Written for Culture Wars
Insecurity rules, OK? Joe and Kirsty might look down their noses at a world full of “mingers” and dickheads, but beneath the blustered superiority, both are deeply apprehensive.
It is the world that has made them that way. Theirs – by which I mean ours – is a realm of simulacra and airbrushed perfection; a Baudrillardian wonderland without a hair out of place. Everything is fake. Everything is identikit. The “never-ending conveyor belt of perfect pussy;” the energy generated from caffeinated drinks. Even the people aren’t originals, but recycled composites: one’s a mix of George Clooney and Lenny Henry, another of Keith Chegwin and a potato.
Joe and Kirsty are Google-babies in a world that can’t measure up to computerised simulations. She goads a teacher for daring not to pluck an answer out of thin air, falling short of Wikipedia. He dismisses those around him as “battery hens.” Yet both fail to understand the implication that, to those they scorn, they fall just as short. “I know everyone thinks I’m a prick,” puffs Joe, “but I’m better than them, so fuck it.” The young have lost all notion of humanity; they make no allowance for our common frailty or individual foibles.
Gradually, their two intercut monologues encroach on each other, as both head out on a Friday night towards Chapel Street. There’s a church at the end that’s been turned into a bar and it’s outside, during a incident-ridden evening, that Joe and Kirsty meet, rather coyly, rather awkwardly and with a vague aroma of urine knocking about.
Young playwright Luke Barnes is a prodigious talent. Not content with one clever little corker at this year’s festival in Bottleneck, he’s gone and written another. Chapel Street is a scorcher; a Disco Pigs for the pro-plus generation. Sure, it’s not saying anything that isn’t being said elsewhere, but his diagnosis of the underlying psychology – all glaring splinters and unseen planks – is pinpoint and written with real explosive flair.
Cheryl Gallagher’s direction, pared right back to the conventions of stand-up, smartly uses microphones to seed ideas of both performance and mediatisation. With the flotsam of Friday night – street furniture and party wigs – she dishevels both characters beyond dignity. Cary Crankson is a fine cheeky chump, with just the right snarling aggression, but Ria Zmitrowicz is superb as Kirsty. All frizz and spasm, she is insecurity bubbled up to the surface and made manifest in eye-rolls and lip bites. Her voice is an upward-inflected mewl, also questioning and quivering. In fact, she bleats.
Barnes probably takes one step to far in the end for the sake of story, forgetting that humdrum, anticlimactic everyday life can be full enough on its own, but nonetheless, Chapel Street announces a young playwright to keep tabs on.
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