PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

the egg, Theatre Royal Bath (Mon 20 Feb)

In a world not very far from now, this world of ours is a nostalgic history tale of reality TV, the internet and smart-phones, Haribos on demand, throw-away consumerism and enough food for everyone. But today, this country - this England - has fallen apart: everyone's hungry, immigration causes resentment, and you have to save up electricity to play your war games. And it all began when they vetoed a treaty.

A coalition government needs a poster-boy for a planned war. A planned war against its former EU partners. Through his self-seeking army widow mother, they recruit Marc, a teenage Coriolanus for these times. Pulled in every direction by the people who claim to love him, Marc has to choose - should he do what his duty demands, or what his heart pleads?

The chorus - an often necessary component with large junior casts - is a haunting character in its own right, progressing from confusion and despair to frighteningly military confidence, deaf to individuality and glad to have found a purpose - any purpose. After all, we hear time and again, England got where it did by winning wars.

Theatre Royal Bath's excellently fertile Shakespeare Unplugged Festival has given birth to a powerful, chilling and politically engaged take on Coriolanus. Writer David Lane and director Sita Calvert-Ennals worked with the extremely talented and thoughtful members of the theatre's Young People's Theatre over the last few months, to develop this work-in-progress. Impressively, Calvert-Ennals and the cast deliver a very polished script-in-hand show on the strength of just one night and one evening's rehearsals.

The entire cast deserves special mention, but peeking above a talented field are Matthew Sterling as Marc, Emer Heatley as his mother, Sabastian Samuel as his friend Arty, Hannah Ward as the clinically manipulative politician and Rhiannon Clapham as Marc's sympathetic Aunt - a character it would be great to see more from.

This is still a work undergoing development, with great potential in a wide variety of settings across the UK. It raises questions for teenagers about the future they want to see, and for adults about the stewardship they allow to happen in their name. Not for nothing, it seems, is one of the play's closing lines, "I didn't vote for this". (Gill Kirk)

Copyright Gill Kirk 2012