its staging, so mundane in its content and so lacking in historicity as to be quite startling.

The set for the New Forest Scene is pictured above. It attests to the Director’s breathtakingly modern approach to the subject, a profound reflection on how mundane and contemporary life in England can be. How bold is the idea of locating a small upright table and four plastic chairs in such an historic setting! (The one complaint one may be permitted is the unlikely inclusion in the set of a bird of prey, perhaps intended as a metaphor of the long history hanging over the place, but quite over the top surely?)

The overall effect of the scene’s set is electric in its intentional dissonance. What would King William have thought of his new forest being used as the site for a commoner father to play frisbee with his young son before repairing to the nearby plastic table and barbecue set?

In Act 3 Scene 4, Pella and I were exposed to a play within the play, in which two accomplished actors from the Badapple Theatre Company portrayed the struggles of Amy Johnson to overcome the challenges experienced by those of her gender who sought aviator’s adventures in the 1930s. Pella, who knows about such things, enjoyed the performances in the piece but was critical of the play’s structure, in which the narrative concerning Johnson’s life was experienced mainly through the words and actions of others. This meant that the play has little direct action and an almost total lack of observed conflict. “What was I supposed to learn?” Pella asked. “And why were there no points of tension to highlight and enliven it?”

Act 4 Scene 1, in contrast, came with plenty of tension. It was set at first light in a cheap hotel with thin walls. It was one of those scenes designed by the Director to create discomfort and even embarrassment in the audience. Individual listeners sense that they are experiencing something so intimate that they wish they could be elsewhere, particularly if listening together with someone else, – as was our situation, since Pella and I were sharing a room. In this morning’s example of the genre the piece was more monologue than conversation, with the precise role played by the second (and perhaps third?) performers only to be guessed at. The lead performer maintained an emotive intensity with great effect, skilfully evoking a certainty among adult listeners that there really was no need to call the police. Again Pella and I felt just one criticism: that the Director persisted with the scene for a far longer time than would happen in real life, making it seem unlikely and excessive.

Overall, though, we have nothing but praise for the Director’s work and feel privileged to have been part of it.