PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Rondo Theatre, Bath (Wed 28 Sept-Sat 1 Oct)

THEATRE This new work from Rondo resident company Provocation, who as the name implies like to take uncomfortable social issues and make drama out of them, concerns binge-drinking among young women in this country. It primarily concerns the lives of three women, one working class, two middle class (who failed their A-levels), all of them working in a crummy Costa Lot-style coffee shop – and there are some witty comments on how such places market their wares and the idiotically complicated names they come up with for a humble cup of coffee. But caffeine is not the drug at issue here. The play shows their progression (rapid) in alcohol consumption and what it does to them, and to some extent why they do it. They are Amy, the foul-mouthed and resentful council estate girl whose constant strident demands for ‘a good time’ belie her hopelessness and self-loathing; Chloe the supervisor, who covers her anxieties with drinking; and Katie the ‘newbie’ who just sort of joins in on the bingeing and gets caught up in it.

This is a piece about restricted lives: about people in a monotonous job, destroying themselves with a repetitive pattern of drinking to excess. The trick in these circumstances is to avoid the play itself becoming one-dimensional - a trap that isn’t entirely avoided here. The room for development of characters and relationships is limited, and the way the play is structured doesn’t help, with a repeating pattern either of monologues from each girl one after the other, or the three of them bingeing together in spangly tops with interactions between them mostly only about drinking or running a coffee shop. It tends to make this a bit more of a health warning for young women, and a bit less of a play.

Having said that, there was plenty of insight into the world of low-rent nights out, the ghastly chat-up lines, the desperate pretence of having fun while making yourself horribly ill, and the emptiness of it all. And a convincing cast gave it full throttle, and were certainly effective enough to cause a drop in bar sales in the interval. (John Christopher Wood)

Copyright John Christopher Wood 2011