PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Alma Tavern Theatre, Bristol (18-29 Oct)

THEATRE The second performance of Theatre West’s Picture This autumn/winter season of plays inspired by a single photograph is a simple story of one man’s pathological pursuit of fear and the effect this has on his life and loved ones. Dorian Matthews, you see, just can’t help himself: he’s even clutching a doctor’s diagnosis brandishing him counterphobic. But does such hard-coded behaviour absolve him of responsibility for his actions, or is there a greater force at work?

We enter the Alma’s bijou performance box as Dorian (Dean Rehman) busies himself about a small metal scaffolding, tightening nuts, testing bolts and ominously muttering about lacerations, facial trauma and loosened molars. Clearly, this isn’t going to end well.

When Dorian, in cut-off jeans, trainers and T-shirt turns to address the audience, he proves a warm-natured host with a mellifluous Cardiff burr, deconstructing his affliction and hinting at an upbringing that failed to recognise it. “I’m an adrenaline junkie,” he confirms, before unpacking a life of speeding cars, BASE jumping (parachuting – often illegally – from a variety of high places) and a latter day absorption with the ultimate thrill: high-wire walking between buildings, Philippe Petit-style, where “losing focus means death”.

Having married and sired a son, Malcolm, the through-line to the ending is an obvious one, perhaps, but the moments where a skittish Dorian, wild-eyed, sweat-soaked and bristling with conviction, loses himself in the defence of his art reel the room in whole, and in convincing his clarinet-toting lad to “walk the line” with him, Dorian heartbreakingly reveals himself as a flawed father with issues buried way beyond the genetic.

Whether he’s simply an unthinking biobot, a responsibility-shirking thrill-seeker or a lost little boy pining for approval from dad, is your call; but without taking a big bite, scriptwriter Penny Gunter licks at the edges of a fascinating, uncomfortable debate around pre-determination aided by some economical, widescreen direction from Sita Calvert-Ennals and the trills, parps and squalls of Sam Halmarack’s unobtrusive soundscape.

More to the point, for a 50-minute slice of conversation-starting, between-courses pub theatre, this should be on everyone’s menu. (Joe Spurgeon)

Copyright Joe Spurgeon 2011

Pic: Farrows Creative