Skip to main content

Review of Blackbird at Bonkers Playhouse, Kettering

Seeing Blackbird by David Harrower, presented me with my first visit to Bonkers Playhouse in Kettering. Opening just this year, it has become the home to Bonkers Theatrical, a group set up in 2009, and the cosy little venue also plays host to a wide range of touring productions, including those from White Cobra and Next Page Productions. It's a smart and really lovely little venue, complete with bar, seating of up to 40, and an impressive stage and bar area with some innovative ideas. However, what of the play?

Blackbird by David Harrower is a tough and gritty little piece, a ninety minute one act, but here split in a nice location. Una has found, by accident, Ray, who 15 years earlier had sexually abused her. He then a 40-year-old, her, just 12. It's an uncomfortable premise to form a play from, however, the sharpness of the writing, while definitely making its audience uncomfortable, never makes it unwatchable.

What it does need though are two performers of some ability and here with David Mander as Ray and Susan Hackett as Una, the show has that. At no point is this little piece perfect, but at its centre are two confident performances. The best of the two is Hackett, who presents the depth of the trauma that she carries with some scenes of brilliant emotion. Her extremely long monologue in the second section is delivered extremely well, and although it is wordy, the director, Mark Walker, keeps our attention through it with just slight movements at significant times, but never excessively to detract from the quality text. Mander meanwhile has the tough deal, it's not a nice character, that goes without saying, and at times, I did feel the role was a tad underplayed. He remains remarkably placid during Una's long speech, and be this director's choice or in the original piece, it seems odd that such a thing would occur without some more emotion, if only beyond the fixed facial gesture. However, between the two, this is a remarkably polished piece of drama from the pairing, with the explosive scenes becoming extremely intense at times.

Staging is clever, on a simple but well-designed set, and those explosive scenes are very well handled, with the front row missing, there is more effort to bring the nature of this outward into the audience space. All in all, with simple sound use, the whole production does Harrower's play full justice and comes as a pleasant surprise for my first visit to Bonkers and this theatrical group. I look forward to seeing future offerings from the group.

Performance reviewed: Saturday 11 August 2018 at the Bonkers Playhouse , Kettering.

Blackbird ran at the Bonkers Playhouse, Kettering between Tuesday 7 and Saturday 11 2018.

For full details of the Bonkers Playhouse visit their website at https://bonkersplayhouse.co.uk/
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent performed by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Underground), Northampton

The National Theatres Connections series of plays had been one of my highlights of my trips to R&D during 2014. Their short and snappy single act style kept them all interesting and never overstaying their welcome. So I was more than ready for my first encounter with one of this years Connections plays ahead of the main week of performances at R&D later in the year. Hacktivists is written by Ben Ockrent, whose slightly wacky but socially relevant play Breeders I had seen at St James Theatre last year. Hacktivists is less surreal, but does have a fair selection of what some people would call odd. Myself of the other hand would very much be home with them. So we are presented with thirteen nerdy "friends" who meet to hack, very much in what is termed the white hat variety. This being for good, as we join them they appear to have done very little more than hacked and created some LED light device. Crashing in to spoil the party however comes Beth (Emma-Ann Cranston)...
Read more

Review of It's A Wonderful Life by Masque Theatre at the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton

Remarkably I only saw the classic film It's A Wonderful Life last Christmas, this was thanks to spotting it lurking on my subscription of Netflix. A glorious heartwarming film perfect for Christmas? That must be why I was a blubbering mess at the end of it then. There was hope that in public, The Masque Theatre's performance of the radio version of the story didn't leave me in the same situation. As it happened it did a little as that final scene in the Bailey household played out again, but it didn't matter as there were members of the cast in the same broken state as many of us audience members. Left to right: Jo Molyneux, John Myhill, Lisa Wright, Michael Street, Lisa Shepherd and Jof Davies This was the first radio play that I had seen performed and on the evidence of this, I sure would like to see some more. While not having the drama of standard plays in their creation of moment and places, they do have a rather striking drive towards character creation. The ...
Read more

Review of The Rocky Horror Show at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes

Seeing the 46-year-old Rocky Horror Show at the theatre for the first time is quite an experience on many levels. First and foremost as a regular theatregoer, the audience, even on a relatively demure evening of a Monday, is something you would never really experience at a theatre beyond this show. Many are dressed up (even on that demure Monday), and so many are so in tune with the show, that these regular fans have become entwined within it. They know every word of the script, they contribute to it, they enhance it, often they make Richard O'Brien's already adult content into something much more adult. It's a revelation of experience, much before a newbie such as myself even considers the show. Laura Harrison's beautifully clear rendition of Science Fiction/Double Feature sets the scene for some generally excellent performances of O'Brien's classic tunes, in a musical which is clearly audible, sadly not something that always happens with many productio...
Read more